November 18, 2020 | 9am PT | 12pm ET | 5pm GMT

The outcome of infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, is determined by a person’s immune response. That outcome may be good, when the immune system halts the virus with barely an obvious symptom; bad, when the immune response causes symptoms of disease; or ugly, when an over-cooked response triggers severe or life-threatening reaction.

During this event, two leading immunologists will describe how our immune defenses recognize and respond to viral threats, tease out the roles that the different components of the immune system play in protection and damage, and discuss the characteristics of vaccines that could generate protective immunity to SARS-CoV-2 in a large fraction of the population.

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Speakers:

Akiko Iwasaki, Professor of Immunobiology and Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, Yale School of Medicine

Akiko Iwasaki received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto (Canada) in 1998, and her postdoctoral training from the National Institutes of Health (USA) (1998-2000). She joined Yale University (USA) as a faculty in 2000, and currently is an Investigator of the HHMI and Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Department of Immunobiology, and of Department of Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology. Akiko Iwasaki’s research focuses on the mechanisms of immune defense against viruses at the mucosal surfaces. Her laboratory is interested in how innate recognition of viral infections lead to the generation of adaptive immunity, and how adaptive immunity mediates protection against subsequent viral challenge.

E. John Wherry, Director, Institute for Immunology, University of Pennsylvania

Dr. E. John Wherry is the Barbara and Richard Schiffrin President’s Distinguished Professor, Chair of the Department of Systems Pharmacology and Translational Therapeutics in the Perelman School of Medicine and Director of the UPenn Institute for Immunology. Dr. Wherry’s research has pioneered the field of T cell exhaustion – the fundamental mechanisms by which T cell responses are attenuated during chronic infections and cancer. His work has advanced understanding of how gene expression changes affect this exhaustion, which has led to strategies to improve the effectiveness of T cell-targeting immunotherapies. Dr. Wherry’s lab is a pioneer in defining the concept of Immune Health using systems immunology approaches, most recently applying this concept to COVID-19.

Moderator:

Richard Gallagher, Editor-in-Chief, Annual Reviews

Richard Gallagher has a PhD from the Department of Cell Biology at Glasgow University, Scotland, and spent 10 years in research, five as Wellcome Trust Lecturer in Immunology at Trinity College, University of Dublin, Ireland, working on the immunopathology of celiac disease. On moving to publishing, he served as Office Head and Senior Editor for the Europe Office of Science in Cambridge, England before joining  Nature in London, England as Chief Biology Editor, where he managed the publication of the papers describing the sequencing of the human genome in 2001. He was later appointed Publisher of  Nature before moving to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to become Editor & Publisher of  The Scientist magazine. He joined Annual Reviews in 2015.

Read more

• Getting “exhausted” T cells back into action against cancer
• What is a cytokine storm?
• Getting a Covid-19 vaccine — quickly and safely
• An old problem: How immune responses weaken with age
• Blood clots: A major problem in severe Covid-19
• Viruses that come to stay
• I tested positive for Covid-19 antibodies — what now?
• Annual Reviews article collection: Coronavirus research

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This event is part of Reset, an ongoing series of live events and science journalism exploring how the world is navigating the coronavirus pandemic, its consequences and the way forward. Reset is supported by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Knowable Magazine is a product of Annual Reviews, a nonprofit publisher dedicated to synthesizing and integrating knowledge for the progress of science and the benefit of society.