65: The Enemy of my Enemy

In this episode, we learn about the war going on inside our bodies every day. We generally think of our immune systems as defending us from malicious, foreign attackers. But, as always with biology, we’re finding that it’s not that simple. In some cases, an apparent foe might turn out to be a friend, and vice versa. Here we bring you three different stories about how the immune system can be outsmarted, misdirected, and even re-engineered.


Part 1: Diplomatic Immunity
Our immune system is pretty good at hunting down most viruses. But there are a handful of viruses out there that can hide from our immune system for years. The jury is still out on what effect these dormant viruses have on our health. Surprisingly, it might be the case that some of these dormant viruses, like herpes, may actually have some positive benefits. For this piece, producer Meryl Horn talks with professor J.J. Miranda of the Gladstone Institute at UCSF, who explains his innovative approach in investigating this topic.

Part 2: A Can of Worms
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, developed countries became increasingly vulnerable to rampant immune system dysfunction, with ballooning rates of allergic and autoimmune disease. Why did this happen? A popular theory is that our hyper-clean environments, and the resulting lack of regular challenge to our immune systems - such as chronic parasitic infections - are causing our immune systems to misbehave. In this episode, producer Sam Ancona Esselmann sits down with Moises Velasquez Manoff, author of An Epidemic of Absence, to explore this dramatic rise in autoimmune and allergic diseases and to discuss the caveats of controversial therapies.

Part 3: T-Cells, 2.0
One of the reasons cancer is often so difficult to treat is because cancer cells are winning an “arms race” against our natural defenses. But what if we could give our immune system a tactical advantage? In T-cell immune therapy, T-cells are removed from cancer patients and modified so that they can hunt down specific cancer markers that they were previously unable to recognize. The T-cells, which can then both recognize and kill the cancer cells, are reintroduced into the patient. In this episode, our producer Tyler Ross sits down with scientist Levi Rupp, a member of Wendell Lim's lab at UCSF, who is hacking into our immune cells to fight cancer.

Pulling DNA: Sophie Dumont

When a cell divides (called a parent cell), it provides complete copy of genes to each new cell that is formed (called daughter cells). This complicated process occurs repeatedly to accomplish an organism's development, repair, and replenishment. To reliably split the DNA correctly requires an orchestra of microscopic interactions among many molecules. While we know many of the molecules involved, scientists still know relatively little about the mechanical interactions that underlie this process. Our guest this month, Sophie Dumont, Assistant Professor in the Department of Cell and Tissue Biology at UCSF, hopes to understand these interactions. Specifically, her lab is working to understand how the chromosome (an organized structure of DNA) is divided and segregated into separate daughter cells. Her work has implications in various developmental disorders and cancer, which can result from errors in cell division. At the end of our talk she discusses the what it’s like to be a woman in science and gives advice to listeners interested in a career in science.

Music in this Episode: Lacrymae - Melodium, Bird’s Lament – Moon Dog, and Push and Pull – Rufus Thomas

More on the Dumont Lab's research

Hosted by Karuna Meda

Stem cells and epigenetics: Barbara Panning

The developing embryo is made up of special cells called stem cells. Unlike most cells, stem cells have the unique ability to transform into specialized adult cells, such as those that make up our heart or the neurons in our brain. In the last five years, scientists have designed a method to go backwards; now the specialized adult cells can be turned into embryonic stem cells. However, a lot of questions remain unanswered. For instance, scientists still do not completely understand what triggers stem cells to transform into different cell types. Or what process keeps stem cells from changing in the first place.
Our guest, Dr. Barbara Panning, a professor in the department of biochemistry at UCSF, is in the process of answering this question. Using a process called RNA interference, her lab turns off specific genes one by one to see how embryonic stem cells are affected. Her research has potentially important implications for diseases like breast cancer.

More on the Panning Lab's research

Hosted by Sama Ahmed