Essay about Toll like receptors and their therapeutic potential

The immune system plays a vital role in helping the body to fight diseases, as well as pathogens, the disease-causing factors. It is mainly composed of the tonsils and adenoids, the lymph nodes and lymphatic vessels, the spleen, appendix, and bone marrow. The main purpose of the immune system is to assist the body in its struggle to maintain optimal health.

The innate immune system is effective to a certain degree. That said, if the environment is regulated then the body is less likely to get ill. Innate immunity is effective as once the patient matures his immune system will mature due to the B and T memory cells. The memory cells will help the body prepare for the virus once it has arrived. The memory cells will send specialised lymph nodes to the invading pathogen. The B and T memory cells are key to immunity of a virus.

Innate immunity refers to nonspecific defense mechanisms that come into play immediately or within hours of an antigen's appearance in the body. Adaptive immunity refers to antigen-specific immune response.

The innate and adaptive immune response start with exposure to an antigen in the epithelium of

Innate Immune System – Nonspecific and abrupt first response; comprised of epithelial surfaces (physical barriers), neutrophils, and macrophages.

Adaptive immunity (p.446): The body’s ability to recognize and defend itself against distinct invaders and their products.

The way they determined the mechanism that increased SRA expression was they treated the cell line with media that stimulated toll like receptors which are the innate immune receptors in this case. This is when they used the LPS media and the LPS/PAM3CSK4 media. Then the cells were stained with an SRA

For instance, the adaptive immune classification is organized around a binary class of cells, namely the T and B cells, whereas the cells of the innate immune classification are considerably more in number, comprising natural killer cells, dendritic cells, and macrophages (Pulendran, Katsikis, & Schoenberger, 2011, p. 12).

By cloning the LPS locus, he was able to identify a ‘toll-like receptor’ (TLR4) which acted sense the presence of invading microbes bearing LPS. Receptors of the same family, ten of which are now known to exist in humans, each ‘tuned’ to detect different kinds of microbes, also initiate inflammation to combat infection, but sometimes shock as well. It was for this work that Beutler won the Nobel Prize, and his team at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center continues to search for proteins that protect mammals against defined infections. In the process, they have identified genes required for other functions, including the regulation of iron absorption, hearing and the development of embryos

The adaptive immunity required and acquires a memory response, which includes lymphocytes (T and B cells), host defense against specific pathogens that can be obtain through a specific antibodies and T cells, slower response to specific recognition of microbe.

The immune system is able to distinguish its own molecules from foreign molecules. There a number of key stages involved an immune response; pathogen, recognition, activation and initiation, regulation, and the generation of immunological memory. The immune system of the vertebrate is divided into two basic branches; innate and adoptive immunity. Even though they have different roles they normally act together in fighting an infection.

The immune system consists of a defense system that guards the body against invasion from infections and other diseases. Normally, a healthy person's immune system has the capability to differentiate between its own cells and cells that represent threats to the health of the body. (Craft and Kanter, 2002). Autoimmune disease refers to a broad range of over 80 acute, long-lasting diseases that affect nearly every organ in the body. (Wrong Diagnosis.com, 2000).

The adaptive immune response is antigen-specific and requires the recognition of specific “non-self” antigens during a process called antigen presentation. Antigen specificity allows for the generation of responses that are tailored to specific pathogens or pathogen-infected cells. The ability to mount these tailored responses is maintained in the body by "memory cells". Should a pathogen infect the body more than once, these specific memory cells are used to quickly eliminate it. so basically killer T cells will identify antigens present on foreign cells. These antigens are not found in any of the cells inside our body. So T cells will identify them and kill them.

The immune system is comprised of two responses: the adaptive immune response and the innate immune response. The first line of defence against invading organisms is classified as the innate immune response and the second line of defence and protection against re- exposure to the same pathogen is known as the adaptive immune response.

Our immune system is made up of two parts that work together to keep us healthy. The first part is called the innate immune system, it is made up mostly of ‘scavenger’ and ‘killer’ cells that fight off bacterial infections and give the body a general defense against harmful substances. The second part of the immune system is called the adaptive immune system. This part