Date/Time
Date(s) - Fri 26 May
12:15 - 13:00
Location
Seminar Room, Malaghan Institute, VUW
Parasitic helminths are among the most common and debilitating causes of disease in humans. To enable their survival, helminths have evolved sophisticated strategies to avoid attack by their host’s immune system. At the same time, the human immune system needed to develop strategies to deal with large and complex creatures such as parasitic worms, since any vigorous inflammatory response directed against the worm may have detrimental effects on its own tissues. This co-evolution has forced us to “tolerate” worms to a point where exposure to these pathogens may be important for shaping the development of our immune system. In the past century however, urbanisation, improved sanitation and health care measures in the developed world has reduced our exposure to many infectious diseases, including parasites. During this period, incidences of allergic and autoimmune inflammatory disorders have risen dramatically.
These disorders occur when the immune system inappropriately responds to harmless stimuli such as environmental factors, food and the body’s own tissues. These observations led to the concept that a novel approach for treating inflammatory disorders would be to “reintroduce” parasitic worms into humans. Several clinical studies have involved deliberate exposure of people to live helminths, which has yielded some promising results in a variety of inflammatory conditions. Our research group has demonstrated the potential for hookworms to restore tolerance to gluten in people with Coeliac Disease, an autoimmune condition affecting the small intestine. These encouraging finding are being followed up in a larger, double-blinded, randomised, placebo controlled trial, as well as planned interventions in other inflammatory conditions. These “live worm” therapeutic trials serve as valuable proof of principle studies that helminths release an array of anti-inflammatory factors into their hosts to mediate their therapeutic effects. Work is ongoing to identify the key hookworm-derived proteins that can suppress inflammation and their mechanism-of-action, in the hope of producing a recombinant protein-based medication for a variety of inflammatory and autoimmune conditions.