Jun 11, 2020
Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and
Immunology Faculty Member of the Department of Medicine at
Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Kate Jeffrey, joins the show to
discuss her work in the field of virology and immunology.
In this episode, you will learn:
Microorganisms: trillions of them live in or on us, many of
which we need just as much as they need us. But how exactly do they
shape and educate our immune systems? And how might the answer
differ if we were asking about
viruses instead of microbes?
These are just a couple of the questions that Dr. Jeffrey explores
in her work, along with a close look at the influence of
epigenetics on the function of our immune cells.
In her lab, a brand-new field of study is under the spotlight:
the virome. Dr. Jeffrey says that of the trillions of
viruses on earth, we can only identify about 6,000. Although we
certainly don’t know the extent to which it occurs, we do know
that there is evidence that viruses have an impact on the
function of immune cells.
Dr. Jeffrey explains the process of studying this, which involves
extracting
viruses from resected sections of inflamed colons from patients
with IBD, and testing those
viruses in the lab to see how they interact with immune cells
such as macrophages, which act as the first line of defense in the
immune system.
Through this research, they have found that
viruses from a healthy gut essentially lead macrophages to be
in an anti-inflammatory state, which means all the genes that
define a macrophage as being anti-inflammatory are triggered by a
virus coming from a healthy gut. To the contrary,
viruses from an IBD individual trigger all of the classic
inflammatory genes.
Dr. Jeffrey expounds on a number of other fascinating topics, so
tune in and check out https://jeffreylab.mgh.harvard.edu/ to
learn more.
Available on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/2Os0myK