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Edward John Wherry III

Edward John Wherry III

American immunologist

Oct 20, 2026

45:06
So Maybe, would you like to talk a little bit about this reframing of exhaustion and why is that important?
45:15
Yeah, Brenda, thanks.
45:15
I mean, I love this question, and I get this at seminars for the past 25 years, really.
45:21
So why bother having exhaustion if it's not very good for the host? That's, in my opinion, the wrong way to think about the problem.
45:27
Evolution is not at an endpoint and is still a process, but it doesn't make mistakes that stick around for a long period of time.
45:34
So there must be a purpose here.
45:36
So first, if you don't let the cells get exhausted at the beginning, you cause tremendous immunopathology in certain settings.

18 MINS LATER

63:23
I think also epigenetic, uh, differences have been used as kind of better, a more reliable way to, to, to identify, uh, where the cells are at, but are there points no return or not?
11:18
And could you help clarify how we should be thinking about it?
11:23
Yeah, I think that analogy is right.
11:25
And you've got this sort of slow burn.
11:28
And we can talk about why that's bad in just a second.
11:32
And then you've got this idea that, you know, if you really have the stove off or you're just the burner light on, right, we need to be able to turn that inflammation on when we need it.
11:42
And how fast we can turn it on, the dynamics are really important to protect us.
11:46
But we really want it nearly off most of the time.

17 MINS LATER

29:04
You don't need to worry about them.

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