•  431
    Immune system, immune self. Introduction
    Avant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 3 (1): 12-18. 2012.
    The idea that the immune system distinguishes between self and non-self was one of the central assumptions of immunology in the second half of 20 th century. This idea influenced experimental design and data interpretation. However, in the face of new evidence there is a need for a new conceptual framework in immunology.
  •  335
    Philosophy of immunology
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2020. 2020.
    Philosophy of immunology is a subfield of philosophy of biology dealing with ontological and epistemological issues related to the studies of the immune system. While speculative investigations and abstract analyses have always been part of immune theorizing, until recently philosophers have largely ignored immunology. Yet the implications for understanding the philosophical basis of organismal functions framed by immunity offer new perspectives on fundamental questions of biology and medicine. …Read more
  •  211
    Gut feelings of safety: Tolerance to the microbiota mediated by innate immune receptors
    with Irun R. Cohen
    Microbiology and Immunology 59 (10): 573-585. 2015.
    To enable microbial colonisation of the gut mucosa, the intestinal immune system must not only react to danger signals but also recognize cues that indicate safety. Safety recognition, paradoxically, is mediated by the same environmental sensors that are involved in signalling danger. Indeed, in addition to their well established role in inducing inflammation in response to stress signals, pattern recognition receptors (PRRs) and a variety of metabolic sensors also promote gut-microbiota symbios…Read more
  •  200
    Advocates of the computational theory of mind claim that the mind is a computer whose operations can be implemented by various computational systems. According to these philosophers, the mind is multiply realisable because—as they claim—thinking involves the manipulation of syntactically structured mental representations. Since syntactically structured representations can be made of different kinds of material while performing the same calculation, mental processes can also be implemented by dif…Read more
  •  187
    Somatic diversification of antigen receptor genes depends on the activity of enzymes whose homologs participate in a mutagenic DNA repair in unicellular species. Indeed, by engaging error-prone polymerases, gap filling molecules and altered mismatch repair pathways, lymphocytes utilize conserved components of genomic stress response systems, which can already be found in bacteria and archaea. These ancient systems of mutagenesis and repair act to increase phenotypic diversity of microbial cell p…Read more
  •  186
    Struggle within: evolution and ecology of somatic cell populations
    Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences 78 (21): 6797-6806. 2021.
    The extent to which normal (nonmalignant) cells of the body can evolve through mutation and selection during the lifetime of the organism has been a major unresolved issue in evolutionary and developmental studies. On the one hand, stable multicellular individuality seems to depend on genetic homogeneity and suppression of evolutionary conflicts at the cellular level. On the other hand, the example of clonal selection of lymphocytes indicates that certain forms of somatic mutation and selection …Read more
  •  185
    Understanding life through metaphors (review)
    Metascience 2022 1-3. 2022.
    There is a deep-seated neopositivist view which regards the language of science as a neutral medium of communication, radically different from indirect symbolic forms of discourse characteristic of arts and humanities. But naturalists, like poets and social scientists, also draw on the dominant images in their culture to organize their thoughts and simplify complex concepts. By conceptualizing one thing in terms of another, metaphors in science not only aid mutual communication between researche…Read more
  •  117
    PROTACs: The Future of Leukemia Therapeutics
    with Zubair Anwar, Muhammad Shahzad Ali, Antonio Galvano, Alessandro Perez, Maria La Mantia, and Ihtisham Bukhari
    Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology 10 851087. 2022.
    The fight to find effective, long-lasting treatments for cancer has led many researchers to consider protein degrading entities. Recent developments in PROteolysis TArgeting Chimeras (PROTACs) have signified their potential as possible cancer therapies. PROTACs are small molecule, protein degraders that function by hijacking the built-in Ubiquitin-Proteasome pathway. This review mainly focuses on the general design and functioning of PROTACs as well as current advancements in the development of …Read more
  •  107
    Holoimmunity Revisited
    Bioessays 40 (11): 1800117. 2018.
    Commensal and pathogenic organisms employ camouflage and mimicry to mediate mutualistic interactions and predator escape. However, the immune mechanisms accounting for the establishment and maintenance of symbiotic bacterial populations are poorly understood. A promising hypothesis suggests that molecular mimicry, a condition in which different organisms share common antigens, is a mechanism of establishing tolerance between commensals and their hosts. On this view, certain bacteria may mimic th…Read more
  •  106
    Immunoglobulins and Antibodies: Conceptual Projections All the Way Down
    Constructivist Foundations 18 (1): 85-86. 2022.
    Central to vaccination-induced responses, antibodies are suggested by Vaz to operate as observer-dependent entities that owe their status to categorization schemes of immunologists. Inspired by color research by Maturana, he argues that antibodies should be distinguished from immunoglobulins, which unlike the former can be considered as constituents of structural dynamics of an organism, products of millions of years of evolution. However, a deeper understanding of the historical roots of the co…Read more
  •  67
    Immune balance: The development of the idea and its applications
    Journal of the History of Biology 47 (3): 411-442. 2014.
    It has long been taken for granted that the immune system’s capacity to protect an individual from infection and disease depends on the power of the system to distinguish between self and nonself. However, accumulating data have undermined this fundamental concept. Evidence against the self/nonself discrimination model left researchers in need of a new overarching framework able to capture the immune system’s reactivity. Here, I highlight that along with the self/nonself model, another powerful…Read more
  •  60
    Systemic features of immune recognition in the gut
    with Maria Rescigno and Irun Cohen
    Microbes and Infection 13 983-991. 2011.
    The immune system, to protect the body, must discriminate between the pathogenic and non-pathogenic microbes and respond to them in different ways. How the mucosal immune system manages to make this distinction is poorly understood. We suggest here that the distinction between pathogenic and non-pathogenic microbes is made by an integrated system rather than by single types of cells or single types of receptors; a systems biology approach is needed to understand immune recognition.
  •  56
    Towards an ecological view of immunity
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 63 85-88. 2017.
    The immune system does not just fight pathogens but also engages in interactions with beneficial microbes and non-immune cells of the body to harmonize their behavior by means of cytokines, antibodies and effector cells (Dinarello, 2007; Moticka, 2015, pp. 217e226, 261e267). However, the importance of these “housekeeping” functions has not been fully appreciated (Cohen, 2000). In his new book Immunity: The Evolution of an Idea Alfred I. Tauber traces the history of fundamental ideas in immunolog…Read more
  •  52
    One of the fundamental questions of life sciences is one of whether there are genuinely random biological processes. An affirmative or negative answer to this question may have important methodological consequences. It appears that a number of biological processes are explicitly classified as random. One of them is the so-called somatic hypermutation. However, closer analysis of somatic hypermutation reveals that it is not a genuinely random process. Somatic hypermutation is called random becaus…Read more
  •  34
    Coordination of immune responses in the gut is a complex task. In order to fight pathogens and maintain a defined population of commensal microbes, the mucosal immune system has to coordinate information from the external (luminal) and internal (abluminal) environment and respond accordingly. Dendritic cells (DCs) are crucial cell types involved in this process as they integrate these signals and direct immunogenic or tolerogenic responses. Here, we review how various functions of DCs depend on …Read more
  •  20
    Immunity by William Paul is an overview of fundamental principles of immunology and their experimental basis. The book includes not only well- established facts about the immune system but also recent findings (the role of Th17 cells, regulatory T cells, inflammasomes, etc.), which are skillfully incorporated into the framework of immunological understanding. The presentation is clear and emotionally charged, which makes the reading of Immunity enjoyable. Despite the original intentions, though,…Read more
  •  16
    Evolution within the body: The rise and fall of somatic Darwinism in the late nineteenth century
    History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 45 (8): 1-27. 2023.
    Originating in the work of Ernst Haeckel and Wilhelm Preyer, and advanced by a Prussian embryologist, Wilhelm Roux, the idea of struggle for existence between body parts helped to establish a framework, in which population cell dynamics rather than a predefined harmony guides adaptive changes in an organism. Intended to provide a causal-mechanical view of functional adjustments in body parts, this framework was also embraced later by early pioneers of immunology to address the question of vaccin…Read more
  •  7
    Francisco Vareli wizja systemu immunologicznego
    Ruch Filozoficzny 75 (2): 209. 2019.
  • Book Review (review)
    Philosophical Quarterly 73 (3): 915-918. 2023.
    While the first-person style of philosophising has a long tradition dating back to Plato and Socrates, it has been almost completely abandoned in modern times