blood
Connecting the Dots: Oral Infection to Rheumatoid Arthritis
Posted on by Lawrence Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D.
To keep your teeth and gums healthy for a lifetime, it’s important to brush and floss each day and see your dentist regularly. But what you might not often stop to consider is how essential good oral health really is to your overall well-being. The mouth, after all, is connected to the rest of the body, and oral infections can contribute to problems elsewhere.
A good case in point comes from a study just published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The study, though small, offers some of the most convincing evidence yet for a direct link between gum, or periodontal, disease and the rheumatoid arthritis that flares most commonly in the hands, wrists, and knees [1]. If confirmed in larger follow-up studies, the finding suggests that one way for people with both diseases to contend with painful arthritic flare-ups will be to prevent them by practicing good oral hygiene and controlling their periodontal disease.
For many years, there had been suggestions that the oral bacteria causing periodontal disease might contribute to rheumatoid arthritis. For instance, past studies have found that periodontal disease occurs even more often in people with rheumatoid arthritis. People with both conditions also tend to have more severe arthritic symptoms that can be more stubbornly resistant to treatment.
What’s been missing is the precise underlying mechanisms to confirm the connection. To help connect the dots, a research team, which included Dana Orange, Rockefeller University, New York, NY, and William Robinson, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, decided to look closer.
They looked first in the blood, not directly at an arthritic joint or an inflamed periodontium, the tissues that hold a tooth in place. They were interested in whether telltale changes in the blood of people with rheumatoid arthritis correlated with the start of another painful flare-up in one or more of their joints.
One of those possible changes involves proteins that carry a particular chemical modification that places the amino acid citrulline on their surface. These citrulline-marked proteins are found in many parts of the human body, including the joints. Intriguingly, they also are present on bacteria, including those in the mouth.
Because of this bacterial connection, the researchers looked in the blood for a specific set of antibodies known as ACPAs, short for anti-citrullinated protein antibodies. They recognize citrullinated proteins that are foreign to the body and mark them for attack.
But the attack isn’t always perfectly aimed, and studies have shown the presence of ACPAs in the joints of people with rheumatoid arthritis is associated with increasing disease activity and more frequent arthritis flares. Periodontal disease, too, is especially common in people with rheumatoid arthritis who have abnormally high levels of circulating ACPAs.
In the new study, the researchers followed five women with rheumatoid arthritis for one to four years. Two of them had severe periodontal disease while the other three had no periodontal disease.
Each week, the study volunteers provided a small blood sample for researchers to study changes at the level of RNA, the genetic material that encodes proteins. They also studied changes in certain immune cells, along with any changes in their medication, dental care, or arthritis symptoms. For additional information, they also looked at blood and joint fluid samples from 67 other people with and without arthritis, including individuals with healthy gums or mild, moderate, or severe periodontal disease.
Overall, the evidence shows that people with more severe periodontal disease experienced repeated influxes of oral bacteria into their blood even when they hadn’t had a recent dental procedure. These findings suggested that when their inflamed gums became more damaged and “leaky,” bacteria in the mouth could spill into the bloodstream.
The researchers also found that those oral invaders carried many citrullinated proteins. Once they got into the bloodstream, inflammatory immune cells detected them and released ACPAs.
The researchers showed in the lab that those antibodies bind the same oral bacteria detected in the blood of people with periodontal disease and rheumatoid arthritis. In fact, those with both conditions had a wide variety of genetically distinct ACPAs, as would be expected if their immune systems were challenged repeatedly over time with oral bacteria.
The overarching idea is that these antibodies prime the immune system to attack oral bacteria. But after it gets started, the attack mistakenly expands and targets citrullinated proteins in the joints. That triggers a flare-up in a joint and the characteristic inflammation, stiffness, and joint damage.
While more study is needed to fill in the molecular details, this discovery raises an encouraging possibility. Taking care of your teeth and periodontal disease isn’t just a wise idea to maintain good oral health over a lifetime. For some of the approximately 1 million Americans with rheumatoid arthritis, it may help to manage and perhaps even prevent a painful flare-up in one or more of their affected joints.
Reference:
[1] Oral mucosal breaks trigger anti-citrullinated bacterial and human protein antibody responses in rheumatoid arthritis. Brewer RC, Lanz TV, Hale CR, Sepich-Poore GD, Martino C, Swafford AD, Carroll TS, Kongpachith S, Blum LK, Elliott SE, Blachere NE, Parveen S, Fak J, Yao V, Troyanskaya O, Frank MO, Bloom MS, Jahanbani S, Gomez AM, Iyer R, Ramadoss NS, Sharpe O, Chandrasekaran S, Kelmenson LB, Wang Q, Wong H, Torres HL, Wiesen M, Graves DT, Deane KD, Holers VM, Knight R, Darnell RB, Robinson WH, Orange DE. Sci Transl Med. 2023 Feb 22;15(684):eabq8476.
Links:
Rheumatoid Arthritis (National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases)
Periodontal (Gum) Disease (National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research/NIH)
Oral Hygiene (NIDCR)
Dana Orange (Rockefeller University, New York NY)
Robinson Lab (Stanford University, Stanford, CA)
NIH Support: National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases; National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; National Human Genome Research Institute; National Institute of General Medical Sciences; National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences; National Cancer Institute
Encouraging News on Gene Therapy for Hemophilia A
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
About 20,000 people in the U.S. live with hemophilia A. It’s a rare X-linked genetic disorder that affects predominantly males and causes their blood to clot poorly when healing wounds. For some, routine daily activities can turn into painful medical emergencies to stop internal bleeding, all because of changes in a single gene that disables an essential clotting protein.
Now, results of an early-stage clinical trial, published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, demonstrate that gene therapy is within reach to produce the essential clotting factor in people with hemophilia A. The results show that, in most of the 18 adult participants, a refined gene therapy strategy produced lasting expression of factor VIII (FVIII), the missing clotting factor in hemophilia A [1]. In fact, gene therapy helped most participants reduce—or, in some cases, completely eliminate—bleeding events.
Currently, the most-common treatment option for males with hemophilia A is intravenous infusion of FVIII concentrate. Though infused FVIII becomes immediately available in the bloodstream, these treatments aren’t a cure and must be repeated, often weekly or every other day, to prevent or control bleeding.
Gene therapy, however, represents a possible cure for hemophilia A. Earlier clinical trials reported some success using benign adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) as the vector to deliver the therapeutic FVIII gene to cells in the liver, where the clotting protein is made. But after a year, those trial participants had a marked decline in FVIII expression. Follow-up studies then found that the decline continued over time, thought to be at least in part because of an immune response to the AAV vector.
In the new study, an NIH-funded team led by Lindsey George and Katherine High of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania, tested their refined delivery system. High is also currently with Asklepios BioPharmaceutical, Inc., Chapel Hill, NC. (Back in the 1970s, she and I were medical students in the same class at the University of North Carolina.) The study was also supported by Spark Therapeutics, Philadelphia.
Trial participants received a single infusion of the novel recombinant AAV-based gene therapy called SPK-8011. It is specifically designed to produce FVIII expression in the liver. In this phase 1/2 clinical trial, which evaluates the safety and initial efficacy of a treatment, participants received one of four different doses of SPK-8011. Most also received steroids to prevent or treat the presumed counterproductive immune response to the therapy.
The researchers followed participants for a year after the experimental treatment, and all enrolled in a follow-up trial for continued observation. During this time, researchers detected no major safety concerns, though several patients had increases in blood levels of a liver enzyme.
The great news is all participants produced the missing FVIII after gene therapy. Twelve of the 16 participants were followed for more than two years and had no apparent decrease in clotting factor activity. This is especially noteworthy because it offers the first demonstration of multiyear stable and durable FVIII expression in individuals with hemophilia A following gene transfer.
Even more encouraging, the men in the trial had more than a 92 percent reduction in bleeding episodes on average. Before treatment, most of the men had 8.5 bleeding episodes per year. After treatment, those events dropped to an average of less than one per year. However, two study participants lost FVIII expression within a year of treatment, presumably due to an immune response to the therapeutic AAV. This finding shows that, while steroids help, they don’t always prevent loss of a therapeutic gene’s expression.
Overall, the findings suggest that AAV-based gene therapy can lead to the durable production of FVIII over several years and significantly reduce bleeding events. The researchers are now exploring possibly more effective ways to control the immune response to AAV in expansion of this phase 1/2 investigation before pursuing a larger phase 3 trial. They’re continuing to monitor participants closely to establish safety and efficacy in the months and years to come.
On a related note, the recently announced Bespoke Gene Therapy Consortium (BGTC), a partnership between NIH and industry, will expand the refined gene therapy approach demonstrated here to more rare and ultrarare diseases. That should make these latest findings extremely encouraging news for the millions of people born with other rare genetic conditions caused by known alterations to a single gene.
Reference:
[1] Multiyear Factor VIII expression after AAV Gene transfer for Hemophilia A. George LA, Monahan PE, Eyster ME, Sullivan SK, Ragni MV, Croteau SE, Rasko JEJ, Recht M, Samelson-Jones BJ, MacDougall A, Jaworski K, Noble R, Curran M, Kuranda K, Mingozzi F, Chang T, Reape KZ, Anguela XM, High KA. N Engl J Med. 2021 Nov 18;385(21):1961-1973.
Links:
Hemophilia A (National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences/NIH)
FAQ About Rare Diseases (National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences/NIH)
Bespoke Gene Therapy Consortium (BGTC) (NIH)
Accelerating Medicines Partnership® (AMP®) (NIH)
Lindsey George (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia)
Katherine High (University of Pennsylvania)
NIH Support: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Can Blood Thinners Keep Moderately Ill COVID-19 Patients Out of the ICU?
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
One of many troubling complications of infection with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, is its ability to trigger the formation of multiple blood clots, most often in older people but sometimes in younger ones, too. It raises the question of whether and when more aggressive blood thinning treatments might improve outcomes for people hospitalized for COVID-19.
The answer to this question is desperately needed to help guide clinical practice. So, I’m happy to report interim results of three large clinical trials spanning four continents and more than 300 hospitals that are beginning to provide critical evidence on this very question [1]. While it will take time to reach a solid consensus, the findings based on more than 1,000 moderately ill patients suggest that full doses of blood thinners are safe and can help to keep folks hospitalized with COVID-19 from becoming more severely ill and requiring some form of organ support.
The results that are in so far suggest that individuals hospitalized, but not severely ill, with COVID-19 who received a full intravenous dose of the common blood thinner heparin were less likely to need vital organ support, including mechanical ventilation, compared to those who received the lower “prophylactic” subcutaneous dose. It’s important to note that these findings are in contrast to results announced last month indicating that routine use of a full dose of blood thinner for patients already critically ill and in the ICU wasn’t beneficial and may even have been harmful in some cases [2]. This is a compelling example of how critical it is to stratify patients with different severity in clinical trials—what might help one subgroup might be of no benefit, or even harmful, in another.
More study is clearly needed to sort out all the details about when more aggressive blood thinning treatment is warranted. Trial investigators are now working to make the full results available to help inform a doctor’s decisions about how to best to treat their patients hospitalized with COVID-19. It’s worth noting that these trials are overseen by independent review boards, which routinely evaluate the data and are composed of experts in ethics, biostatistics, clinical trials, and blood clotting disorders.
These clinical trials were made possible in part by the Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) public-private partnership and its ACTIV-4 Antithrombotics trials—along with similar initiatives in Canada, Australia, and the European Union. The ACTIV-4 trials are overseen by the NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood institute and funded by Operation Warp Speed.
This ACTIV-4 trial is one of three Phase 3 clinical trials evaluating the safety and effectiveness of blood thinners for patients with COVID-19 [3]. Another ongoing trial is investigating whether blood thinners are beneficial for newly diagnosed COVID-19 patients who do not require hospitalization. There are also plans to explore the use of blood thinners for patients after they’ve been discharged from the hospital following a diagnosis of moderate to severe COVID-19 and to establish more precise methods for identifying which patients with COVID-19 are most at risk for developing life-threatening blood clots.
Meanwhile, research teams are exploring other potentially promising ways to repurpose existing therapeutics and improve COVID-19 outcomes. In fact, the very day that these latest findings on blood thinners were announced, another group at The Montreal Heart Institute, Canada, announced preliminary results of the international COLCORONA trial, testing the use of colchicine—an anti-inflammatory drug widely used to treat gout and other conditions—for patients diagnosed with COVID-19 [4].
Their early findings in treating patients just after a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 suggest that colchicine might reduce the risk of death or hospitalization compared to patients given a placebo. In the more than 4,100 individuals with a proven diagnosis of COVID-19, colchicine significantly reduced hospitalizations by 25 percent, the need for mechanical ventilation by 50 percent, and deaths by 44 percent. Still, the actual numbers of individuals represented by these percentages was small.
Time will tell whether and for which patients colchicine and blood thinners prove most useful in treating COVID-19. For those answers, we’ll have to await the analysis of more data. But the early findings on both treatment strategies come as a welcome reminder that we continue to make progress each day on such critical questions about which existing treatments can be put to work to improve outcomes for people with COVID-19. Together with our efforts to slow the spread of SARS-CoV-2, finding better ways to treat those who do get sick and prevent some of the worst outcomes will help us finally put this terrible pandemic behind us.
References:
[1] Full-dose blood thinners decreased need for life support and improved outcome in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. January 22, 2021.
[2] NIH ACTIV trial of blood thinners pauses enrollment of critically ill COVID-19 patients. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. December 22, 2020.
[3] NIH ACTIV initiative launches adaptive clinical trials of blood-clotting treatments for COVID-19. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. September 10, 2020.
[4] Colchicine reduces the risk of COVID-19-related complications. The Montreal Heart Institute. January 22, 2021.
Links:
COVID-19 Research (NIH)
Combat COVID (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, D.C.)
Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines (ACTIV) (NIH)
NIH Support: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Two Studies Show COVID-19 Antibodies Persist for Months
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
More than 8 million people in the United States have now tested positive for COVID-19. For those who’ve recovered, many wonder if fending off SARS-CoV-2—the coronavirus that causes COVID-19—one time means their immune systems will protect them from reinfection. And, if so, how long will this “acquired immunity” last?
The early data brought hope that acquired immunity was possible. But some subsequent studies have suggested that immune protection might be short-lived. Though more research is needed, the results of two recent studies, published in the journal Science Immunology, support the early data and provide greater insight into the nature of the human immune response to this coronavirus [1,2].
The new findings show that people who survive a COVID-19 infection continue to produce protective antibodies against key parts of the virus for at least three to four months after developing their first symptoms. In contrast, some other antibody types decline more quickly. The findings offer hope that people infected with the virus will have some lasting antibody protection against re-infection, though for how long still remains to be determined.
In one of the two studies, partly funded by NIH, researchers led by Richelle Charles, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, sought a more detailed understanding of antibody responses following infection with SARS-CoV-2. To get a closer look, they enrolled 343 patients, most of whom had severe COVID-19 requiring hospitalization. They examined their antibody responses for up to 122 days after symptoms developed and compared them to antibodies in more than 1,500 blood samples collected before the pandemic began.
The researchers characterized the development of three types of antibodies in the blood samples. The first type was immunoglobulin G (IgG), which has the potential to confer sustained immunity. The second type was immunoglobulin A (IgA), which protects against infection on the body’s mucosal surfaces, such as those found in the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts, and are found in high levels in tears, mucus, and other bodily secretions. The third type is immunoglobulin M (IgM), which the body produces first when fighting an infection.
They found that all three types were present by about 12 days after infection. IgA and IgM antibodies were short-lived against the spike protein that crowns SARS-CoV-2, vanishing within about two months.
The good news is that the longer-lasting IgG antibodies persisted in these same patients for up to four months, which is as long as the researchers were able to look. Levels of those IgG antibodies also served as an indicator for the presence of protective antibodies capable of neutralizing SARS-CoV-2 in the lab. Even better, that ability didn’t decline in the 75 days after the onset of symptoms. While longer-term study is needed, the findings lend support to evidence that protective antibody responses against the novel virus do persist.
The other study came to very similar conclusions. The team, led by Jennifer Gommerman and Anne-Claude Gingras, University of Toronto, Canada, profiled the same three types of antibody responses against the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, They created the profiles using both blood and saliva taken from 439 people, not all of whom required hospitalization, who had developed COVID-19 symptoms from 3 to 115 days prior. The team then compared antibody profiles of the COVID-19 patients to those of people negative for COVID-19.
The researchers found that the antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 were readily detected in blood and saliva. IgG levels peaked about two weeks to one month after infection, and then remained stable for more than three months. Similar to the Boston team, the Canadian group saw IgA and IgM antibody levels drop rapidly.
The findings suggest that antibody tests can serve as an important tool for tracking the spread of SARS-CoV-2 through our communities. Unlike tests for the virus itself, antibody tests provide a means to detect infections that occurred sometime in the past, including those that may have been asymptomatic. The findings from the Canadian team further suggest that tests of IgG antibodies in saliva may be a convenient way to track a person’s acquired immunity to COVID-19.
Because IgA and IgM antibodies decline more quickly, testing for these different antibody types also could help to distinguish between an infection within the last two months and one that more likely occurred even earlier. Such details are important for filling in gaps in our understanding COVID-19 infections and tracking their spread in our communities.
Still, there are rare reports of individuals who survived one bout with COVID-19 and were infected with a different SARS-CoV-2 strain a few weeks later [3]. The infrequency of such reports, however, suggests that acquired immunity after SARS-CoV-2 infection is generally protective.
There remain many open questions, and answering them will require conducting larger studies with greater diversity of COVID-19 survivors. So, I’m pleased to note that the NIH’s National Cancer Institute (NCI) recently launched the NCI Serological Sciences Network for COVID19 (SeroNet), now the nation’s largest coordinated effort to characterize the immune response to COVID-19 [4].
The network was established using funds from an emergency Congressional appropriation of more than $300 million to develop, validate, improve, and implement antibody testing for COVID-19 and related technologies. With help from this network and ongoing research around the world, a clearer picture will emerge of acquired immunity that will help to control future outbreaks of COVID-19.
References:
[1] Persistence and decay of human antibody responses to the receptor binding domain of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in COVID-19 patients. Iyer AS, Jones FK, Nodoushani A, Ryan ET, Harris JB, Charles RC, et al. Sci Immunol. 2020 Oct 8;5(52):eabe0367.
[2] Persistence of serum and saliva antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 spike antigens in COVID-19 patients. Isho B, Abe KT, Zuo M, Durocher Y, McGeer AJ, Gommerman JL, Gingras AC, et al. Sci Immunol. 2020 Oct 8;5(52):eabe5511.
[3] What reinfections mean for COVID-19. Iwasaki A. Lancet Infect Dis, 2020 October 12. [Epub ahead of print]
[4] NIH to launch the Serological Sciences Network for COVID-19, announce grant and contract awardees. National Institutes of Health. 2020 October 8.
Links:
Coronavirus (COVID-19) (NIH)
Charles Lab (Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston)
Gingras Lab (University of Toronto, Canada)
Jennifer Gommerman (University of Toronto, Canada)
NCI Serological Sciences Network for COVID-19 (SeroNet) (National Cancer Institute/NIH)
NIH Support: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; National Institute of General Medical Sciences; National Cancer Institute
Discussing the Long Arc of Discovery with NIH’s Newest Nobelist
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
It’s been a tough year for our whole world because of everything that’s happening as a result of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Yet there are bright spots that still shine through, and this week brought some fantastic news about NIH-supported researchers being named 2020 Nobel Prize Laureates for their pioneering work in two important fields: Chemistry and Physiology or Medicine.
In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, NIH grantee Jennifer A. Doudna, a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, got word that she and Emmanuelle Charpentier, a microbiologist at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Berlin, Germany, had won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing the CRISPR/cas approach to genome editing. Doudna has received continuous NIH funding since 1997, mainly from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and National Human Genome Research Institute.
The CRISPR/cas system, which consists of a short segment of RNA attached to the cas enzyme, provides the ability to make very precise changes in the sequence, or spelling, of the genetic instruction books of humans and other species. If used to make non-heritable edits in relevant tissues, such technology holds enormous potential to treat or even cure a wide range of devastating diseases, including thousands of genetic disorders where the DNA misspelling is precisely known.
Just two days before Doudna learned of her big award, a scientist who’s spent almost his entire career at the NIH campus in Bethesda, MD, received news that he too was getting a Nobel—the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Harvey Alter, a senior scholar in the NIH Clinical Center’s Transfusion Medicine Department, was recognized for his contributions in identifying the potentially deadly hepatitis C virus. He shares this year’s prize with Michael Houghton, now with University of Alberta, Edmonton, and Charles M. Rice, The Rockefeller University, New York, who’s received continuous NIH funding since 1987, mainly from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
In a long arc of discovery rooted in basic, translational, and clinical research that spanned several decades, Alter and his colleagues doggedly pursued biological clues that at first led to tests, then life-saving treatments, and, today, the very real hope of eradicating the global health threat posed by hepatitis C infections.
We at NIH are particularly proud of the fact that Alter is the sixth Nobel Prize winner—and the first in 26 years—to have done the entirety of his award-winning research in our Intramural Research Program. So, I jumped at the opportunity to talk with Harvey on NIH’s Facebook Live and Twitter chats just hours after he got the good news on Monday. Here’s a condensed version of our conversation, which took place on the NIH campus, but at a safe physical distance to minimize the risk of COVID-19 spread.
Collins: Harvey, let me start off by asking, how did you find out you’d won the Nobel Prize?
Alter: At 4:15 this morning. I was asleep and heard the telephone ringing. I ignored it. Five minutes later, I got another call. Now, I’m getting kind of perturbed. But I ignored it, thinking the call must be some kind of solicitation. Then, the phone rang a third time. I answered it, prepared to tell the person on the other end not to call me anymore. I heard a man’s voice say, “I’m the Secretary General of the Nobel Prize, calling you from Stockholm.” At that point, I just froze.
Collins: Did you think it might be a hoax?
Alter: No, I didn’t think it was a hoax. But I wasn’t expecting to win the prize. I knew about three years ago that I’d been on a Nobel list. But it didn’t happen, and I just forgot about it. Truthfully, I didn’t know that today was the day that the announcement was being made. The news came as a complete shock.
Collins: Please say a few words about viral hepatitis. What is it?
Alter: Sure. Viral hepatitis is an infection of the liver that causes inflammation and can lead to scarring, or cirrhosis. Early in my career, two viruses were known to cause the disease. One was the hepatitis A virus. You got it from consuming contaminated water or food. The second was the hepatitis B virus, which has a blood-borne transmission, typically from blood transfusions. In the 1970s, we realized that some other agent was causing most of the hepatitis from blood transfusions. Since it wasn’t A and it wasn’t B, we cleverly decided to call it: non-A, non-B. We did that because we hadn’t yet proven that the causative agent was a virus.
Collins: So, even though you screened donor units for the hepatitis B virus to eliminate tainted blood, people were still getting hepatitis from blood transfusions. How did you go about trying to solve this mystery?
Alter: The main thing was to follow patients prospectively, meaning forward in time. We drew a blood sample before they were transfused, and then serially afterwards. We saved those samples and also the donor samples to compare them. Using a liver function test, we found that 30 percent of patients who had open heart surgery at NIH prior to 1970 developed liver abnormalities indicative of hepatitis. That’s 1 in 3 people.
We then looked for the reasons. We found the main one was our source of blood. We were buying blood, which was then in short supply, from commercial laboratories. It turned out that their paid donors were engaging in high-risk behaviors [Note: like IV drug users sharing hypodermic needles]. We immediately stopped using these laboratories, and, through various other measures, we got the rate down to around 4 percent in 1987.
That’s when Michael Houghton, then at Chiron Corp. and a co-recipient of this year’s prize, cloned the virus. Think about it, he and his colleagues looked at 6 million clones and found just one that reacted with the convalescent serum of a patient with non-A, non-B. In other words, having contracted the virus, the patient already made antibodies against it that were present in the serum. If that one clone came from the virus, the antibodies in the serum would recognize it. They did, and Chiron then developed an assay to detect antibodies to the virus.
Collins: And that’s when they contacted you.
Alter: Yes, they wanted to use our panel of patient blood samples that had fooled a lot of people who claimed to have developed a non-A, non-B assay. Nobody else had “broken” this panel, but the Chiron Corp. did. We found that every case of non-A, non-B was really hepatitis C, the agent that they had cloned. Hepatitis C was the missing piece. As far as we could tell, there were no other agents beside hepatitis B and C that would result in transfusion transmission of the disease.
Collins: This story is clearly one of persistence. So, say something about persistence as an important characteristic of a scientist. You’re a great example of someone who was always looking out for opportunities that might not have seemed so promising at first.
Alter: I first learned persistence from Dr. Baruch Blumberg, my first NIH mentor who discovered the hepatitis B virus in 1967. [Note: Other NIH researchers identified the hepatitis A virus in 1977] The discovery started when we found this “Australian antigen,” a molecular structure that the immune system recognizes as foreign and attacks. It was a serendipitous finding that could have been easily just dropped. But he just kept at it, kept at it, kept at it. He had this famous wall where he diagrammed his hypotheses with all the contingencies if one worked or failed. Then, all of a sudden, the antigen was associated with hepatitis B. It became the basis of the hepatitis B vaccine, which is highly effective and used throughout the world. Dr. Blumberg won the Nobel Prize for his work on the hepatitis B virus in 1976.
Collins: Sometimes people look at NIH and ask why we don’t focus all of our efforts on curing a particular disease. I keep answering, ‘Wait a moment, we don’t know enough to know how to do that.’ What’s the balance that we ought to be seeking between basic research and clinical applications?
Alter: There is this tendency now to pursue highly directed research to solve a problem. That’s certainly how biopharma works. They want a payoff. The NIH is different. It’s a place where you can pursue your scientific interests, wherever they lead. The NIH leadership understands that the details of a problem often aren’t obvious at first. Researchers need to be allowed to observe things and then to pursue their leads as far as possible, with the understanding that not everything will work out. I think it’s very important to keep this basic research component in parallel with the more clinical applications. In the case of hepatitis C, it started as a clinical problem that led to a basic research investigation, which led back to a clinical problem. It was bedside-to-bench-to-bedside.
Collins: Are people still getting infected with hepatitis C?
Alter: Yes, hepatitis C remains a global problem. Seventy million people have contracted the virus, though the majority are generally asymptomatic, meaning they don’t get sick from it. Instead, they carry around the virus for decades without knowing it. That’s because the hepatitis C virus likes to persist, and our immune system doesn’t seem to be able to get rid of it easily.
However, some of those infected will have bad outcomes, such as cirrhosis or cancer of the liver. But there’s no way of knowing who will and who won’t get sick over time. The trick now is to identify people when they’re asymptomatic and without obvious disease.
That involves testing. We’re in a unique position with hepatitis C, where we have great tests that are highly sensitive and very specific to the virus. We also have great treatments. We can cure everybody who is tested and found to be positive.
Collins: People may be surprised to hear that. Here is a chronic viral illness, for which we actually have a cure. That’s come along fairly recently. Say a bit more about that—it’s such a great story of success.
Alter: For many years, the only treatment for hepatitis C was interferon, a very difficult treatment that initially had only about a 6 percent cure rate. With further progress, it got up to around 50 percent. But the big breakthrough came in the late 1990s when Gilead Corp., having the sequenced genome of the hepatitis C virus, deduced what it needs to replicate. If we know what it needs and we interfere with that, we can stop the replication. Gilead came out with a blockbuster drug that, now in combination with another drug, aims at two different sites on the virus and cures at least 98 percent of people. It’s an oral therapy taken for only 12 weeks, sometimes as little as 8 weeks, and with virtually no side-effects. It’s like a miracle drug.
Collins: What would you say to somebody who is thinking about becoming a scientist? How do you pick an area of research that will be right for you?
Alter: It’s a tough question. Medical research is very difficult, but there’s nothing more rewarding than doing something for patients and to see a good outcome like we had with hepatitis C.
The best path forward is to work for somebody who’s already an established investigator and a good teacher. Work in his or her lab for a few years and get involved in a project. I’ve learned not get into a lot of projects. Get into something where you can become the expert and pursue it.
The other thing is to collaborate. There’s no way that one person can do everything these days. You need too much technology and lots of different areas of expertise.
Collins: You took on a high-risk project in which you didn’t know that you’d find the answer. What’s the right balance between a project that you know will be productive, and something that might be risky, but, boy, if it works, could be transformative? How did you decide which of those paths to go?
Alter: I don’t think I decided. I just went! But there were interim rewards. Finding that the paid donors were bad was a reward and it had a big impact. And the different donor testing, decreasing the amount of blood [transfused], there were all kinds of steps along the way that gave you a reward. Now, did I think that there would be a treatment, an eradication of post-transfusion hepatitis at the end of my line? No, I didn’t.
And it wouldn’t have happened if it was only me. I just got the ball rolling. But it needed Houghton’s group. It needed the technology of Charlie Rice, a co-recipient of this year’s Nobel Prize. It needed joint company involvement. So, it required massive cooperation, and I have to say that here at NIH, Bob Purcell did most of the really basic work in his lab. Patrizia Farci, my closest collaborator, does things that I can’t do. You just need people who have a different expertise.
Collins: Harvey, it’s been maybe six hours since you found out that you won the Nobel Prize. How are you going to spend the rest of your day?
Alter: Well, I have to tell you a story that just happened. We had a press conference earlier today at NIH. Afterwards, I wanted to return to my NIH office and the easiest route was through the parking garage across the street from where we held the press conference. When I entered the garage, a security guard said, “You can’t come in, you haven’t been screened for COVID.” I assured him that I had been screened when I drove onto the NIH campus. He repeated that I had to go around to the front of the building to get screened.
Finally, I said to him, “Would it make any difference if I told you that I won the Nobel Prize today?” He replied, ‘That’s nice, but you must go around to the front of the building.’” So, winning the Nobel doesn’t give you immediate rewards!
Collins: Let me find that security guard and give him a bonus for doing a good job. Well, Harvey, will there be that trip to Stockholm coming up in December?
Alter: Not this year. I’ve heard that they will invite us to Stockholm next year to receive the award. But there’s going to be something in the US. I don’t know what it will be. I’ll invite you.
Collins: I will be glad to take part in the celebration. Well, Harvey, I really want to thank you for taking some time on this special day to reflect on your career and how the Nobel Committee came calling at 4:30 this morning. We’re really proud of you!
Alter: Thank you.
Links:
Hepatitis C (National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases/NIH)
“The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice for the discovery of Hepatitis C virus,” Nobel Prize announcement, October 5,2020.
Harvey Alter (Clinical Center/NIH)
“The Road Not Taken, or How I Learned to Love the Liver: A Personal Perspective on Hepatitis History” Alter HJ, Hepatology. 2014 Jan;59(1):4-12.
“Reflections on the History of HCV: A Posthumous Examination.” Alter HJ, Farci P, Bukh J, Purcell RH. Clinical Liver Disease, 15:1, Feb 2020.
“Is Elimination of Hepatitis B and C a Pipe Dream or Reality?” Alter HJ, Chisari FV. Gastroenterology. 2019 Jan;156(2):294-296.
Michael Houghton (University of Alberta, Edmonton)
Charles Rice (The Rockefeller University, New York)
What is genome editing? (National Human Genome Research Institute/NIH)
Jennifer Doudna (University of California, Berkeley)
Emmanuelle Charpentier (Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Berlin, Germany)
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