Reflection- Cell Journal #2

Hello journal , 

This week, I learned some basics of cell biology which include prokaryotes and eukaryotes, their classifications, structures, and genetic information - such as DNA sequencing, microarrays, chromatography, etc. Because this subject focuses on the cell, in one of our first classes, my classmates and I sketched and explained the cells that are affected during a covid infection and how it progresses throughout our bodies. I thought our professor's requirement that we discuss it in class was an excellent idea because it is a current medical concern, and learning about it increases awareness and importance. Furthermore, because everyone's expertise and understanding differ, sharing information was like learning more about the role of cells in covid, such as the ACE2 receptor and the virus's replication process within our bodies. We sketched out the cell as a group and discussed the ways the virus spreads and replicates within the body. When someone discusses something, especially science-related issues, it helps me study when they talk about it frequently and sketch and describe it. Repetition of the content, which I define as studying it repeatedly, aids me in memorizing it.

VOCABULARY JOURNAL #1 - CELL & MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

                   VOCABULARY TIME!!

 

CELL FRACTIONATION

It is a process of separating out the cellular organelles/components while preserving its individual functions. 

IMMUNOHISTOCHEMISTRY

IHC is a technique used  for determining the tissue distribution of an antigen using monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies.

GLYCOSIDIC BOND

It is covalent bond between a saccharide molecule's hemiacetal group and the hydroxyl group of an organic substance 

ImmunoJournal #14 VoCAbuLarY

Hello Journal Readers, 

Hypersensitivity

A situation in which the body's ordinarily protective immune system causes harm to it.

There are four types of hypersensitivity such as:

                                                                            Type 1 

                                                                            Type 2

                                                                            Type 3

                                                                            Type 4 

Anaphylaxis

                        A severe allergic reaction to an antigen to which the body has developed a hypersensitivity.

Ionophores

A chemical capable of transporting certain ions across a cell's lipid membrane.

ImmunoJournal -#13 Encounter

 

Helloooo...

Today, I'd like to talk about an incident I had the other day. So, my father has a few medical issues, and yesterday, after returning from a doctor's appointment, he showed me a new medication for his psoriasis (a drug) that his doctor prescribed him, and he asked if I could look them up on the internet to see whether they were safe to use. So, as he said, I casually investigated the name of his drug, which is an injectable, and was extremely thrilled to know that it had something to do with immunology. This is primarily due to my lack of knowledge of psoriasis as an immune illness. Tremfya (guselkumab) is the name of the medication/drug that he was prescribed. Tremfya (guselkumab) is a monoclonal antibody used against interleukin-23 to treat psoriatic arthritis and plaque psoriasis. It's a drug that comes in two doses that are separated by eight weeks. My father suffers from plaque psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis.IL-23 is a heterodimeric cytokine consisting of IL-12B and IL-23A subunits that belongs to the IL-12 family of cytokines. I was thrilled when I read the name Interleukin-23 because I was studying interleukins in my immunology class at Wau. At the same time, I was worried about my father because I discovered that he has three immunological conditions at the same time: psoriasis, arthritis, and diabetes. Polyautoimmunity is a term used to describe when a person has three or more immunological illnesses.

Investigation Journal #12

Hello,

This blog is about the two articles that I read about the development of the Sars-Cov-2 (Covid-19) vaccine.

The first article I read was from Florian Kramme published by the organization NATURE where the writer talked about how developments of vaccine for covid 19 was possible, the techniques they used, and the risks that are involved in this. This is an interesting article that reviews the different types of vaccines available, how they are made, and the recent outcomes of these vaccines. As traditional vaccines take approximately more than 15 years, SARS-CoV-2 vaccines have been developed in an accelerated manner which only took months to start its first trials. But it is however not clear how long or how much effective these vaccines be. Some vaccine platforms discussed in this article are the inactivated vaccines, live attenuated vaccines, recombinant protein vaccines, replication-incompetent & competent vectors, inactivated vectors, DNA vaccines, and RNA vaccines. The most interesting part of the information that I liked and didn't know before, presented in this article are the systemic and mucosal immune responses to the natural infection with respiratory viruses and vaccination. That is, the natural infection induces mucosal antibody responses (IgA) as well as systemic antibody responses (IgG). The upper tract of the respiratory system is protected by the secretory IgA and the lower respiratory tract is mainly protected by the secretory IgG. It is mainly the intramuscularly or the intradermal vaccinations that are administered to the people which is mainly focusing on the lower respiratory tract that induce IgG and not IgA. There are only a few people who got administered the intranasal vaccination which is mostly for the upper respiratory tract that is protected by the IgA. Therefore, it is possible that the vaccines administered are the disease-preventing or the disease-attenuating immunity and not necessarily sterilizing immunity. I didn't know that there are vaccines that are administered through the nose (even the vaccines for Covid-19). This article also talks about various vaccines available at the market such as the CoronaVac from the Sinovac, Sinopharm, CanSino, AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer, and Novavax. 

This is a peer-reviewed article presented by the organization Nature by Florian Klammer published on 23rd September 2020. This article presents the actual results from the clinical trials done with the developed vaccines, some short-term results, and basic information about the development of the vaccines. 

The second blog I read titles "Development of an inactivated vaccine Candidate for Sars-CoV-2 " investigated and reported by twenty-five authors was published on 4th November 2020 in an organization called Science. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) belongs to the genus Betacoronavirus (β-CoV) from the family Coronaviridae. "SARS-CoV-2 has a linear, single-stranded, positive-sense RNA genome encoding four structural proteins, with a spike (S), envelope (E), membrane (M), and a nucleocapsid (N)". This article talks about the development of PicoVacc which is a purified inactivated SARS-CoV-2 virus vaccine that is induced with specific neutralizing antibodies of SARS-CoV-2 in mice, rats, and also other non-human primates. This was first tried on monkeys against the SARS-CoV-2 virus which protected them from a rhesus macaque. With the results from this short-term study, the researchers collected multiple SARS-CoV-2 strains from different patients admitted at 11 different hospitals around the world. Then, they chemically inactivated the most armful properties of the virus. The animals were then immunized with one of the two doses they made and inoculated with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This vaccine seemed to be neutralizing 10 strains of SARS-Cov-2 which gave an idea that it would help protect against other possible strains as well. Three immunizations using two different doses (3 or 6 micrograms per dose) provide partial or complete protection against the SARS-CoV-2 virus according to the clinical tests in the animals. That is, those who received the lowest dose seemed to have a controlled condition of the infection, and those animals who received the highest dose seemed to have more protection and did not see any loads on the pharynx or at the lungs after seven days of the infection. This was also a pretty good article that helped me understand how the clinical trials on animals help determine the possibility to run a clinical run on humans. 

Citation of the article: 

Krammer, F. SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in development. Nature 586, 516–527 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2798-3

https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.abc1932

VOCAB-JOURNAL #11

Time to learn some New Terms!!

Stochastic model  

    These models make an immune response as well as dynamics of a viral infection that are developed at the earliest stages of an infection. 

Thymic selection

   This selection takes place in the thymus and is an important process for generating mature T cells through the negative and positive selection of immature cells of alpha-beta T-cell receptors.

CCR7 

Chemokine receptor that helps direct cells to lymph node. 

Immuno-journal #10: Vocabulary

                              TIME TO LEARN SOME NEW WORDS😃

Lymphotoxin 

            A member of the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and is also produced by the lymphocytes which is a type of white blood cells. Lymphotoxin has multiple functions such that it helps in regulating inflammation and autoimmunity, control the development and maintenance of the lymphoid organ. 

Glycoproteins

          These are molecules that contain proteins and carbohydrates chains which involve in physiological functions including immunity. These are the proteins that help enter the body. 

Example:  Covid-19 virus (Sars cov-2) have spike (s) glycoproteins which attaches to the surface of the host cell and play a huge role in the fusion and penetration of the host cell.    

Polymorphism 

            It's a phenomenon or a possibility when there are two or more different forms that occur in a gene or phenotypes. Also known as alternate phenotypes.

                    Poly = many             morphism = a variance of form 

Investigation- journal #9 : Rheumatoid Arthritis

Today, I'm reviewing two articles that I personally found interesting when I was researching about Rheumatoid Arthritis!!

The first article that I found interesting was about the proteomic analysis to define the predictors of some treatment options in RA patients. Even though this whole article talked about many other common treatment options, the main treatments included the use of adalimumab or methotrexate. In this article, the researchers used a multiplex bead-based approach where they analyzed the healthy controls as well as the RA patients for their similarities and differentiation in the autoantibody expression and the co-expression profiles to test the outcome of their treatment. Also if any of the autoantibodies expressed are the response from the treatment. For this study, the healthy controls were selected from the specimens from blood donors of Bavarian Red Cross, Germany, and the experimental subjects were 18 years or older RA patients commencing Methotrexate along with other DMARDS and oral steroids from the Rheumatoid Arthritis medication study. The other set of experimental subjects were RA patients commencing adalimumab which is an anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF) used to treat the inflammation in the joints. Out of 376 autoantibodies tested 39 autoantibodies were expressed differentially in the patients with Rheumatoid arthritis when compared with the healthy controls and most of them were in a citrullinated form. The patients who tested seropositive for citrullinated form had an improved DAS28, whereas, patients with seronegative citrullinated form tend to get a worsen DAS28 in their first 3 to 6 months of treatment. 

This article is a peer reviewed article which was published in Pharmacogenomics journal in December 10, 2019 by the authors Stephanie F. Ling, Nisha Nair, Suzanne M. M. Verstappen, Anne Barton, Hans-Dieter Zucht, Petra Budde, Peter Schulz-Knappe, MATURA consortium, and, Darren Plant. 

The second article I read was about a small study conducted to study the perspectives of Primary Care Physicians when dealing with RA patients. For this study, the researchers randomly selected PCPs practicing in the United States. As part of the study, they conducted a survey via email which included questions about their experiences with the RA patients, how comfortable they are, rheumatological referrals, and their prescribing of the disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDS drugs). The main goal of this study was to check and understand the experiences, attitudes, knowledge about how these PSPs have with the Rheumatoid arthritis patients since these were the doctors who get the first contact with the patients. There were also some complaints raised by the RA patients about how much care they receive from the PCPs and Rheumatologists. Therefore, this survey to a certain extent I believe was able to capture some insights about the treatments, attitudes, and experience of some PCPS. The study recorded that around 1,103 PCPs opened the survey but only 267 PCPs completed the survey. It was mostly men with an experience of 10 years having six RA patients completed this survey. It was interesting that only half of the doctors receive training for treating RA patients after their medical school years and out of this only one-third were confident in their treatment. Overall, from the study, it was clear that most of the PCPs weren't comfortable treating RA patients either due to lack of confidence and/or lack of experience. 

This article is also a peer-reviewed article written by Katie L Garneau, Mura D Iversen, Hsun Tsao & Daniel H Solomon published by Department of Physical Therapy School of Health Professions, Bouve College of Health Sciences Northeastern University on the November 18th, 2011. 

Citation:

Ling, S.F., Nair, N., Verstappen, S.M.M. et al. Proteomic analysis to define predictors of treatment response to adalimumab or methotrexate in rheumatoid arthritis patients. Pharmacogenomics J20, 516–523 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41397-019-0139-4

Garneau, K.L., Iversen, M.D., Tsao, H. et al. Primary care physicians' perspectives towards managing rheumatoid arthritis: room for improvement. Arthritis Res Ther 13, R189 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1186/ar3517

Vocabulary- Journal #8

Let's learn some new Immunological terms!! 

ITAM 

Immunoreceptor Try-based Activation Motif is a region in the cytoplasmic tail region where it is a mediator of intracellular signals and also a domain in the signaling chain that consists of protein and receptors. 

TCR

T-cell receptor is a complex containing integral membrane proteins which helps in the activation of T-cells in response to antigens.

Glycosylation

This is an important function that takes place in the Golgi apparatus and in the endoplasmic reticulum where it plays a role in the biosynthetic secretory pathway. About half of proteins that are expressed in cells undergo this change with sugar fragments covalently added to specific amino acids.

Reflection- journal #7: Know about Arthritis??

 

Hello Journal, 

    It was World Arthritis Day on October 12th, 2021! So, what is this Arthritis? 

A simple definition for arthritis would be swelling, tenderness, and pain in the joints which may come with many more symptoms. There are different types of arthritis. Some common types of arthritis that found are osteoporosis, psoriatic arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, gout, and lupus. 

This past week, I had a project due for my immunology class and I did a small poster on the topic Rheumatoid arthritis. There's no specific reason why I chose this topic even though I do have family members who has diagnosed with arthritis in general. Since, I completed my project, I thought its ideal to reflect on what I said on my project through an immuno-journal. On my project, I started with a small introduction by defining what specifically "Rheumatoid arthritis" is. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune, inflammatory disease where the immune system sends the antibody to the lining of the joints and tissues which thereby causing the synovium to spread across the joints causing inflammation. My overall project also included sections of signs and symptoms, the risk factors and diagnosis, treatments, and also some detailed diagrams of the process in which rheumatoid arthritis occur. 

Working on this project was helpful for me as it gave me more knowledge on this specific disease which is widely seen in many population especially in the older community. Therefore, it always helps to educate ourselves and the people we know who has arthritis or show symptoms that is similar to rheumatoid. And I do support with all these projects because it allows us to choose the topic we love to research on and develop our abilities, skills, and knowledge needed for further studies. 

Immuno-Encounter #6!!

Hello journal readers...

On a Saturday evening, doing a bit of door dash food delivery, I was assigned an order from a nearby restaurant to an elderly nursing home/assisted home. I collected the food and reached the assigned location, parked my car, and walked into the building. I found myself in a silent hallway with a lot of small apartments on either side. As I was searching for the correct apartment number for the delivery, there were different signboards on each door. I didn't care much to read all the signboards until I reached my assigned apartment, where I saw a signboard stating "DANGER! Someone in this apartment has an Autoimmune disease". As I was unaware of what to do next, I knocked on the apartment door. A female voice through the speaker, which was beside the door told me to place the food package by the door. I kept the food outside and as I started walking back, the door opened and a person in a full PPE gown stepped out, sanitized the outer cover of the package, and took it inside the apartment. 

At that moment, I remembered the class at my university on autoimmune disorders and the discussions held in class. Autoimmune disease is a condition in which one's immune system attacks its own healthy living cells. This compromises the immune system, making it susceptible to diseases easily which can have fatal consequences. Apparently, this might be the reason why the person was wearing a PPE kit gown and sanitized the package before taking it into the apartment regardless of the covid safety measures.