After millions of years of evolution, tapeworms have gotten pretty good at one thing: Limiting the damage they do to their hosts. Now, some University of Calgary students are hoping to learn a thing or two from these creatures in hopes of battling autoimmune diseases.
Parker Volk, a UCalgary PhD student originally from Victoria, is studying rat tapeworms, or Hymenolepis diminuta, because of their innate ability to calm their hosts’ immune system. His findings have led him all the way to Washington, D.C., to compete internationally.
“Viruses and bacteria, a lot of those infectious agents that cause disease, they will just infect you. They’ll replicate, they’ll try to take over your body, like the flu virus will show up, start infecting your cells, tell the cells to make more viruses, and that’ll just keep going until your immune system recognizes the problem, then expels the virus,” Volk told LWC.
“Worms are very different.”
Unlike viruses, parasitic worms are visible to the naked eye and aim to establish long-term infection in their host. Because a human’s immune system is very effective, if the worms are not careful, it will detect the worms and flush them out.
So they can keep feeding off of their host, parasitic worms do not want to be discovered, and take minimal nutrients, and can even calm the host’s immune system.
This principle can be translated to battling autoimmune diseases.
“The idea behind using worms to treat autoimmune diseases is, can we take a more relaxed worm, or a worm that can temporarily establish itself in the human host, but then get removed by your immune system, so it’s not there for too long and can’t cause much damage, can we use that kind of worm that will calm down the immune system, subvert the immune system and subvert that inflammation,” Volk said.
“Alternatively, can we take something the worm is producing that it uses to control your immune system, put that into somebody with Crohn’s (disease) or some kind of inflammatory disease and use it on the inflammation.”
Early in the research, Volk and the team have been focused on the worm’s reaction with a part of the cell called macrophages. Thus far, when mixing different variations of the worm and the macrophages in a culture dish, the worms have reduced the inflammatory response in the macrophages.
From dish to clinic and international competition
Admittedly, Volk’s research is far from any real-world clinical trials.
“We’re really a long way from getting into the clinic or some kind of human studies, and even some of the animal work we’re working on, we’re slowly getting into that. It’s going to take a while,” he said.
The idea of treating inflammation and autoimmune diseases with worms dates back around 25 years and has yielded mixed results in the past.
“It all works very well in animal models and animal models of things like colitis, but when you take it into the clinic, there’s been clinical trials where they’ve given certain less dangerous worms, or worms that are only in your body part way for a short period of time and the clinical results in people is really hit or miss,” he said.
A big part of the recent debate has been the use of live worms for testing. The field is now shifting towards using worm products, things like molecules, substances, or biological materials that parasitic worms naturally produce and release inside their host, rather than the worms themselves, something that is easier to swallow, according to Volk.
“Pun intended,” he said.
Sooner than any live trials, Volk will be presenting his findings in Washington, D.C., this weekend through his Three Minute Thesis, a condensed, three-minute summary of his research.
“I’ve just competed at the national, Canadian National Three Minute Thesis showcase, where I won first place, and now myself and our second place winner from that showcase are going to the North American finals,” he said.
“The competition’s on Saturday, and we’ll see what happens, competing against, I believe, eight American contestants and two Mexican contestants.”
His Canadian success was not easy though, including a mix-up at Western regionals.
“For the University of Calgary finals, we were given a handheld mic to hold, so we would have one hand free to gesture and do all that. At Western regionals, we were given a wireless mic,” he said.
“It was like, ‘oh, no, now I’ve got two hands. What am I going to do with my other hand while I talk?’”
