The immune system comprises organs, tissues, cells and molecules, which protect the body against pathogens.
Detailed description
The biological defense system can be separated into an innate and an adaptive part. The innate immune system developed early in the phylogeny of living things. The adaptive immune system adjusts to new or modified pathogens. Both parts collaborate closely. Moreover, the immune system can destroy abnormal or defective cells of the own body.
Alexander Titz’s research group focuses on biofilms, which is a slimy layer that bacteria produce to physically protect themselves against the immune system and against antibiotics. For example, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a dreaded hospital pathogen, is a member of this group of bacteria and uses ...
Advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) is one of the most common chronic illnesses in Germany. In the affected dialysis patients, the immune system is weakened and the susceptibility to infection is increased: Pneumonia caused by pneumococci is one of the most common causes of death, although ...
Hematological stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is one of the most important treatments for haematological malignancies. Two major complications after stem cell transplantations are the development of graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) and the reactivation of the human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), which ...
Jörg Janne Vehreschild started his professional career as a programmer. However, he soon decided to pursue his second passion and began his medical studies a year later. Today, at only 39, Vehreschild
Christina Zielinski always wanted to become a doctor, but then research got hold of her, or, more precisely, human T cells did. Christina Zielinski has been focusing on these major players in the
DZIF infectious disease and tropical medicine specialist Günter Fröschl (42), from Munich, spent two months in Liberia from December last year, to help with the largest Ebola epidemic seen to date
It happened so incredibly fast that she can still hardly believe it. Until September last year, Marylyn Addo and her family lived in Boston, where the physician and infectologist had successfully
