00:00We know for a long time that the immune system has a remarkable capacity to recognise and respond to various pathogens like viruses and bacteria that might invade our bodies.
00:12But a problem is that sometimes it makes this decision incorrectly and will attack not the pathogens but our own tissues and that will cause autoimmune conditions like type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis.
00:25What our colleagues discovered was that there's a specialised immune cell called a regulatory T cell or Treg that's job is to prevent these inappropriate immune responses.
00:35How significant is it that your colleagues have found this?
00:38It's a game changer for how we understand our immune system distinguishing ourselves from potential pathogens and it's opened up a new way of considering how we treat autoimmune conditions and also transplants and so forth.
00:51And so off the back of this work on which diseases could there possibly be breakthroughs?
00:58Yeah particularly autoimmune conditions like type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis and others because we have the opportunity now to enlist this powerful immunosuppressive capacity of regulatory T cells to dampen inflammation and prevent those conditions.
01:13Does this feel like a seminal moment in your career in terms of what you look at and what you study?
01:20Absolutely. This was, as I said, a game changing discovery when it was made just a couple of decades ago and it's resonated by creating new fields in immunological research that we and others are pursuing.
01:31And when you see what these scientists did and how they approached it, do you think, oh, I wish I would have thought of that?
01:38Well, I'd classify it as inspirational but certainly a tinge of envy and admiration. Absolutely.
01:45And what are you working on now?
01:47Well, inspired by these efforts, I'm interested in understanding how we better measure our immune health.
01:52And as part of an amazing new initiative, the Snow Centre for Immune Health, which is a partnership between Wehi, the Royal Melbourne Hospital and colleagues all over the globe,
02:00we're interested in bringing clinicians and scientists together to better understand and measure our immune health so that we can better diagnose and treat immune-related disorders like autoimmune conditions.
02:10And so how do we measure our immune health at the moment and how could that be improved?
02:16Well, at the moment we have rather blunt tools to measure cell types and maybe antibodies and a few other measures.
02:22But we're animated by trying to come up with new predictive measures of understanding what our immune system might do next.
02:28And for that we need to carefully follow patients throughout their journey of immune-related diseases and treatment.
02:34And how far are you along that journey of discovery?
02:37I'd say we're building on a really amazing discoveries like this so that we understand the components.
02:43But really we need to understand how they all work together in a whole systems approach,
02:47which is why it's going to take many, many researchers and clinicians working together to crack this problem.
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