A robust and healthy immune response is essential to combat infection and eliminate harmful substances from the body. Inflammation alerts our immune system to take appropriate action. In chronic infections/diseases or pandemics, this inflammatory response becomes uncontrolled and infectious agents or cancer cells find ways to evade being eliminated by the immune system. Stress exacerbates inflammatory responses, and stress is hard to eliminate from our lives--it is a double-edged sword and when left unchecked, exacerbates inflammation by adversely affecting the immune system. Join Dr. Aditi Bhargava, a UCSF stress researcher and a molecular neuroendocrinologist to ask questions and learn more about the basic workings of our immune system and how chronic stress weakens our immune responses and worsens inflammation. This program is coordinated by the Library’s Biotechnology Learning Center.