Title: Cross Talking Series Part 1: Immunology 101: Principles of immune detection and activation
This presentation is part of the CDTRP 2024 Research Connect Series. Learn more: cdtrp.ca/en/publications/2024-webinar-series/
Dr. Choy is Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Simon Fraser University. He and his team are broadly interested in understanding the immunological mechanisms of transplant rejection and associated vascular injury. Recent studies are focused on understanding how inflammation and the gut microbiota influence immune responses that causes rejection and on development of strategies to protect blood vessels in grafts from early damage that causes rejection.
Ke Fan Bei is a fourth year PhD student at the University of Toronto in the Department of Immunology working under the supervision of Dr. Stephen Juvet. Her graduate project focuses on understanding the role of intragraft regulatory T cells, a type of immune cell that maintains homeostasis, in the driving chronic lung allograft dysfunction/function. Her research seeks to improve long-term allograft survival to provide better quality of life for transplant recipients. A goal that was influenced by her early childhood. In 1999 Ke received news that she has chronic kidney disease. She clearly remembers spending days to weeks in the maze of hallways and playrooms of Sick Children Hospital, making colorful beaded artworks as cartoons played in the background on small corner mounted TVs. After the many years, nurses and physicians became her friends and her inspiration and support, answering the curiosities of a child and the challenging questioning of a teenager. In 2011, Ke started dialysis and in 2014 she received her transplant from a close family member. Ke was exposed to scientific literature and encouraged to make a presentation on dialysis disequilibrium. Inspired, perhaps more so encouraged by the gift of her transplant, Ke is now pursuing her research in transplant immunology.