New Video Interview with Professor Shane Crotty P.h.D. from La Jolla Institute for Immunology and Shannon Dickson

Hello Afibbers!

It is our pleasure to share with you all a new video that can be found in our video links area within the 'LEARN' section of our redesigned website. Interview with Professor Shane Crotty Ph.D. from La Jolla Institute for Immunology and Shannon Dickson

All things 'AFIB' and related topics have been, and remain, our prime focus of course. And yet, over the past two plus years when we have all been impacted to one degree or another by a global pandemic for the first time in any of our lives, it felt worth while to reach out when the opportunity presented itself, to a world-renowned expert in the fields of Immunology and Virology in the hopes of sharing some of his insights and expertise into these remarkably complex and yet amazing fields of science and medicine!

I give a partial overview of Dr. Crotty's extensive and highly impressive curriculum vitae towards the end of what in the last moments before we went live with the interview on Zoom, became my hand-typed introduction to the interview, and thus you can learn more about his career near the last part of the video introduction.

Over the last two years, with his colleagues at La Jolla Institute for Immunology (and especially Drs. Crotty plus his colleague and renowned T-cell expert, Dr. Alessandro Sette), have been front and center doing heavy-lifting with the research into SARS-CoV-2 when very early on in the first months, the NIH had tasked these two experts to complete the studies necessary to prove whether or not this novel coronavirus would be truly amenable to vaccine therapy, and whose strongly positive study results on the topic was, in part, a key reason the multi-$billion vaccine development plans got off to such a good start.

Most of the top experts were pretty confident up-front that SARS-CoV-2 would respond well to vaccination, but without those key studies confirming its value, few were about to pony up billions of dollars on a good guess alone!

(Continued)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/09/2022 06:51AM by Shannon.

(Continued ....)

For those of you who might wish to further explore the incredible adventure of Immunology, beyond this introductory 40minute and 30 second interview with Dr. Crotty, you can also find even more in-depth videos with him on YouTube.

These kinds of videos usually include 3 or 4 additional immunologist or virologists with Dr Crotty often as the key speaker for the entire session discussing new insights about the virus etc. and typically any questions are held to the final half hour or so.

In a cozier two-man interview format, as our interview was, it is often intended for a general lay audience, with the host (me in this case) and Dr. Crotty engaging in a nice back and forth discussion about his wealth of insights and the host asking some questions or discussing possible lay audience interests in helping to keep the flow going.

As part of my preparation to host the video, I had bought a new 15" color touchscreen monitor for the first time, and my objective was to position this color monitor in a 'portrait mode' so I could transfer the full text of not only my one page intro. to Afibbers.org, a bit about our group and then a more fulsome review of Dr. Crotty's impressive C.V. ... but to also have room enough to add 10 to 12 additional one-line reminder bullet-points to trigger not only myself, but Dr Crotty as well during the interview.

I had practiced over the prior few days with the new monitor standing it up vertically just to the right of my main MacBook Pro laptop on which the full ZOOM meeting was to occur.

We have all heard those wise sayings one-liners such as: Rarely does one's best laid plans survive first contact with action :-))

It was no sooner than we were to start the intro to the Interview before the new monitor screen froze with a greyed-out look making it very hard to read at all!! Gulp!

We had just enough time for me to abandon the monitor idea and I pulled out a 'trusty' paper version of my intro document and restarted the interview from there ... though without any of my notes and bullet-points as reminders ... just an old school 'winging it' job from there onward .. Ha! :-)

And Dr Crotty didn't miss a beat and was very smooth and gracious throughout the interview, and I was impressed how he subtly would feed off a few of my comments, dovetailing it all very nicely into often the same topic from his part as well.

In any event, I hope you all enjoy the Interview and I am very glad we could offer if for you all.

Best wishes,
Shannon



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/09/2022 11:19AM by Shannon.

Very well done Shannon. Very thoughtful discussion. So gracious of Dr. Crotty to share with the afibbers community. Thanks for making the connection and sharing the knowledge and information with everyone here.

My pleasure AB, and thanks so much for your help too as always, my friend! I'm glad you enjoyed it as well. Dr Crotty and his advance team much enjoyed the afternoon too, as they do not often get the chance to share some of the nuances of immunology with a group of seasoned Afibbers like ours.

Take care,
Shannon



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/09/2022 03:45PM by Shannon.

This is great Shannon. Thanks for putting this together and sharing it. It was certainly a great introduction for how immune knowledge he works for someone like myself who knows next to nothing about the topic. It was interesting to learn that three seems to be the magic number for the quantity of vaccines needed to have an effective response to Covid.

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You are more than welcome Que!

And yes, I too find immunology, virology and vaccine research and development fascinating as well. It's all about how our innate and adaptive branches of our immune system carry out a truly amazing feat of keeping us alive and functioning, in spite of also having to address nasty pathogens along the way!

Take care, Shannon



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2022 03:51PM by Shannon.