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Review: Immunosenescence: implications for vaccination programs in the elderly
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Tag Archives: aging
November is Lung Month! The Bowdish lab gets involved with the Breathing As One campaign.
Research in Lung health is not nearly as well funded as it should be considering the toll it takes on patients and our healthcare system. That’s why the Bowdish lab is involved in the Lung Association’s Breathing as One campaign to raise money for lung research. Click on the picture to read the insert that was delivered in a number of newspapers (including our own Hamilton Spectator) to launch the campaign.
The Bowdish lab is on a roll!
This past month has been very productive in the Bowdish laboratory, with many triumphs achieved by it’s industrious members.
Firstly, a big congratulation goes to Kyle Novakowski, the Bowdish 
lab’s newest PhD student. Following a lot of hard work, determination and great dedication to his Masters project, Kyle successfully passed his transfer exam on July 7 and has officially begun his seemingly endless exciting pursuit for a PhD. Good luck to Kyle in continuing his interesting investigation on the regulation and function of MARCO!
Dessi Loukov presents her undergraduate work in the Bowdish lab at the 1st annual Perey Symposium, convinces everyone she’s a senior PhD student and brings home the Faculty choice award for best speed poster presentation.
Next up is Dessi Loukov, who is currently an undergraduate but come September will be the Bowdish lab’s 4th PhD student. At the 1st annual MIRC Perey Symposium held on June 19, Dessi impressed faculty and trainees with her educational and enthusiastic speed poster presentation on modulating the immune system to potentially reverse age-associated inflammation. Dessi was awarded a travel award as a result of her superb presentation skills. Kudos also to Fan Fei (PhD candidate) and Avee Naidoo (MSc candidate) who gave excellent speed poster talks and Dr. Chris Verschoor who gave an excellent oral presentation. Who knew that research in inflammation could be so exciting? The Bowdish lab, that’s who!
One PhD candidate who deserves great recognition for his recent successes is Mike Dorrington. Not only was Mike awarded with a prestigious and well-deserved Canadian Lung Association & Canadian Thoracic Studentship, but he additionally achieved received The Ruth and Wilson Tafts Prize for Immunology for having the best paper published in a peer-reviewed journal in 2013. Geez Mike, save some awards for the rest of us. These awards will be used to further fund his fascinating work on the role of macrophages – clearly, the best cell around – in recognition and clearance of Streptococcus pneumoniae in the upper respiratory tract. Congratulations Mike!
At the celebration of Mike’s first first author publication. Although Dawn is mostly happy for Mike, she is also slightly nervous that she might be about to lose an eye when the champagne is opened.
Then, there’s Dr. Chris Verschoor, the lab’s most productive and well-rounded member. Chris’ paper entitled, “Alterations to the frequency and function of peripheral blood monocytes and associations with chronic disease in the advanced-age, frail elderly“, was recently accepted into the PLoS one. If you’re interested in changes in monocyte populations with age – I mean, who isn’t? – keep a look out for Chris’ article in the next issue of PLoS one . Way to go Chris on this well-deserved publication!
<- Manuscipt accepted = happy post-doc.
And last, but definitely not least, the lab takes great pleasure in congratulating our passionate leader, Dr. Dawn Bowdish, who has been awarded tenure and a promotion to Associate Professor effective as of July 1, 2014. This accomplishment is a fitting acknowledgement of Dawn’s exceptional work, devotion and academic contributions to research in the field of macrophage biology. In addition to her promotion and tenure, Dawn recently received a Best Teacher Award in the Department of Pathology for excellence in undergraduate teaching and graduate supervision. Well-done Dawn!
Dawn receives the Pathology & Molecular Medicine Department’s best teacher award for her undergraduate and graduate supervision. Dr. Murray Potter, the education co-ordinator and Dr. Fiona Smaill, the chair, present her with the award.
Congratulations Bowdish lab on our successes!
Way to kill it, like young macrophages on pneumo 😉
Avee Receives a Prestigious CIHR Banting & Best CGS Scholarship
A long overdue congratulations to Avee Naidoo(MSc candidate) for receiving the Frederick Banting and Charles Best Master’s Canada Graduate Scholarship (CGS) from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR).
The award funds Avee’s research examining age-associated inflammation, impaired macrophage function and disease susceptibility in the elderly.
Way to go Avee!
Funding from the province of Ontario supports two new graduate students!
Bowdish lab receives funding from the province of Ontario to train two new graduate students! Avee Naidoo (MSc) and Dessi Loukov, who will be starting a PhD in Sept 2013, will be studying how age-associated inflammation predisposes older adults to pneumonia.
For full details on the award for Dawn’s proposal “Interplay between inflammation and impaired anti-bacterial immunity in the elderly.”
http://iidr.mcmaster.ca/IIDR-news/ERAs-2014.html#.UzXGj_ldWSo
Dessi Loukov, pictured here pushing back the boundaries of science.
Aveshni Naidoo, MSc sits beside the coolest jack-o’-lantern ever.
Whelan et al. The Loss of Topography in the Microbial Communities of the Upper Respiratory Tract in the Elderly. Ann Am Thorac Soc. 2014 Mar 6.
Whelan FJ, Verschoor CP, Stearns JC, Rossi L, Luinstra K, Loeb M, Smieja M, Johnstone J, Surette MG, Bowdish DM. The Loss of Topography in the Microbial Communities of the Upper Respiratory Tract in the Elderly. Ann Am Thorac Soc. 2014 Mar 6.
This paper describes how the microbial communities of the anterior nares and nasopharynx change between adults and the elderly.
“Myeloid-Derived Suppressor Cells, Age & Cancer” 2013. Oncoimmunology.
Dr. Bowdish discusses the implication of our Verschoor et al publication “Blood CD33(+)HLA-DR(-) myeloid-derived suppressor cells are increased with age and a history of cancer.” in studies of aging and cancer in the below commentary.
Click image for .pdf.
This is an open access publication so please feel free to use the following image in presentations/publications providing that it is properly referenced.
“Immunosenescence & novel vaccination strategies for the elderly” 2013. Dorrington et al. Frontiers in Immunology
What is the best way to reduce infectious disease in the elderly? Vaccination! Unfortunately the aging immune system presents a number of challenges for vaccine development. Bowdish lab PhD candidate Mike Dorrington discusses them in this review and presents a case for developing novel vaccines that work within the constraints of the aging immune system.
Media coverage: This paper was picked up by MDLinx. See their coverage here.
Click image for .pdf.
“Blood CD33+HLA-DR- myeloid-derived suppressor cells are increased with age and a history of cancer” 2013. Verschoor et al. JLB
MDSCs (myeloid derived suppressor cells) are a recently discovered and very heterogenous cell type that appear to directly suppress T cell responses and their presence in the tumour or the circulation is an extremely poor prognostic marker.
The Bowdish lab recently dipped our foot into the confusing world of MDSCs because we were curious to know whether their frequency increases with age and if so, could this explain why age is a risk factor for many cancers. They do increase with age and this may explain why some adaptive immune responses decline with age. One thing we were very surprised to find is that individuals who had any history of cancer but were believed to be in remission had higher levels of these cells in circulation. This begs the question – did these people have higher levels and to begin with and is this why they were predisposed to cancer? Or do they still have subclinical tumours that promote the development of MDSCs? Or does the suppressive environment of the cancer microenvironment stay with you for life? More studies (not by us, that was enough) are warranted.
For the .pdf click here
For the supplementary data, click here.
Dr. Dawn Bowdish receives a research award from the Ontario Lung Association and Pfizer Canada (and gets to attend a swanky event to receive it!)
Dawn was thrilled to attend the annual Breathe! gala event hosted as a fundraising event for the Ontario Lung Association to receive an award donated by Pfizer Canada and administered by the Ontario Lung association. Not only did it give her a chance to dress up and go out (a rare event!) for an evening of good food and drink but she was inspired to meet some of the spokespeople of the event, including Helene Campbell, who spent her time waiting for a double lung transplant starting an immensely successful social media campaign to increase organ donation, Ann Marie Cerato, a lung cancer survivor and Kayla Baker, a young sarcoidosis patient on a waiting list for a lung transplant. Not only was it inspiring to meet these brave, bold heroes but it was humbling to be in a room full of people whose lives were all touched by the research funded by the Ontario Lung Association.
Dawn standing beside the real heros of the event, Helene Campbell, double lung transplant recipient and idiopathic fibrosis patient, Ann Marie Cerato, lung cancer survivor and Kayla Baker sarcoidosis patient waiting for a lung transplant.
So what did Dawn win her award for? You can take a look at the YouTube video here or read on…
President of Pfizer Canada, John Helou (L) and Dr. John Granton, chair elect of the Ontario Lung Association (R) present Dr. Dawn Bowdish with the OLA-Pfizer Research Award.
Description of research funded by the Ontario Lung Association-Pfizer Ca award
neumonia is the sixth most common cause of death in Canada. The incidence of pneumonia rises steeply in individuals over the age of 65 years and approximately 90% of deaths due to pneumonia occur in the elderly (>65 yrs). Current prevention strategies are inadequate as the vaccination does not prevent pneumonia in most elderly individuals. Recent research from the Bowdish lab demonstrates that one of the reasons the elderly are so susceptible to pneumonia is that their immune systems cannot control the bacteria that normally live in our sinuses. The immune systems of healthy adults can keep the bacteria (Streptococcus pneumoniae) in the sinuses (“pneumococcal carriage”) and eventually clear them, but for reasons we don’t understand, the immune systems of the elderly cannot and as a result the bacteria break through the immune barriers of the sinuses and spread to the lungs, which results in pneumonia.
Although most people think that the elderly get sick because their immune systems “just don’t work”, in fact our data demonstrate that they recruit more white blood cells to the sinuses when they encounter the bacteria that cause pneumonia than healthy adults. Even though they have more white blood cells in the sinuses they don’t seem to be as good at recognizing and killing bacteria. Our goal is to figure out why they have overactive recruitment of white blood cells and why they aren’t as good at killing bacteria as white blood cells from healthy adults.
We have developed what we believe to be the world’s only Aged mouse model of colonization by pneumonia causing bacteria. This allows us to study how the immune system responds to the presence of bacteria in the sinuses in real-time. In addition we have a bank of white blood cells from adults and elderly patients that allow us to confirm the importance of our mouse studies in people.
Hospitalizations and deaths due to pneumonia are unacceptably high in the elderly. This is likely because vaccination of the elderly only does not protect against pneumonia. New methods for preventing infection are urgently required. Our recent data demonstrates that containment and clearance of pneumococcal carriage is impaired in age and results in increased susceptibility to pneumonia; however the mechanisms by which immune control of the sinuses fails remain to be discovered. Prevention of colonization of the sinuses will therefore be essential for control of pneumonia in this population. In order to develop novel therapeutic interventions for the elderly it will be necessary to discover the mechanisms by which bacterial recognition, killing are impaired in the sinuses.
Helene Campbell, conceivably, the most charming woman alive and the recipient of a double lung transplant, leads a dance with the Hon Deborah Mathews (MPP). The music failed so I held my iPod up to the Mike and we played Metric's "Sympathy".