Our immune system in the fight against diseases

00:00:00: [crowd cheering]

00:00:02: Ah, they're coming dangerously close to the goal now.

00:00:07: The defence must show what they've got.

00:00:09: Exciting tackles.

00:00:11: What a clean tactic.

00:00:13: That was really close.

00:00:15: [whistle]

00:00:16: Great performance here.

00:00:18: [whistle]

00:00:19: The defence of the football team just managed to prevent a goal

00:00:27: and thus help the team to victory.

00:00:32: Points, money, maybe a championship title.

00:00:36: We may not get a championship title or money,

00:00:39: but it does feel like a victory when our immune system

00:00:43: successfully fights off a pathogen.

00:00:46: It does this every day, often without us realising it.

00:00:50: But sometimes we do notice it in the form of cold symptoms,

00:00:54: swollen lymph nodes, thick tonsils, fever or a red swollen area.

00:01:00: This is when our body's own defence system, our immune system,

00:01:04: is working at full speed.

00:01:07: And this is only the case with harmless pathogens.

00:01:10: Some pathogens are not so harmless

00:01:13: and some people's defences don't work so well either.

00:01:16: Our body is constantly exposed to new challenges,

00:01:20: environmental changes and new pathogens.

00:01:24: Our immune system can receive help against some of these

00:01:27: in the form of vaccinations or other medicines.

00:01:30: However, there is still no help against some pathogens.

00:01:34: It's a game of chance.

00:01:36: Professor Catherine Delarosa wants to be able to improve

00:01:40: individual defence mechanisms in people whose immune system

00:01:44: cannot cope with the pathogen on its own.

00:01:48: And she is copying tricks from nature.

00:01:52: I'm sitting here in the library of the age that I am with

00:01:55: Professor Catherine Delarosa.

00:01:58: Nice to meet you.

00:01:59: Nice to meet you. It's a pleasure to be here.

00:02:02: We are talking about the immune system.

00:02:05: So do you have a metaphor for our immune system?

00:02:08: Yeah, I think sports very often works quite well

00:02:12: and here in particular football maybe.

00:02:14: Because if you in a football match it's very important

00:02:18: to have a good defence, to attack at some point.

00:02:21: And you need people or players who orchestrate the entire game.

00:02:25: And that's pretty much what happens with the immune system.

00:02:31: So also there you have different players,

00:02:33: you have different cells and that's so it works.

00:02:37: Yeah, OK, so you have a team that has to communicate

00:02:41: and work together.

00:02:43: Yeah, OK.

00:02:44: What actually happens in our body when it has to fight

00:02:48: the pathogen, bacterium or virus, for example?

00:02:52: I think it's extremely complex and it's very difficult

00:02:57: to answer shortly to that question.

00:03:01: But in general, so like as said for the football match,

00:03:06: you have diverse sections or players in the immune system

00:03:12: that take over different roles.

00:03:15: And for instance, one of those roles can be that there are cells

00:03:19: in our body that engulf and digest the pathogen that comes in.

00:03:27: These are for instance, macrophages or you have players

00:03:30: like T cells, which are really in the front line they attack.

00:03:35: Because if a virus for instance hides in the cell,

00:03:38: you need a player that takes care for that.

00:03:42: And then there is one more part of the immune system

00:03:46: that we are particularly interested in, which is the B cell.

00:03:49: And the B cell is the cell in the body that produces antibodies.

00:03:52: Yeah, and antibodies can bind to a pathogen,

00:03:55: mark it and can also activate other aspects of immune defense.

00:04:00: And yeah, this is part of what happens.

00:04:04: But as said, it's extremely complex.

00:04:05: And this is why there are so many researchers needed

00:04:07: in order to understand it.

00:04:09: Yes, so what exactly do you research as a monologist?

00:04:14: In general, so immunology is to understand what mechanisms,

00:04:20: what are the underlying mechanisms behind the response to a pathogen.

00:04:23: This is the sum, but then the devil is in the detail, right?

00:04:28: So it is about finding out what are the single aspects that matter,

00:04:34: what goes wrong, maybe at what moment can't we cope

00:04:38: with a certain pathogen.

00:04:39: And this is what immunology is about.

00:04:44: And which defense mechanisms do we have?

00:04:48: So what person do we have in our immune system?

00:04:52: You mentioned a few, but maybe you can talk a little bit more about it.

00:04:56: Maybe I can talk about the B cell because I like it so much.

00:04:58: Yes, we can of course talk about the B cell.

00:05:02: Yeah, so that's a player for an instance that is very particular.

00:05:06: And the reason why I'm so fascinated by this, the cell type is that it is extremely diverse.

00:05:14: So we have numerous millions of different V cells in our body

00:05:21: that are only slightly different.

00:05:23: And what is different about them is that they have different antibodies.

00:05:27: And it's important that we have that what we call diversity or repertoire

00:05:30: in order to have an answer to all these pathogens that are out there

00:05:35: that we can encounter.

00:05:37: And this is somewhat similar.

00:05:40: So T cells work similarly.

00:05:42: They also have this diversity.

00:05:44: But what is special about B cells is that during an immune response,

00:05:49: they can even further diversify and start to fine tune

00:05:56: or to come up with an even better solution than what was initially the case.

00:06:04: So it improves with the response.

00:06:06: This is something that fascinates me.

00:06:09: And an online portrait of the Hamilton Society,

00:06:11: you were described as an engineer of our defense system.

00:06:15: What does that actually mean?

00:06:17: This means that we are trying to build on solutions that are already present

00:06:23: in our body or in nature.

00:06:25: But we are trying to modify it in a way that it's getting better or more advanced

00:06:31: because to some extent nature is limited with the tools it has available.

00:06:36: To give you an example, something that we are investigating in the lab

00:06:40: is a mechanism that B cells use to mix antibodies with other proteins.

00:06:47: And when that very protein that they use to mix with the antibody

00:06:51: is reactive for the pathogen, that's a very fortunate situation

00:06:55: because then the antibody becomes immediately reactive

00:06:59: and can attack that very pathogen.

00:07:01: But the problem here is, or the limitation of nature,

00:07:05: is that not every protein that is bound by a pathogen is produced in a B cell.

00:07:10: But it needs to be produced in a B cell to end up in the antibody.

00:07:14: And this is where we try to help B cells to come up with better solutions.

00:07:19: So we add a few components and hope that we will provide a better solution

00:07:26: than nature is already providing.

00:07:28: Your research group is based at the Center of Individualized Infection Medicine,

00:07:34: that's the site of the HZ-IN-Hanoufa.

00:07:36: I think you can call it even personalized medicine.

00:07:40: Yes, exactly.

00:07:41: So it is about to find tailored solutions for an individual.

00:07:46: And in that particular case for infectious diseases of an individual,

00:07:49: how does this change the treatment of infections?

00:07:52: As I said, we need a tailored solution because we cannot always try to solve problems

00:07:59: by using one tool.

00:08:02: So sometimes you need to understand better what an individual provides.

00:08:07: For instance, what is the quality of an immune system?

00:08:10: Not everybody has the same immune system.

00:08:12: We know by experience that some of our friends, they are easily sick

00:08:17: and others never experience or never got a disease even when they are directly exposed to it.

00:08:23: So it is also about the quality of the immune system.

00:08:26: And I think here it's very important to understand what is the baseline

00:08:29: and what can be expected from a vaccine or a certain treatment

00:08:35: when this is given to an individual.

00:08:37: Vaccine research, you mentioned vaccines, is for some viruses very, very difficult.

00:08:44: For example, HIV, it has been going on for decades.

00:08:49: But why is it sometimes difficult?

00:08:52: This is completely different to SARS, right?

00:08:54: We had a very easy solution to that pathogen.

00:08:57: but yeah for

00:08:59: some viruses it is extremely tricky and there are a lot of reasons for that but just to highlight one

00:09:05: is viruses like HIV are extremely potent to mutate, to change and this is why the virus is always one

00:09:15: step ahead and our immune system is running behind which means that we have difficulties to find the

00:09:22: right solution because the evolution is so fast. How has the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the

00:09:30: direction of the research? It influenced us in many aspects. First of all our everyday lab work

00:09:37: changed completely from the moment we had to face the pandemic right as for any other

00:09:42: individual we had issues for instance to enter the lab to conduct our research we just started

00:09:48: so I just started my position so we were an extremely young team but of course we had the

00:09:54: tools to study antibodies and this is why I decided relatively quickly to address and try to contribute

00:10:01: to the pandemic by generating knowledge and we had some ideas here to how we could maybe improve

00:10:11: vaccines in the future so just to get it clear from the beginning so there isn't

00:10:16: an extremely good vaccine available for a SARS-CoV-2 but just working on it we had the idea that maybe

00:10:22: we can change vaccines to be even better by preventing that a vaccine interacts with our body.

00:10:32: So there are the vaccines and on the other side there you mentioned it people who get more sick

00:10:40: or heavier sick and there are people who don't get sick at all so how does your research help to

00:10:46: better understand why some people get more severe infections than others? We try to understand

00:10:53: the BESELTS right this is what I was trying to explain so sometimes BESELTS responses are not

00:11:01: proper they are not very effective and we are trying to get it right so to understand where

00:11:06: are the gaps in our immune system because if you understand where you have some gaps you can try to

00:11:12: fill them and find strategies to for instance create better BESELTS and supplement them but also

00:11:18: to address how does a vaccine need to look like in order to stimulate cells to fill that very gap.

00:11:25: Which new technology is our methods do you find exciting for the future on infection research?

00:11:33: Yeah they are now very general tools that are extremely exciting that are on the rise or they

00:11:39: that were just developed one very prominent example is alpha fold this is a tool with which we

00:11:46: now can predict protein structures and of course this is a very this was an extremely important

00:11:52: development because we can now just from a sequence of a protein predict how does a protein look like

00:11:58: and when it comes to vaccine design and to many other things as well but as we are talking about

00:12:03: vaccine design it is extremely important to understand how would a protein look like when you

00:12:08: have a given sequence right and if you now make a guess how could it look like in the future and

00:12:14: how could it impact our thinking and the tools that we have available then if you combine it for

00:12:20: instance with other developments for instance quantum computing these quantum computers they can

00:12:26: tackle multiple solutions at a time right and it's another dimension of computing and this would be

00:12:33: essential for a problem like a vaccine design because you need to handle many different

00:12:39: potential designs in parallel so maybe by handling many designs in parallel you can come up with a

00:12:45: completely novel solution that would have never been possible to handle in the lab because we

00:12:50: have to perform one experiment after the other right so there I think there's a lot of yeah

00:12:56: excitement and definitely something to come and I'm yeah I'm curious yeah I hear it in your

00:13:03: voice and I can see it so is this how you see the future of personalized immunotherapy or

00:13:09: are these the breakthroughs you're expecting? Yeah this will of course also help personalize

00:13:18: medicine but there I think there's another aspect that is very important which would be the

00:13:24: discovery of new biomarkers so biomarkers are yeah markers that help us to classify patients

00:13:32: and with novel biomarkers you may have the possibility to specify better what you expect

00:13:44: from an individual with regard to a vaccine for instance or from a therapy so this could be a

00:13:53: game changer okay so certain biomarkers yeah I'm excited so I hear the the words or the words

00:14:05: green lab what does it mean? It means that labs are trying to be more aware or more careful with

00:14:16: resources and climate change is an important topic if we think the the level of resources that we use

00:14:27: or consume to do research it's insane it's really an it is an incredible amount of energy that we

00:14:37: consume if you think for instance about the samples that we need to cool down to minus 80 or even more

00:14:42: in liquid nitrogen to store them there's a lot of energy needed and plastic another topic so when

00:14:49: we are conducting our essays usually we are running it just once on a single plastic plate which means

00:14:56: that after that it goes into the trashmen we are trying to minimize that now and this is where

00:15:01: green lab sticker comes into place yeah but it is just we are on the way to become better and we

00:15:07: are trying to save what we can save and we discuss it regularly in the lab and there even now these

00:15:13: certificates that you can get and we are heading for them and I think this is something that research

00:15:18: should do in general yeah a big challenge but I think it's it's important regarding climate change

00:15:26: and the health of our planet and so of our health what interests me is how did you get into your

00:15:32: field of research and what fascinate you most to be yourselves yeah initially I was planning to

00:15:40: study something completely different and so it was biotechnology and but then yeah life happened

00:15:49: and I heard in a lecture of so of immunology and so there was a seminar series during my studies

00:15:58: and I just sit in and I was listening it happened so I fell in love with the immune system and I

00:16:05: decided to cancel my plans and follow that path and continue studying the immune system and

00:16:13: particularly BESELT yeah and it's it's your passion it's my passion definitely I can see that

00:16:20: do you perhaps have a few tips for our listeners or for me for for for everyone as as a take-home

00:16:29: message that we can do to keep ourselves healthy and our immune system or our defense our body

00:16:37: defense strong one thing is to keep the body defense strong but something that is equally

00:16:42: important is to protect ourselves from pathogens or use condoms is definitely something that I

00:16:50: would like to not advise but that I stand for as well because we are facing increasing numbers

00:16:58: the awareness especially in the younger generation is not that high anymore and I think the best you

00:17:04: can do is protect yourself HIV or sexually transmitted diseases is one part but also when

00:17:10: it comes to malaria you can try not to be bitten and cover yourself with a net right

00:17:18: yeah very simple advice but I think very useful and very true thank you for your time and for

00:17:26: there for all the information thank you it was a pleasure to be here thanks for the invitation

00:17:30: that was our first season look forward to the next one in which we will once again talk to many

00:17:40: exciting researchers about our coexistence with pathogens

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