LSIPR 50 2016: Martin Blaser and Helen Hobbs
Name: Martin Blaser
Organisation: Human Microbiome Program
Position: Director
Martin Blaser works at the Human Microbiome Program at New York University (NYU). He has studied bacteria in human disease for over 30 years and has written about the subject in national newspapers including The New Yorker and The Washington Post.
His work in the Human Microbiome Program at NYU focuses on bacteria that colonise the human body. He has extensively studied the campylobacter and helicobacter species that live in the mucus layer overlying the mucosal epithelium of mammals including humans. The program’s continuing work focuses on obesity and type one and two diabetes, as well as asthma, psoriasis and skin infections.
"19.1% of children in year six were obese and a further 14.2% were overweight."
In June 2014, Blaser wrote an article for The Guardian in which he discussed the role of antibiotics in destroying the body’s natural microbes. He explained that “fewer than five of every thousand infants in Britain are expected to die before the age of one”, which is in contrast to 1850, when four in ten babies in England died before their first birthday.
He added however that despite improved sanitation, vaccinations, clean drinking water, pasteurised milk, modern medical procedures and 70 years of antibiotics, modern children appear to be “getting sicker”. He said that 21st century children appear to be suffering “modern plagues” which include obesity, hay fever, asthma, food allergies, coeliac disease and eczema.
The most alarming and increasing problem is childhood obesity, according to the National Child Measurement Programme, which is run by the UK government’s Public Health England agency. Its figures for childhood obesity for 2014 to 2015 show that 19.1% of children in year six (aged ten to 11) were obese and a further 14.2% were overweight.
Along with food allergies, asthma and autoimmune diseases, modern children are facing health problems compared to a generation before them. “These disorders suggest that our children are experiencing levels of immune dysfunction never seen before,” Blaser wrote.
Name: Helen Hobbs
Organisation: University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Centre
Position: Professor
It’s described as ‘the Oscars of the science field’. When in November 2015 Helen Hobbs scooped up the $3 million Breakthrough Prize (for scientific advancements) established by Google chief executive Sergey Brin and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, just two months after collecting the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize (biomedical research), you could be forgiven for thinking that she had swept the board for all prizes in the science field.
But it was arguably the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the Praluent (alirocumab) and Repatha (evolocumab) drugs that was her biggest award yet after years of research. Both drugs address heart and blood problems associated with high cholesterol.
Such drugs, however, may not have reached the light of the day if Hobbs and her professional partner Jonathan Cohen had not identified how gene mutations prevented the development of the production of the PCSK9 protein. The mutation is more common in African-Americans and results in reduced levels of lipoprotein in an individual’s blood stream.
"you could be forgiven for thinking that she had swept the board for all prizes in the science field."
In July 2015, the FDA approved Sanofi’s application for the first PCSK9 inhibitor drug, Praluent injection. Praluent is used to treat adults with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolaemia or clinical atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. The drug is available in 75mg and 150mg doses.
A month later, the FDA approved Repatha (evolocumab) for marketing by Amgen. The drug is an antibody and tackles the PCSK9 protein. It is authorised to be used in addition to statin therapy in adults for reducing their low-density lipoprotein cholesterol.
