Ruslan Medzhitov (Yale / HHMI) 1: Introduction to Inflammation

https://www.ibiology.org/immunology/i...

Ruslan Medzhitov provides an overview of the field of inflammation, outlines its role in pathology and homeostasis, and explains how Inflammation is generated.

Talk Overview:
Dr. Ruslan Medzhitov provides an overview of the field of inflammation and outlines its role in pathology and homeostasis. Medzhitov explains how Inflammation is generated when pathogens, allergens, or other perturbations are recognized by sensor cells that then release inflammatory mediators (cytokines and chemokines) to activate effector cells. Inflammation is then followed by a resolution phase that brings the system back to homeostasis.

Why do we experience fatigue and loss of appetite, as well as other symptoms when we get ill? Sometimes what we associate with a pathogenic response and illness is the effect of inflammation. In his second talk, Medzhitov outlines the symptoms that we often feel when we get sick, like the lack of appetite (anorexia), and unveils the molecular mechanisms that explain why we have evolved this way. In addition, he compares and contrasts how anorexia affects the outcome of bacterial and viral infections.

Speaker Biography:
Dr. Ruslan Medzhitov is a Sterling Professor of immunology at Yale School of Medicine and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. His laboratory studies the signals that initiate and control the process of inflammation, allergic reaction, and immune response. His laboratory also studies tissue biology, and the communication circuits that help to establish stable cellular communities within tissues.

Medzhitov earned his bachelor's in Biology from Tashkent State University, and pursued a doctorate degree in biochemistry at the Moscow State University (1993). Medzhitov was a graduate student during the profound economic crisis that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, which prevented him from performing any experimental work during his graduate studies. Being unable to do any experimental work didn’t stop Medzhitov, who continued his studies by reading the scientific literature at the Library for Natural Sciences in Moscow, and attending lectures. There, he encountered his passion towards studying immunology after reading a paper by Dr. Charles Janeway, where he described his theories on how the immune system works. Medzhitov, fascinated by these theories, contacted Janeway and started a collaboration that shaped the rest of his career. In 1993, Medzhitov received a 3-month Unesco fellowship to study bioinformatics with Russell Doolittle at the University of California, San Diego. In 1994, he continued his postdoctoral training at Janeway’s lab.

For his scientific contributions, Medzhitov was elected member of the National Academy of Sciences (2010), and received the Shaw Prize in Life Science and Medicine (2011). Learn more about Medzhitov’s research at his lab website:
http://immunobiology.yale.edu/people/...