Questions and AnswersDr. Bhagirath Singh

How did you get involved in infection research? What fascinated you about the subject?

My interest in infection research started with looking at autoimmune diseases such as diabetes. Almost twenty years ago we found a link between infection and protection from this disease - a very intriguing finding, because people had always talked about the bad effects of infection, but we found that infection can also have good effects.

Why does infection have good effects? How does this work?

The immune system is involved in autoimmune diseases. We were working on inducing diabetes experimentally in animal models, and what we found was protection against diabetes. This was very surprising. It turns out that if you don’t get exposed to infection, your body’s immune system is not properly regulated and can cause autoimmune diseases. Roughly 95 percent of people have no autoimmune diseases, but in approximately 5 percent of individuals, genetic factors can cause T lymphocytes – the white blood cells of the immune system that are capable of destroying tissue – to predominate, leading to autoimmune diseases. What is the mechanism by which infection prevents autoimmune diseases? What are the factors that might eventually lead to the development of a vaccine? These are the questions we’re now addressing in our research.

How far have you gone in your research? Will we have vaccine against diabetes one day?
It is clear that our approach - to change the balance in people who have genetic factors predisposing them to autoimmune disease - is very feasible. We have a lot of data showing that although the disease cannot be prevented, if certain factors are manipulated it can be delayed. Several clinical trials support this conclusion. The problem is that animal research cannot always be translated 100% into human research; we have to understand the mechanism and translate it into a human vaccine to prevent autoimmunity.

You are the director of the Canadian Institute of Infection and Immunity. Do you still have time for your own research?
I have a lab with about ten people, and I still work in research. The Institute is very large; it is an institute of the federal government with almost 2000 employees. We are working in all areas of infection and immunity including HIV, transplantation and autoimmune disease. My role as the director is to provide funding for all this research.

This is really very different from the work you’re doing in the lab....
Yes, it is. It is very political, and I also have to deal with a lot of bureaucracy; this takes a great deal of time and a lot of traveling. Before I took this job in 2001, I was chair of a department for about 10 years; in that job there were students to manage and postdocs to work with. I also did a lot of work with the US National Institutes of Health. This enabled me to build relationships and networks and to get a better understanding of how institutional systems work in research. My current job gives me the opportunity to collaborate with people both within and outside Canada. We have develop programs with several research institutes, which is really nice; we can bring researchers together and make a real difference with our work, which is also a great feeling.

Was there a turning point in your career?
I was in England doing chemistry, and when we decided to move to Canada it involved a total departure from my field. My Professor in England told me, “once you leave chemistry, you will never come back“. And he was totally right. It was definitely a turning point because I went from chemistry to immunology - which are worlds apart. But what it did was to challenge me to think outside the box. In 1970 immunology was a new science. People were starting to understand how the immune system works, and I was at the right place to learn a new discipline and apply my background in chemistry to immunology.

What was your biggest finding?
There are always surprises in science – I already mentioned our research in autoimmunity. Using my background in chemistry, we could demonstrate in 1980 that a small peptide can induce the same immune response as a big protein. Before this time people thought that the immune system responds only to a big molecule or a whole bacterium, but we showed that a small molecule or a fragment can produce the same response. This was the start of a new thinking in immunology, and it completely changed the way we approach vaccine production.

What are the biggest challenges for infection research in the future?
We are facing a very uncertain future. Nature can always change direction, producing the next threat we have to respond to. For example, food-borne infections are becoming more of a problem due to climate change. And we still don’t know why some diseases are more prevalent than others in certain regions. There are constantly surprises in store – just take influenza H1N1. Nature is always a step ahead of us, so there is a lot to do!

But the biggest challenge is to change the way we practice science. There is a lot of competition, which can be good; through striving to make their own impact, individuals also contribute a lot to common knowledge. But the nature of science is changing. We have to realize that no one can do everything by himself, a single person can’t change the world. The achievements in science should be collective ones.

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