Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session

Prerequisite

20.420J and 20.440, or permission of instructor.

Course Description

This course focuses on the fundamentals of tissue and organ response to injury from a molecular and cellular perspective. There is a special emphasis on disease states that bridge infection, inflammation, immunity, and cancer. The systems approach to pathophysiology includes lectures, critical evaluation of recent scientific papers, and student projects and presentations.

This term, we focus on hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), chronic-active hepatitis, and hepatitis virus infections. In addition to lectures, students work in teams to critically evaluate and present primary scientific papers.

Text

Readings are in the form of primary scientific papers, reviews, and selected chapters from the following text:

Kumar, Vinay, Abul K. Abbas, and Nelson Fausto, eds. Robbins and Cotran Pathologic Basis of Disease. 7th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier Saunders, 2004. ISBN: 9780721601878.

Grading