EY1920 Year Book

79 78 Ip Shuk Tin Tina Term 1 The first module is core immunology during which we learnt about the latest updates in immunology. Every week there were lectures given by guest lecturers from different institutions, for example, Prof. Sarah Gilbert from Jenner Institute, Oxford, gave us a lecture on vaccine platform designed for Ebola which is now used in SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development. Every week we also had regular tutorial meetings, during which professor meets students in small group and discuss latest research papers, this helped me get familiar with how to analyse a paper. Later, we also did a module called Advanced Immunology, students were divided into groups of 3- 4, get a paper and prepare a 1-hour presentation on the findings in the next day. It was a fun module! Term 2, 3 Aside from the core immunology course, we can pick elective modules that we are most interested in. I picked Clinical Immunology, Parasitic Immunology and Vaccine Immunology. I’ve learnt a lot from these modules. Clinical Immunology This module covers clinical immunological diseases including immunodeficiency, autoimmunity, infectious diseases, cancers, so on. Each of us has to prepare a 15-mins presentation on a selected topic and mine was Immuno- dysregulation poly-endocrinopathy enteropathy X- linked (or IPEX) syndrome, which is a disease caused by mutation of Foxp3 gene that leads to loss of regulatory T cells and hence multiple autoimmune-induced pathology. Parasitic Immunology This module introduces different type of worms that are prevalent in other part of the world but less common in Hong Kong, such as Trypanosome, Leishmania, Schistosoma, etc. I think it is a fascinating module as the worms are really smart! Parasites can make use of multiple strategies to invade out immune system, and they are smart enough to manipulate our immune system to limit their replication so that they do not kill their host (Us). Vaccine Immunology Vaccine is currently one of the most discussed topic, scientist and pharmaceutical companies from all over the world are working hard to make vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. I am already back to Hong Kong when this module started due to COVID-19 and most of the lectures were in form of pre-recorded lectures. Fortunately, we did have some zoom meetings with the speakers. One of the most interesting thing I learnt from this module is about epitope prediction, there is an online platform called IEDB, where scientist from all over the world upload information about T cells and B cells epitopes, this is a useful tool for designing vaccines. BSI Congress During December, 2019, I joined the 2019 British Society for Immunology (BSI) Congress. There were numerous interesting sharings, such as the association of chronic inflammation and Alzheimer’s disease, the chronic inflammatory state in aged people named Inflammaging, but the most interesting topic to me was CAR-T cell therapy, which redesign the T cell receptor to make our T cells targets the cancer cells. Currently, CAR-T cells work best for haematological cancers as it is difficult for the T cells to reach the solid tumours with complicated architecture. Professor Carl June shared his latest work which engineered the T cells to target fibroblast, this allows the T cells to recognise and attack the fibrous layer on solid tumours. Interestingly, these T cells also shows potent effect on limiting cardiac fibrosis! MBBS Enrichment Year 2019/20 Khong Ka Wa Matthew Full Year < IC - I nter c alate d d egree at Lo n do n Sc h oo l of H y giene an d T r op i c al Me d i c ine , U K > Khong Ka Wa Matthew