Scientists Are Starting to Unlock the Nanoscale Secrets of the Immune System
The immune system works on a scale that scientists are only just beginning to perceive. This new vision could change the way diseases like cancer are fought.
Speaking to WIRED Health on April 16, Daniel Davis, an immunologist at Imperial College London, detailed how researchers are using advanced microscopes to uncover previously invisible dynamics in the human immune system, showing that multiple processes occur at a “nanoscale” that was previously out of reach.
This new vision is already reshaping the way immunity is understood. “We discovered something called the immunological synapse, which is that many different protein molecules are known to trigger the immune system,” Davis said.
Today’s microscopes reveal worlds that “we just had no idea existed,” he explained. “There wasn’t really a hypothesis that led us to this,” he said. “It was about looking at things happening under a microscope.”
At this scale, even the first moments of contact between cells seem different. “When an immune cell sticks to another cell, it has to decide whether that other cell is healthy or diseased. Small nanoscale protrusions stick out from the immune cell to make that initial contact,” he said.
In collaboration with pharmaceutical company Bristol Myers Squibb, his lab is exploring how this level of detail can be used not only to observe immune responses, but also to influence them. After killing a diseased cell, for example, an immune cell must break off and attack another, a process that scientists have only recently been able to observe in detail.
Davis’ team is experimenting with redesigned antibodies (Y-shaped molecules that act as a bridge between immune cells and cancer cells) to enhance the signals that activate those immune cells. By binding to the immune cell and bringing key proteins together, these molecules can “send a very powerful signal for the immune cell to activate and kill the cancer.”
Conceptually, this suggests that the arrangement of molecules on immune cells could make them more effective at killing target cells, potentially improving how the immune system attacks cancer or, in the case of an autoimmune disease, eliminates harmful cells. Although the work is currently in its early stages, Davis says “this could ultimately produce something that could be tested on patients.”
There are many types of molecules whose positioning on the surface of immune cells you can change, he explains. “I don’t really have an idea on who would be good to target or not. At the moment, the strategies are making a lot of bets.”
“Many small start-ups are trying many different versions of this type of therapy” as they try to discover what would enable this powerful response, he said.
Along with these advances, Davis emphasized that immune health is inherently individual. Of all human genes, those that vary most from person to person are, perhaps surprisingly, not those that determine appearance, but those related to the immune system, he explained.
“There is a fundamental biological reason why humans are so diverse and that is because it is the way our species evolved to survive all kinds of diseases,” he said.
This means that people react differently to the same infection. “I think maybe I haven’t exercised enough, I haven’t eaten the right things, I’m too stressed,” he said. In fact, “you may have inherited a particular set of immune system genes that allow you to better fight this type of disease.”
“There is no hierarchy in the system,” he added.
Currently, immune health practices are not at the point where they can tailor treatments to these differences. Davis added that while some companies are working on personalized approaches, the ability to truly harness individual immune health remains a future goal.
