This website is designed as an online resource for the Immunobiology (MCDB 133) and Medical Immunology (MCDB W 138) courses at UCSB.
Immunobiology (MCDB 133)
This introductory course presents a comprehensive overview of the immune system. Starting with the extensive network of organ systems that collectively define the immune system, the focus then narrows down to various cell types, proteins, and genes that collectively orchestrate the specialized biological activities of the immune system.
The two buttons below open resource webpages with links to interactive 3-D structures of important immunological molecules and desciptions of methods for isolating immune cells and analyzing their functions.
Medical Immunology (MCDB W 138)
This course focuses on immune-related human disease conditions arising from inappropriate immune responses that might be over active (e.g., hypersensitivity), under active (e.g., immunodeficiency), self reactive (e.g., autoimmunity), misdirected (e.g., a nonpathogen allergy), or ineffective (e.g., immunosuppression induced by a tumor or pathogen infection).
The button below enters a website portal with interactive case-based studies presented with customized diagnostic data for various medical conditions that are linked to specific defects in immune responsiveness.
Instructors may request a password from D. Sears to examine
these case studies as possible course learning activies.
In the late seventeen hundreds, Edward Jenner made the astounding observation that smallpox might be medically connected to cowpox, a milder disease in cows that produces skin lesions similar to the skin lesions of smallpox. With tissue extracts from infected cows, Jenner produced the first ever vaccine, which could protect most individuals from the serious and often fatal course of smalpox if administerd before smallpox exposure.
Nearly a hundred years later, Louis Pasteur broadly generalized Jenner's observation by demonstrating that safe and effective vaccines could be produced to protect humans and animals from other infectious diseases, including rabies, anthrax, and cholera. With the full recognition that different microbes were at the root of different infectious diseases, Pasteur's rigorous use of animal models in his research effectively created the new biological discipline of immunology. At the same time, he also established the basic template for modernizing the scientific and medical approaches for studying and treating many different types of diseases.
Pasteur's many discoveries predated the first Nobel Prize, awarded about five years after his death. Nevertheless, the Prize has been bestowed on many scientists over the years for seminal and often unexpected discoveries that have profoundly shaped our understanding of the immune system. The discipline of immunology continues to grow by leaps and bounds but puzzling mysteries still surround many of its intriguing features. Now that the genome of any organism can be readily decoded and manipulated, it is safe to assume that a wealth of new insights are yet to be discovered about the immune system.
April 9, 2020