Branches
The field divides by the question asked and by the clinic it serves. Several of the branches below did not exist as separate subjects fifty years ago.
| Branch | What it studies | Typical question |
|---|---|---|
| Cellular and molecular immunology | The cells, receptors and signals of the immune system | What tells this T cell to divide? |
| Vaccinology | How to produce protective memory without the disease | Why does this vaccine need a booster and that one not? |
| Clinical immunology and allergy | Immunodeficiency, allergy and hypersensitivity in patients | Why does this child keep getting infections? |
| Autoimmunity | Responses directed at the body’s own tissues | What broke tolerance in this disease? |
| Transplant immunology | Rejection and how to prevent it | How closely must donor and recipient match? |
| Tumour immunology | How cancers evade immunity and how to reverse it | Which patients will respond to checkpoint blockade? |
| Infection immunity | The contest between pathogens and host defences | How does this virus hide from antibodies? |
| Systems and computational immunology | Immune responses measured and modelled at scale | Can the outcome be predicted from the first week of data? |
Tools that came out of the field
Monoclonal antibodies, made possible by Köhler and Milstein’s hybridoma method in 1975, are now a major class of medicine and are used in many rapid diagnostic tests. Engineered T cells carrying a synthetic receptor — CAR-T cells — were first approved as a treatment in the United States in 2017.