ABOUT
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ISSUE
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IMMpress Volume 14 Issue 2 – Sex, Immunity, and Reproduction
Every day it becomes clearer that the immune system is a universe of infinite connections. This issue explores the intricate relationship between sex, immunity, and reproduction; factors often dismissed as confounding variables rather than embraced as essential guiding principles. The cover brings these themes together through one of immunology’s most mysterious phenomena: pregnancy, a state…
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Letter from the Editors —Volume 14 Issue 2, 2026
The immune system responds to signals from nearly every part of our physiology, including our microbiome, hormones, and reproductive organs. In this issue of IMMpress Magazine on Sex, Immunity and Reproduction, we explore what happens when we put these relationships at the centre of the conversation. We begin with one of the most extraordinary examples…
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Letter from the Chair, Dr. Jennifer Gommerman – Volume 14 Issue 2, 2026
“It is not economical to go to bed early to save the candles if the result is twins.” ~ Chinese Proverb. In thinking about my commentary on this latest IMMpress Magazine issue entitled ‘Sex, Immunity, and Reproduction,’ I asked AI to reveal quotations that sum up how we collectively view the topic. I got a…
Infographic
Featured Articles
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The Delicate Immunology of the Testes
At first glance, sperm appear to be relatively unremarkable cells churned out by the body. They are small, stripped of most cellular machinery, and produced in staggeringly large numbers – upwards of 1,500 per second in a healthy adult male. Yet beneath this apparent simplicity lies an immunological paradox that has fascinated researchers for over a century: most sperm bear several antigens that are completely foreign to the body that…
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Undercover in the Uterus
Pregnancy is, immunologically speaking, an affront. The immune system is one of evolution’s more ruthless achievements: a surveillance apparatus that spends a lifetime cataloguing the body’s own proteins with bureaucratic thoroughness, treating any deviation as a threat. A transplanted kidney carrying a stranger’s molecular signature will be attacked within days without a steady flood of suppressive drugs to hold the immune response back. A fetus, harbouring its father’s proteins which…
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The Little Blue Pill: from Bench (to Bedroom) to Bedside
Drug discovery has a habit of rewarding researchers for finding exactly what they weren’t looking for. From hair-loss treatments to anxiety medications, pharmacy shelves are lined with myriad remedies whose rises to success were serendipitous. One of the happiest accidents birthed Viagra®, the Little Blue Pill that revolutionized bedrooms across the world. But before it rose to fame as the frisky first-line treatment for erectile dysfunction, Viagra® had humble beginnings…
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Interview
Every Placenta Has a Story – An Interview with Dr. Lena Serghides
For Dr. Lena Serghides, some of the most important lessons about pregnancy research did not come from a laboratory; they came from listening. They came from women living with HIV who challenged her to look beyond the virus itself and ask what lifelong treatment meant for mothers and babies, and from a midwife who taught…
Articles
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An Ever-Changing Map of Hormones and Immunity—Impact of gender affirming hormone therapy on the immune system
As the understanding of the human immune system evolves, it becomes clear that the rigid map research once relied on is missing novel routes and territories. Traditionally, biological sex acted as a fixed coordinate to explain distinct patterns in infection…
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Book review: Lousy Sex: Creating Self in an Infectious World
What does it mean to be “you”? It’s the kind of question you’d expect from a philosopher, maybe even a poet, but probably not from an immunologist. In Lousy Sex: Creating Self in an Infectious World, Gerald Callahan, an immunology…
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CSI 2026 Recap
KEYNOTE The 38th Annual Canadian Society for Immunology (CSI) Conference opened in Winnipeg, Manitoba with welcome remarks from conference chair Dr. Thomas Murooka, followed by the keynote address from Dr. Carla Rothlin (University of Minnesota), titled The Afterlife: Decoding the Response to Cell Death. Dr. Rothlin challenged…
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Endometriosis
Imagine a tenant who refuses to vacate the premises. Not out of spite, but because no one ever told them they were in the wrong apartment. This is, in rough biological terms, endometriosis. Uterine-lining tissue (the endometrium) sets up shop…
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Females and Autoimmunity: What’s Behind the Bias?
The immune system is an elegant and highly refined network of cells, organs, and proteins, but in approximately 10% of the world’s population, it goes haywire. Autoimmune diseases occur when your body’s own immune system, normally responsible for protecting against…
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Immunocontraception — Harnessing immune cells for social equity?
The quest for safe and effective birth control strategies has been a long-standing matter in society, with the earliest methods conceived in ancient times. Women in ancient Egypt had brewed their own potion, consisting of honey, dates, and acacia, which…
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It Takes Two: Couple-Level Genital Health Interventions Shape Local Immunity
Every year, millions of women seek treatment for bacterial vaginosis—yet more than half experience recurrence within six months. Growing evidence suggests one reason may be that clinicians are treating only half of a two-person problem. The lower genital tract, which is most…
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Mind the Gap: how overlooking sex compromises research
What shapes the way each of us responds to the world around us? One influential biological variable is sex: the combination of chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive anatomy that governs both development and adult physiology. This is a core feature of…
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Outsmarting Viruses: Challenges Behind HIV Vaccine Development
Human Immunodeficiency Virus, commonly known as HIV, is a well-known and significant health challenge across the globe. It is a viral infection that targets and attacks the body’s immune system and, when left untreated, can progress to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome…
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PCOS/PMOS and Chronic Low-Grade Inflammation: The Metabolic-Immune Crossover
In 1935, two gynaecologists described a medical phenomenon, named it after what they could see, and quietly set reproductive medicine back by nearly a century. This is the story of polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS, a condition that affects one…
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Sex Differences in Osteoimmunology
One often thinks of bone as biologically inert. In fact, as it is made up of hard, mineralized material, skeletal tissue externally bears the appearance of an organ with very little need for the immune system. In reality, however, the…
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The HPV Vaccine: A Cancer Prevention Success Story Facing Global Access Challenges
The human papillomavirus, HPV, is a category of over 200 related viruses. It is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the world, with over 40 types of transmissible HPV. While most HPV infections can be asymptomatic and can be…
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The Placenta: Your New Favourite Immune Organ
“Yet, in spite of being the star of the show, the placenta has never quite managed to gain the attention it deserves.” – Y.W. Loke The placenta is a unique, temporary organ that exists only for 9 months. Its sole…