Care for horses & livestock/farm animals
Care for cats, dogs & other companion animals
Dr. Christopher Hunter, BSc, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, has been named the inaugural Mindy Halikman Heyer President’s Distinguished Professor. Established by Penn alumni Mindy and Andrew Heyer, the $3 million endowment will advance Hunter’s research on how the immune system protects animals and humans from infectious disease.
The Ebola virus acts fast. The course of infection, from exposure to recovery, or death, can take as little as two weeks. That may not leave enough time for the immune system to mount an effective response.
Almost all human beings are exposed to the respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, before their second birthdays. For most, the symptoms mimic those of the common cold: runny nose, coughing, sneezing, fever. But in some very young infants — and some older adults — the disease can be serious, causing respiratory problems that require hospitalization and increase the risk of developing asthma later in life.
Just as the brain forms memories of familiar faces, the immune system remembers pathogens it has encountered in the past. T cells with these memories circulate in the blood stream looking for sites of new infection.
The brain is a privileged organ in the body. So vital to life, the brain is protected from alterations elsewhere in the body by a highly regulated gateway known as the blood-brain barrier, which allows only selected molecules to pass through.