General Immunology

The word 'immunology' comes from the latin "immunis" which means "no charge", understanding by charge a tax, law or disease. It is said that those individuals who do not succumb to the disease when infected are immune, and this state of resistance to a specific disease is called immunity. The first contributions of the Immunology to Biology and Medicine, departed from the idea that it was possible to induce immunity to pathogens preventing therefore the appearance of infectious diseases; hence, the rationale for vaccines represents the historical birth of immunology. Until the sixties of the last century, the greatest progress of immunology occurred in the elucidation of the nature of the antibodies, complement and the antigen-antibody reaction. These advances have made possible development and improvement of serological diagnostic methods and their application to other fields, with the subsequent appearance of the radioimmunoassay and enzyme immunoassay. The last decades of the century witnessed the great boom of the studies concerning the critical role of cellular immunity in immune responses, which served to complete the knowledge of the acquired immunity mechanisms. More recently, innate immunity, their cells and molecules, have also occupied an important place in the study of the defense mechanisms.

Currently, Immunology is one of the greatest interest areas in the field of biology, especially in Health Sciences. The importance of this subject in the curriculum of the degree in biology is determined by several factors: 1) The immune response is a physiological process essential to understand the operational of organisms.
2) The immune response is a basic process in the context of infectious diseases and the immune system abnormalities constitute a group of very important pathologies.
3) Immune-based techniques currently used in laboratory are key to reach a proper diagnostic

In addition to the usual difficulties inherent in any discipline, we must be aware of the added challenges of immunology. Indeed, throughout this course students have to become familiar with new vocabulary (cytokine, cluster of differentiation, Antigen and antibody, complement system, etc) that so far has been completely unknown to them. They should also learn to manage certain complex reagents and machines. So at the end of this program we only pursue the student to be able of knowing and understanding basic and fundamental aspects of Immunology, as well as to initiate themselves in the management of some of the main laboratory techniques used in such discipline.

Course will consist of 60hrs of in class work and 90 hrs of independent work outside the classroom.

Course includes a lab component.