Chapter 13

“This year’s Nobel Prize Laureate, Dr. Betty Caxin, was born in La Jolla, California twenty-nine years ago. From an early age, she was drawn to scientific inquiries. Self-described as ‘cursed with a literal mind’, she dabbled in many things before setting her eyes on genetic engineering,” the Provost of Karolinska Institute announced. “Today we are here to acknowledge and celebrate the fundamental discovery Dr. Caxin has made in immunotherapy. It is an honor and a privilege to convey to you on behalf of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences our warmest congratulations”

“Thank you and the members of the selection committee and Nobel Assembly,” Betty opened with introductory credits and took a deep breath before continuing with her lecture.

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“Our immune system is more powerful than most people realize, but its extraordinary power does not extend to linguistic prowess. What I mean by that is the soldier cells of immunity, cannot always distinguish friends from foes. I often imagined the role of our immune cells as secret service agents who are tasked with deciphering the semantics of alien languages for time-sensitive missions. And in this analogy, our conventional treatment method has been training agents to speak specific languages.

“[Her] pioneering research was not about teaching our immune system languages or dialects per se. Instead, she envisioned programming our immune cells to become more proficient in communication in general. ‘Instead of making keys, I’ll teach our immune system to pick locks.’ [She] used to say. If our immune system can better comprehend pathogens by ten percent, this could mean life-saving treatments for millions of people.”

Betty explained how myriad gene mutations, genome instability, and relapses often caused disease-specific drugs or therapies to fall short of expectations. She then described the techniques she used to modify the human immune system.

The Inspiration Behind This Text

I attended the symposium led by Dr. James Allison in Houston with skepticism. After all, immunotherapy has been around for more than a century, and I thought it was more hype than substance. However, I believe its true potency will be unleashed in the era of genome editing. His work on stimulating the inherent ability of our immune system to attack tumor cells inspired me to write about Betty’s seminal work on enhancing the human immune system.