Immunobiology
Jean-Laurent Casanova, MD, PhD (he/him/his)
The Rockefeller University
New York, NY, United States
Disclosure(s): No financial relationships with ineligible companies to disclose
COVID-19 is characterized by heterogeneity in disease susceptibility and severity, with male sex being notably more severe. Understanding inter-individual variation has been an area of active study, and breakthroughs in immunologic mechanisms relevant to host immune defense have been discovered. The goals of this session are to highlight the gender immunologic differences, inborn errors of immunity, as well as autoantibody production discoveries that have led to our better understanding of why males have more severe disease. Toll like receptor (TLR), angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE), and interferon (IFN) signaling will be discussed in addition to genetic profiling of patients with severe COVID, all of which has furthered our understanding of host immune defenses to viral infections. This session will highlight recent genetic and immunologic discoveries that elucidate molecular pathways relevant to COVID host immune defense. The session will also incorporate new genomic research and illuminate the pathways of relevance in innate and adaptive immune responses with focus on the known sex discordance for severe COVID.
Speaker: Jean-Laurent Casanova (he/him/his) – IHU Imagine, AP-HP Necker