When we finally understand it, your immune system will provide a lot of answers. From what’s actually causing any stomach aches, to which vaccines will protect you from the next pandemic, there’s a lot it can tell us.
But there’s a problem. Scientists don’t really understand your immune system. And they really don’t understand how yours is different from other people’s. That’s because age, gender, race and even socioeconomic background can all impact your immune system, from changing your susceptibility to certain illnesses and diseases to altering your immunity to certain drugs.
With such variety, diagnosing, treating and preventing diseases can be a challenge that's met with a host of new problems with each new immune system. What works for other people might not work for you.
But what if scientists had a map of every human immune system on the planet? Think of it a bit like a digital double, a way to see exactly how each person’s immune system ticks, how they react to different drugs and vaccines, and essentially know your immune system without ever running a test on you.
This is the lofty goal that is being attempted by the Human Immunome Project (HIP).
The Human Genome Project was a 13-year-long project that sequenced all of the genes of the human genome. Following in its footsteps, the HIP could, if successful, help us get ahead of pandemics, develop better medicines, speed up drug development and even treat serious illnesses like cancer, Alzheimer's and heart disease.
What is the Human Immunome Project?
In theory, the work of the human immunome project is simple: map out the entire immune system. Okay, it’s not actually that simple. A complex mix of organs, cells and proteins, the average immune system is made up of cells numbering well into the trillions.
So how can it be understood? Through a combination of in-depth studies of the immune system and advanced artificial intelligence programs, the HIP team aims to essentially create a giant library of everything we know about the immune system.
“The immune system is generally made up of the genome, epigenome, transcriptome, proteome and microbiome. Across these, there are about 30,000 data points,” Dr Hans Keirstead, a leading stem-cell expert and CEO of the HIP, explains to BBC Science Focus.
To make it even more complicated, the HIP is processing data from many different types of people. “If you sample these data points from two organs, in seven different ethnicities, two biological sexes, six different age groups, five socioeconomic classes, five categories of immune health status, while also examining the immune system's reaction to different drugs and vaccines, you’re well into the trillions of data points.”
How do you go about processing trillions of data points? Through AI and a whole lot of sampling. Test sites will be set up around the world, taking blood and tissue samples from participants.
These samples will be run through a variety of tests and further data will be collected from some of these participants after vaccinations. Over time, the number of people sampled will drastically increase, with sites able to test thousands of people, as well as at-home kits planned down the line.
It’s a process that’s expected to take at least 10 years, but once it is done, will provide a complete view of every single person’s immune response.
Read more:
- How cold showers could boost your immune system
- Can my immune system fight disease without me realising?
Breaking down barriers in medicine
Skip forward a decade: what is the point in spending all this time and money trying to better understand our immune responses?
"The health of humans is directly related to their immune systems. Everything to do with ageing, disease – it’s all immunological,” says Keirstead. “The project is formed around the singular mission to generate datasets covering all races, ages, genders and socioeconomic classes.”
These datasets are a bit like a giant calculator. Put in an age, gender, race and socio-economic background and suddenly you know exactly how that person’s immune system will deal with anything thrown at it.
With this information, it can be quickly seen how, for example, a 55-year-old Caucasian man with a history of heart disease is going to respond to a particular drug.
While the science is obviously highly technical, it is hard to not imagine a computer loading up some kind of immune system sandbox, making a character and finding out their immune system stats – a bit like The SIMs… just with years of complicated immunology research and less of the made-up language.
Equally, it reduces the steps needed for drug development, a notoriously long process. By identifying trends in the population, it is easier to see which drugs are most crucial, and where they are needed. This could also make the healthcare system as a whole more affordable.
“We won’t just be studying the white and wealthy, but all socio-economic classes and ethnicities. We will cover all of these categories in contrast to all of the key health conditions, a long but important task going right to the most granular level,” says Keirstead.
By looking in this much detail, the research aims to fix key problems around our understanding of minority groups and medicine. There are large gaps in our understanding of how different medicines, illnesses, diseases and other factors affect people of different sexes and ethnicities, and people from different regions. This is simply due to a lack of data, especially in smaller groups that haven’t been studied as deeply.
“Once defined within the algorithm, a minority group can become a commercially viable group for drug development. We can use our research to show that there are this many people who could benefit from this drug or treatment,” says Keirstead.
“These minority populations could be scattered across the whole world. Maybe there aren’t enough in the US alone for a drug to be developed, but once you include all of the variables across the entire world, it is commercially viable for proper healthcare.”
Stopping the next pandemic
Day-to-day drug development and a better understanding of the immune system across people throughout the world is a crucial part of the project. But another focus is to halt future pandemics.
“If we had the data from the Human Immunome Project before the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of deaths and hospitalisations would have plummeted and the targeted drug development skyrocketed,” says Keirstead.
“The HIP will provide a level of pathogen readiness because we will understand how the immune system reacts to different pathogens. We just don’t have that centralised kind of information today.”
It’s a big claim. But does it stand? BBC Science Focus reached out to several experts who agreed that understanding this data was indeed very important, whether to aid in pandemic prevention or vaccine development. Yet, some expectations might have to be tempered.
“Molecular immunology has come magnificently of age in recent years, revolutionising many aspects of medicine,” said Danny Altmann, a professor in the department of Immunology at Imperial College London.
“These technologies produce big data, requiring artificial intelligence to process it for maximal gain. These approaches sped up various aspects of our response to the pandemic – the Human Immunome Project is one of these initiatives that in the future may help to contribute further.”
Interestingly, it's not just viral pandemics that the HIP is hoping to prevent in years to come. “If you ask me or any biologist how we could be wiped out, the answer is irrefutably bugs. That’s one of the reasons for the project, to ready ourselves and protect ourselves,” says Keirstead.
"By better understanding our baseline functions and responses to different pathogens, we can make personal medicines for different races, genders, ages.”
Not just set on bugs and pandemics, the Human Immunome Project is hoping to help in everything from cancer to neurodegeneration, infectious diseases, autoimmunity, and just about every area of health.
First, it just needs to map trillions of data points, perform countless studies around the world, load it into one of the most powerful AI systems ever made, and tag all of the data with rigorous scientific methodology… a pretty easy task when you think about it.
About our expert, Hans Keirstead
Hans Keirstead is a leading stem-cell expert and the CEO of the Human Immunome Project. He holds board positions in several biotechnology companies and has served as CEO at multiple large health-related companies.
Danny Altmann is a professor of medicine at the department of immunology and inflammation. He studies how the human immune system battles serious infectious diseases. His research has been published in Nature, The Lancet Microbe and Science journals.
Read more:
- Getting a good night's sleep boosts our immune response to vaccinations
- Why do some people experience more vaccine side effects than others?
- How soon after having COVID can you catch it again?
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