London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Prof Maria Yazdanbakhsh will deliver this talk entitled 'Geographical differences in the immune system and the consequences'.

There is considerable variation in disease profiles and in vaccine responses in populations belonging to high and low resource settings in different geographical areas.  Environmental factors, such as exposure to micro- and macro-organisms, can have a strong influences on the immune system, which in turn determines the development of immune mediated diseases or responses to vaccines. Understanding of the variation seen in the human immune system will have implications for designing better treatment or vaccines. The immune system can be studied at great detail using mass cytometry, which allows huge number of immune cell clusters to be identified and compared in different geographical settings. Data will be presented on type 2 diabetes and on responses to controlled human malaria infection in groups of individuals, with distinct immune systems, living in areas characterized as urban and rural.