Luke ONeill - Keep Calm and Trust the Science: An Extraordinary Year in the Life of an Immunologist

KEEP
CALM

AND TRUST

THE
SCIENCE

AN EXTRAORDINARY YEAR IN
THE LIFE OF AN IMMUNOLOGIST

PROFESSOR

LUKE ONEILL

Gill Books

To all the scientists working on COVID-19,
whose work will finally release us
from the pandemic.

Contents

INTRODUCTION

At the beginning of 2020 things were looking really good for me. Id been a research scientist from 1985, when I did a research project on Crohns disease. I then trained as a scientist in the UK, continuing to work on inflammatory diseases, moving into rheumatoid arthritis. Finally, I established my own lab in Trinity College Dublin and, with my team, made some interesting discoveries about the immune system, and how it goes wrong in various diseases. Id published lots of papers, and even won some awards, including becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society in the UK. Having FRS after your name makes you something of a Jedi knight, although as one friend told me at the time, it stands for Former Research Scientist.

So the science was going well, and that had allowed me to do two other things that give me great satisfaction and pleasure: communicating science and turning scientific discovery into new treatments for patients.

I became an academic because I like teaching. Id been doing that for the general public too. Id had a weekly slot with Pat Kenny on Newstalk radio for a few years. I had written two columns for the Sunday Independent, with a promise of more to come. I had done a bit of TV, including making a documentary on RT about the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrdinger. He had worked in Dublin and given his famous What Is Life? lectures in 1943, which sparked the revolution in biology that led to the structure of DNA being solved, explaining how genetics works. Id loved all that.

In December 2019 Id been asked to help with a Prime Time item on synthetic meat and had almost finished writing my second science book for a lay audience named, to my great joy Never Mind the B#ll*cks, Heres the Science. Id already published Humanology, about the science of being human, and a science book for children called The Great Irish Science Book, both of which had done well. Id grown to love all of it the radio, a bit of TV and the books because I want to communicate science to as many as I can reach.

In early 2020 we were also making advances with new medicines, begun in my lab, for patients with serious diseases such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons. The company I had co-founded, Inflazome, was attracting interest from a couple of big pharmaceuticals and I thought it possible that one might offer to buy us. This was an especial thrill. Even though I had published lots of papers, I wanted my discoveries to ultimately help patients, and that was becoming an increasing possibility. Id failed in that before with a company called Opsona, so there were no guarantees; but it was looking more and more likely.

All of this is what I thought I would be doing with my science in 2020: generating data, benefiting patients and hopefully having fun along the way. It was going to be a special year.

I was also becoming aware of a new coronavirus. And so I decided to keep a diary, something I hadnt done since I was a teenager. Every night, usually well after midnight, like a 21st-century Samuel Pepys, I would record what had happened during the day. When everyone else was in bed asleep, Id be working.

Yet I never imagined that, like Pepys, Id be writing about a plague.

JANUARY 2020

THURSDAY 16 JANUARY

Woke up in the Pickwick Hotel, San Francisco. Saw the headline: Chinese respiratory illness claims first life. So theres this new virus in China. Intriguing, but nothing to worry about. It could be like SARS.

Went for a delicious steak dinner with Jeremy, Angus and Thomas, my Inflazome colleagues. Too much red wine, but we deserved it. Spent the last four days trying to interest all the big pharmaceutical companies in us. We have a drug that might treat Parkinsons, Alzheimers, ulcerative colitis, asthma, heart disease, you name it. And its not snake oil. Its an NLRP3 inhibitor, so there. NLRP3 is a really important inflammatory protein that goes wrong in so many diseases, and we might have found a great way to stop it.

Damp and cold outside. Loads of meetings. All the drug companies here as usual and we made our pitches again. Several are interested in us, which is great. Good to have competition. But Roche seem especially keen. They sent 20 people to meet us. We sat on one side of the table, and all 20 sat on the other side in a huge big line, poker face after poker face.

The latest on this Wuhan virus, though, is that it has killed someone. The Chinese dont seem too worried because they think it just passes from animals to humans. No evidence yet for human-to-human transmission. But they are watching things closely.

I avoid virologists at conferences as they always bang on about the risk of a global pandemic. Fun-crushers! Looked into it a bit. On 31 December the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission put information on its website saying there was a pneumonia outbreak in the city of unknown aetiology. Reuters picked up on it. The origin was likely to be Huanan seafood wholesale market: it had been heavily disinfected and stallholders were all told to wear masks. Hong Kong responded by saying they would put anyone coming from Wuhan into a 14-day quarantine. They had SARS before and dont want a repeat.

The same day the Shanghai Centre for Disease Control said they were able to contain it and no human-to-human transmission had been reported. Thats enough of that.

Today I have to fact check more chapters in my new book, Never Mind the B#ll*cks, Heres the Science. So pleased with myself that I came up with the title, which came to me on a flaming pie over Christmas.

Right, up and at em! First a big American breakfast in the Pickwicks restaurant. It has lots of drawings of Dickenss Pickwick Papers on the wall. I like this hotel: old fashioned and comfortable and my desk at the window has a good view of downtown San Francisco. All the cars rushing by, each with people with their own separate cares.

Ill do the chapter on vaccines today.

SATURDAY 18 JANUARY

About to take off. Long haul to London and then Dublin. Its been a good week. We met them all GSK, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Takeda, BMS, Novo Nordisk, Sanofi. All the big boys. Literally boys. I noted how many women were in the meetings 10 per cent, Id say. Why is that? I much prefer meetings with a mix. All the men look and dress like me. Jacket and trousers. Shirt but no tie. Checking our phones every five minutes.

Heard from Eithne of Prime Time that the clip I sent of me eating an Impossible Burger in Burger King in San Francisco, for her piece on the future of meat, worked well. She had interviewed me on 3 January in my lab for a piece shes doing on lab-made meat and then asked me to eat one in Burger King. Me and Jeremy had fun filming it a welcome break from all the meetings. It will be the first time on Prime Time for me delighted Eithne asked me and it was great working with her. I suspect this will be my one and only time on Prime Time, so I thought: why not?

Settling into my nine-hour flight, but its OK no one can get at me! I pull the blanket over me as the US and the Atlantic Ocean rush beneath me. A sense that Im going somewhere. Reflected a bit on Inflazome. It began with the discovery in my lab in Trinity of a drug that blocked the inflammatory protein NLRP3. We knew it might be useful for many diseases. That led to a conversation at a conference in Australia with Matt Cooper, a chemist working in the University of Queensland. Between us we hatched the plan, with backing from Manus Rogan of Fountain Healthcare Partners, who invests in new companies. Matts lab improved on the initial drug (which had been found by Pfizer) and we tested what he made. Now we have some very interesting ones that we think could really work. We need a big pharmaceutical company to take them on now, and get them to patients. Imagine that. What a dream that would be. And it might well happen this year.