Elizabeth Mann and Madhvi Menon will discuss findings from their recent longitudinal immune profiling surveying with admitted COVID-19 patients across four hospitals in Manchester at the height of the pandemic in the UK. They find key immune signatures that track with disease severity and can potentially be used to identify patients that are destined for intensive care upon admission that are destined for intensive care. They also determine how immune responses change throughout the course of the disease course and how this differs in patients with milder disease that recover compared with patients who went on to become severe/critical.

PRESENTERS

Elizabeth Mann obtained her PhD from Imperial College London in 2010 studying tissue specificity of human dendritic cells in the laboratory of Professor Stella Knight. Her postdoctoral studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore (with Dr Xuhang Li) and the University of Glasgow (with Professor Simon Milling) investigated mechanisms by which intestinal immune responses are dysregulated in inflammatory bowel disease, and how gut immunity is shaped by local factors including the gut microbiota. Elizabeth Mann established her own research group in 2017 through a Wellcome Trust and Royal Society-funded Henry Dale Fellowship at the University of Manchester, and is currently investigating how mucosal immune responses are regulated by the local environment in the intestine, lungs and reproductive tract.

Madhvi Menon is a Presidential Research Fellow at the University of Manchester investigating mechanisms of B cell dysfunction in chronic inflammatory disorders. Prior to this, she completed her postdoctoral studies at Harvard Medical School, identifying inflammatory pathways contributing to age-related macular degeneration, and at University College London, investigating how gut pathology contributes to the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis. She obtained her PhD in Immunology from University College London in 2015 studying the crosstalk between B cells and plasmacytoid dendritic cells in systemic lupus erythematosus.

MODERATOR

The webinar will be moderated by Ann Ager, Professor at the Division of Infection and Immunity, Cardiff University, UK.