Daniel M Davis: ‘Unbelievable things will come from biological advances’
Daniel M Davis is a professor of immunology at the University of Manchester. He has published over 130 academic papers and two lauded popular science books, The Compatibility Gene and The Beautiful Cure. His third, The Secret Body, describes the forthcoming revolution in human health.
As an immunologist, when you overhear conversations about antibodies or T-cells in the pub (when regulations permit), is it pleasing to you that these aspects of science have entered the public domain?Many terrible things have happened because of this pandemic, but the science of viruses and infections has come right to the foreground. As an immunologist I always thought my subject was quite important, but right now it’s become blatantly clear to everyone how critical it is to understand how the immune system works and how viruses evolve, and how infections spread between people. Without that deep understanding there wouldn’t have been progress in creating vaccines and many, many, many more people would have died.
Particularly at the beginning of the pandemic there were lots of stories in the media about what you could do to boost your immune system. As an immunologist does that make you groan a little?I do understand where it comes from. Even before the pandemic, if I gave a public talk, that was the question I would get asked the most. Essentially, we don’t really know the answer because an experiment isolating a food or supplement to see if it boosted your immune system is really hard to do. The only thing most scientists would agree on which does affect the ability of your immune system to respond to an infection is stress. And there’s a molecular level of understanding of why that is: because when you are stressed the cortisol levels in your blood go up and that quietens down the immune system because you divert energy to the fight-or-flight response. So if you have chronic stress you may have a long-term quieting of the immune system, which could be a problem. My message would be to be very sceptical of anything which makes a claim to boost your immune system.
At degree and PhD level, you studied physics. What led you to pivot to the outer reaches of the cosmos to our insides?As a young kid I always wanted to be a scientist. And in my youth physics felt to me like it was the most fundamental science. It was science about rules that work across the whole universe – motion and gravity, electromagnetic waves – that’s why I should study it. But as I got older I really felt that life was more fundamental and that understanding life is perhaps most special. Moreover, physics is a very mature science.
You felt you could make a bigger contribution to biology?There are so many questions that just instantly catapult you to the frontier of biology. In biology we’re at that point where everything is kicking off in a big way. Unbelievable things are going to come about because of the biological advances that are happening now. In the same way that early 19th-century physics led to the internet, biology now will lead to, I don’t know what – it’s just going to be insane.
Last month a study was published about a baby in San Diego who was admitted to neonatal intensive care with unexplained symptoms. His genome was sequenced and within 43 hours, a gene defect had been diagnosed, treatment ordered and symptoms resolved. How commonplace can this therapy become?Yes, this is surely going to be a part of medical practice more and more. In fact, I think all sorts of new ways to analyse our health will eventually come online. Not tomorrow, but in years or decades to come. For example, microbiome compositions might one day be used to help diagnosis of any number of illnesses. Small packets of proteins and fat molecules called exosomes, which circulate in our blood, as well as circulating cell-free DNA, are less well understood right now, but they too are likely to vary across different states of health and disease, and might be used diagnostically in the future. How about analysis of breath or the sweat from the palms of hands? This is science fiction right now, but it is the direction of travel.
Does the future of personalised medicine depend on context and regulation, ie whether you’re a patient in an insurance-based system or how much you trust the authorities with your genomic data?I think this is very important. To be honest, it’s not that I know the answers, it’s just that I know we should be talking about it. Across all the different aspects of the human body, it’s clear that everything is kicking off and we are soon going to be exposed to all sorts of difficult personal decisions. I think that whatever legislation is in place or wherever you live, each of us will need to decide for ourselves if and when to use new science that’s available to us. Again, not tomorrow but sometime in the future. For example, would you want to take personal nutritional advice from an algorithm that has analysed the components of your own stool and blood?
What makes you think individuals will act on these insights? Broadly speaking, we all know it’s good for our health to exercise, drink less, eat wholefoods and so on, but many people don’t bother.That is true, but as things get more detailed, it will have an effect. For example, lots of people diet to try to lose weight, but if it became clear that a personalised diet plan based on analysis of your microbiome and other aspects of your body was more effective, people would consider that path.
Quite a lot of data about our potential health outcomes are already accessible through something like a 23andMe genetic test. However, some people would rather not know about their chances of developing Alzheimer’s disease and all the rest of it. Do you sympathise with that position?It comes down to where the knowledge is. With a lot of things, it doesn’t help you to know because there’s not much you can do about it. Famously, Angelina Jolie had a mastectomy on the basis of BRCA1 mutation, but she had relatively clear facts from which to make a decision.
Most other things are a bit too fuzzy to make clear decisions about. But it is going to come. There will be an onslaught of information about ourselves as knowledge progresses and people are going to have difficult decisions to make about their own lives. This is where we’re heading, but at the moment it’s a bit fuzzy.
On one hand The Secret Body is about scientists making insights and identifying mechanisms, but it’s also about scientists inventing new instruments to see what was previously obscured. Is there a fantasy instrument which would advance your own work? Because of my background in physics, one of the things that enabled me to make inroads in the immune system was to use high-powered microscopes to look at immune cells interacting. The super-resolution microscope we have now is a complete dream compared to what we had 20 years ago. The next level would be to see a molecular view of the immune system within the human body. A lot of the high-powered microscopes I use inside my lab are restricted to looking at cells interacting with each other in a dish.
Many of the breakthroughs you describe come about through chance meetings between scientists at conferences. Are you worried that, post-pandemic, these kinds of expensive events – involving lots of air travel – will be less likely to happen? Can serendipity occur on Zoom?I think about that a lot because, personally, I’m not a great fan of travelling around to conferences, because you miss your family, it’s exhausting and bad for the environment. Yet it is definitely true that an informal face-to-face interaction is where things spark. So I’m hoping the technology could improve. Surely some type of virtual reality headset can put me in a conference situation. Certainly you can’t get a lot of banter on Zoom.
• The Secret Bodyby Daniel M Davis is published by The Bodley Head (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
There will be an onslaught of information as knowledge progresses; people will have difficult decisions to make