How early life adversity alters Pneumococcal infection risk be of interest?
In person and online
As part of our Monday seminar series we are delighted to welcome our speaker:
Dr. Dawn M.E. Bowdish, PhD.
Professor & University Scholar
Canada Research Chair in Aging & Immunity
Executive Director, Firestone Institute of Respiratory Health
St. Joseph’s Healthcare, McMaster University
Hosted by
How to join
The event will be hybrid.
To join in person: Medical Sciences Building MSB 2170, University of Toronto
To join online: A Zoom link will be sent to the LMP community in the Friday events bulletin.
If you are not part of LMP and wish to join this talk online, please contact:
Louella D'Cunha
Speaker bio: Dawn Bowdish
My independent research program studies how the aging immune system impacts the ability to recognize the microbes that live on and in us (‘the microbiome’) and pathogens that cause respiratory infections. Additionally, my lab studies how the aging immune system affects responses to vaccines.
My lab has particular expertise in understanding how macrophage phagocytosis changes with age and during acute and chronic inflammation, particularly in response to the pulmonary pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae, determining how age-associated inflammation changes monocyte/macrophage development and function and increases susceptibility to infection, elucidating how age-associated inflammation alters the aging trajectory, and understanding how the microbiota contributes to healthy or unhealthy aging and how the aging immune system impacts responses to vaccines (e.g., COVID-19).
I run the PreClinical Studies in Aging Laboratory (www.psal.ca), Canada’s only aging mouse colony dedicated to discovering non-genetic causes of healthy and unhealthy aging and to testing interventions to improve healthy aging.
My work has been recognized via a Canada Research Chair in Aging & Immunology, Tier 2, that I have held since 2014. In 2021 I became the Executive Director of the Firestone Institute for Respiratory Health, which is one of Canada’s largest translational research institutes dedicated to understanding mechanisms of chronic lung disease and developing new treatments and therapeutics to improve the lives of the 1 in 5 Canadians living with lung disease.
