Dalhousie University's Molly Appeal raising money for immunity research
An infectious diseases specialist at Dalhousie Medical School in Halifax is looking to raise money for a new machine that could help her study the cells of Hepatitis C patients in the P.E.I. jail system, as a way to better understand the immune system.
Dr. Lisa Barrett is one of a number of researchers in the area of inflammation, infection and immunity seeking funding through this year's Molly Appeal — a fundraiser co-ordinated by the Dalhousie Medical Research Foundation.
Organizers are hoping to match or exceed last year's total, which was approximately $246,000.
Barrett told the CBC's Information Morning in Halifax: "It's hard to study aging. You've got to wait decades for that to happen."
Instead, she said, it's possible to cure a Hepatitis C patient and observe how their immune system goes from compromised to functioning, in the hopes of applying those lessons to an aging person.
Powerful tool
A new flow cytometer — a machine which can measure and sort individual cells — would help her complete that research, Barrett said.
"It's an incredibly versatile and powerful tool" which would also benefit many of her colleagues in a variety of disciplines, she said.
Jail population
Hepatitis C patients provide a good model for a rapidly aging immune system, Barrett said. Because the virus is spread through contact with infected blood, intravenous drug users are at high risk of contracting the disease, she said, and the number of patients is often concentrated in the jail system.
Because of concerns about ethics, prisoners are rarely used in medical research, Barrett said. "This is one of the first interventional drug studies in a correctional setting in North America in about 60 years," she said.
There are 20 people enrolled in the study — with room for 40 more — and feedback from participants has been "overwhelmingly favourable," she said.
It's not a large sample size, she said, but "what we want to do is prove that we can do this, and we can do it ethically, safely and well."
Designer drugs
Barrett said she's using new drugs with a 95 per cent success rate, "the Prada handbag of designer drugs," to cure those prisoners who have Hepatitis C.
Then she's studying how their immune systems go from exhausted "and looking like an 80-year-old immune system" to functional again. She said the drugs reduce the stress of the infection on the immune system.
"Your immune system seems to be able to say: I'm not just going to sit around and look like I should be doing something. I'm actually going to start coming to work, showing up and doing something."
Next steps
The next step would be to compare whether the markers for immune exhaustion in Hepatitis C patients are the same as those in seniors.
The question is, "Can we start to stimulate, at least in a test tube, some of this immune rejuvenation?" Barrett said. If so, it would be a "facelift for your immune system."
