Key Messages
Weaving Together Stories and Scientific History to Tell the Story of Immunology
When most of us think about our immune system, we hardly give it a second thought.
We take for granted its powerful and important role in protecting us from illnesses and disease.
But the wild world of the immune system is filled with fascinating and complex components.
In Matt Richtel’s book An Elegant Defense, he offers an eye-opening account of this incredible biological resource.
Through personal stories, Richtel illustrates how medical advances have leveraged the power of the immune system to combat serious diseases.
He introduces readers to the history of immunology, describing how certain animals have led to drug developments that tap into its amazing potential.
Richtel also highlights the importance of keeping our immune systems functioning properly so they can function at peak performance when called upon to protect us.
For example, his friend, Jason Greenstein’s story illustrates just how life-changing proper immunotherapy can be, restoring him from cancer back to health.
How Our Immune System Defeated Disease-Causing Pathogens
Living inside you is like a massive festival with hundreds of billions of attendees – and your immune system is like a security team making sure everything runs smoothly.
Cells that constitute the immune system are your body’s elegant defense, attending to tissue damage, cleaning up toxins and protecting against malicious intruders called pathogens.
These pathogenic agents come in the form of bacteria, viruses and parasites, but only a fraction are actually dangerous or life-threatening.
The Yersinia pestis bacteria is responsible for the Black Plague, while other hazardous bacteria include salmonella, E.
coli, and tetanus bacillus.
On the viral front there’s Ebola, HIV, smallpox and flu to name a few of the most lethal ones.
As it stands now though, these deadly microbes have been kept in check since 1900 because of advances in science and understanding in how our own body’s defence system works – specifically the discovery of our immune system.
The collective efforts of vaccine development and proper hygiene has made health conditions much safer for us all today than before those monumental discoveries were made.
How Three Mysterious Animal Organs Led to the Discovery of Immunology
It all started with a series of perplexing discoveries.
The first mystery was revealed in the sixteenth century by Italian anatomist Fabricius ab Aquapendente, when he discovered an organ located beneath a chicken’s tail, shaped like a pouch but serving no apparent purpose.
This organ was eventually named the bursa.
A century later, Gaspare Aselli stumbled upon another enigma – white milky veins in the stomach of a dog – which didn’t fit in with the standard understanding of the circulatory system that had been held for centuries.
Fast forward two centuries to 1882, and Russian zoologist Élie Metchnikoff encountered yet another strange phenomenon while visiting his sister in Sicily.
While examining starfish larvae under his microscope, he detected mobile “wandering cells” within the organisms.
Leveraging this clue, Metchnikoff reasoned that these cells functioned as sentinels against invasion by forming a protective barrier around tribulations – what we call inflammation today.
This groundwork set out by these three puzzling discoveries is what led to one of the most important scientific fields of our time – immunology!
Dr. Miller’s Discovery of the Thymus: Revealing the Immune System’s Mysterious Role in Protecting Us from Disease
Dr.
Jacques Miller was a French physician based in London during the late 1950s when he made a breakthrough discovery regarding the thymus, an organ previously of little known importance.
His experiments began when he discovered that mice were regularly dying with lesions on their livers.
Upon further examination, Dr.
Miller noticed that these lesions were occurring exclusively inside the thymus, an organ situated near the breastbone.
In effort to gain insights into what might have caused these deaths and to better understand this now mysterious organ, he began testing with radiation-induced cancerous tissue and observed something peculiar – adult mice without thymuses would spontaneously develop leukemia after being injected with a radioactive liquid.
Realizing this strange phenomenon meant he was on to something bigger, Dr.
Miller conducted further research and tested whether or not replacing an adult mouse’s thymus with one from a newborn mouse could cause it to then contract leukemia – which proved successful in every case!
Based off of this evidence, Dr.
Miller deduced that the thymus is indeed essential for immunity and serves as a key component of the immune system; thus marking his discovery that the thymus is crucial for healthy bodily functioning.
The Body’s Ability to Distinguish Between Self and Non-Self: The Discovery of Thymus-Derived Cells and the Antibody-Antigen Model
After conducting experiments on mice whose thymuses had been removed, Dr.
Jacques Miller came to a remarkable conclusion – the thymus was responsible for producing T cells.
During his research, he noticed that the mice without the thymus did not reject the skin grafts from other mice, unlike their counterparts with a healthy thymus.
This observation signaled to him that something must be affecting immune system functioning and hence skin rejection in these mice.
Next, Dr Miller proceeded to run an array of blood tests on them and found an unusually low number of a certain type of lymphocytes—eventually known as T cells—which he deduced were derived from the thymus.
By completing his research, Dr.
Miller discovered key insight into how our body can distinguish between self and non-self elements, as well as uncovering a major part of what goes on inside our immune system when it is trying to fight off invaders or heal wounds.
Realizing the Role of the Bursa of Fabricius in Building Immunity: Connecting a 16th-Century Puzzle to 20th-Century Medicine
In 1951, a very ill boy was taken to Walter Reed General Hospital in Bethesda and the doctors found that he lacked antibodies.
They were aware that not having antibodies meant trouble, but they had no idea why this was happening as the boy’s thymus, blood cells and body were seemingly capable of defending against viruses.
This mysterious case of an immune system that didn’t work perplexed researchers until the mid-1960s when Max Cooper discovered Wiskott-Aldrich Syndrome where patients had plenty of lymphocytes and functional thymuses.
This led him to hypothesize that there must be two types of lymphocyte instead of one – with T cells originating from the thymus and another type coming from somewhere else.
The evidence was confusing but ultimately it resulted in the researchers realizing that T cells weren’t the only lymphocytes in existence.
The Discovery of Two Types of Lymphocytes and How They Defeat Pathogens
Our bodies have an incredible defense system that is made up of two types of cells: T cells and B cells.
These are the components of our white blood cells, which comprise 40 percent of our immune system.
T cells have tiny spikes on their surface, which helps them recognize pathogens in our body.
When they detect one, they can either fight it themselves or send out B cells to do the work for them.
Meanwhile, B cells are equipped with unique antibodies that act as small antennas or keys that filter out specific viruses and antigens.
Even though there might be billions of these B Cells roaming our bodies, only one eventually finds the specific antigen to its antibody and gets rid of it.
Essentially, T cells and B Cells are essential in providing our body with precision to accurately detect and eliminate potential threats.
They make sure that our body can respond precisely when attacked by an infection—which certainly isn’t an easy feat!
The Infinity Machine: How Our Bodies Produce Trillions of Unique Antibodies to Protect Us from the Infinite Threats of the World
Susumu Tonegawa, a Japanese researcher working at the Basel Institute for Immunology in the 1970s, discovered how our bodies can detect an infinite array of antigens with what he termed his “infinity machine”.
He found that mature B cells have genetic material not present in immature cells.
This means that each B cell carries unique genetic coding which locks into specific types of antigens, giving us a virtually limitless number of possibilities when it comes to identifying potential threats.
To understand this phenomenon further, Tonegawa observed the length of short segments in B cells’ genomes and compared them in immature and mature B cells.
He found that long sequences were surprisingly truncated as they matured, leading to the production of billions of different antibodies.
Tonegawa’s discovery opened the door to new vaccine development and immunotherapy treatments, unlocking our body’s capability to defend itself against virtually any antigen out there.
This is largely due to the fact that immature B cells are able to produce combinations of genetic coding so strange and specific that certain locks may never be encountered.
Thanks to Tonegawa’s work we now know that our bodies possess an incredible defense mechanism allowing us to protect ourselves from anything nature throws at us!
Our Innate and Adaptive Immune Systems Team Up To Fight Pathogens
Our body’s defense system is a complex combination between two types of immune systems that work together to protect us from harmful pathogens.
The adaptive immune system, which includes B cells and T cells, is able to learn about and recognize millions of antigens.
It remembers how best to fight off specific attacks in the future through its memory capabilities.
On the other hand, our bodies also possess an innate immune system which is largely responsible for detecting hostile invasions by uncovering generic traits associated with certain viruses and bacteria.
This system contains special Toll-like receptors on certain cells that are able to recognize these traits when they come into contact with them.
When this happens, it alerts the T cells which then begin directing other cells to go into battle against the intruder.
By working together, these two distinct yet complementary systems are essential in keeping us safe from harm!
The Incredible Power of Cellular Communication in Our Immune System
The cells in our bodies are capable of communicating with one another via a protein known as a cytokine.
When there is an invading pathogen, cells near the invasion release these cytokines, a process that can reach throughout the body in just hours.
These cytokines act like messengers, telling the body to attack or defend against the invader.
One such cytokine is known as interferon which signals other healthy cells to start creating more of it and making it hard for the virus to spread.
This process comes at a cost, however, as interferon can have side-effects such as causing aches and exhaustion in order to encourage resting and defense preparation.
Another type of cytokine called an interleukin actually serves to discourage immune-system attacks by maintaining balance.
Through these various types of molecules, cells are able to communicate with one another and tell the immune system when and how to attack invaders without risking your life in the process.
The Brutal Realities of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma: An Uphill Battle to Survive Cancer
Jason Greenstein was a vibrant human being, an amazing athlete, and an eccentric serial entrepreneur.
He always showed encouragement to those close to him, and in his forties he was hit with the shocking news: Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
Hodgkin’s lymphoma is a type of cancer that attacks the immune system by attacking B cells and using them to control it.
It does this by attaching onto healthy T cells via a molecule called PDL-1, fooling them into believing they are part of the body’s defenses when they actually cause cellular destruction.
This can take over one’s immune system if cell by cell, however fortunately it tends to respond well to chemotherapy which makes 90% of cases curable.
Sadly Jason was in that other ten percent and as a result sadly passed away, making his loss all the more tragic but ensuring that his legacy will live on through those who remember him.
The Dangers of Interfering with Our Immune System
In an incredible example of how resilient our bodies can be, Jason was able to beat back his Hodgkin’s Lymphoma with the help of nivolumab, a drug that hadn’t even been approved for this form of cancer.
But after achieving remission, Jason decided to undergo a risky treatment: having his stem cells replaced with those of his sister.
Unfortunately, what should have been a blessing soon turned into a curse as complications set in and ultimately led to Jason’s death.
Even though he had beaten the cancer, it was his own immune system that ended up doing him in.
Despite his initial improvement after receiving his sister’s stem cells, this new immune system waged war against Jason’s body until it eventually caused extreme inflammation – known as cytokine storm – leading to liver failure and ultimately death.
This tragic story is an important reminder that tinkering with our immune system can come at great cost.
We do so at our own risk and must always remain aware of the dangers that lurk just below the surface when tampering with such powerful systems.
Wrap Up
The Elegant Defense: A Summary encourages us to remember the importance of living a balanced life and maintaining our immune system’s delicate balance.
We must be careful not to over-stress and not to ignore signs of illness, for if our immune system is too aggressive or too weak we leave ourselves vulnerable to getting sick.
The book’s key message is that immunology has made many advancements in the last century, but we are still far from being able to fully control our body’s built-in defense systems.
As a closing point, one should attempt to reduce stress by getting adequate sleep and meditating, as it can help restore equilibrium and disrupt an addiction to stress hormones such as adrenaline.
