Immunology and Cell Biology

Immunogenicity is the property enabling a substance to provoke an immune response, or the degree to which a substance possesses this property. The ability of an antigen to elicit immune responses is called immunogenicity, which can be humoral and/or cell-mediated immune responses. Proteins are more immunogenic & T-cells are required to drive immunogenicity. Protein therapeutics of all types can potentially elicit immune responses when administered to humans. Understanding immunogenicity is a key challenge in the development of therapeutics with many biologics inducing undesirable immune responses directed towards the therapeutic resulting in reduced efficacy, anaphylaxis and occasionally life threatening autoimmunity.

Immunotoxicology is the study of immune dysfunction. Immunotoxicology is due to exposure of an organism to foreign chemical substance found within an organism that is not normally naturally produced by or expected to be present within that organism. Immune dysfunction may result in the reduction of the activity of the immune system.