From helping humans live longer and hacking our performance, to repairing the body and understanding the brain, WIRED Health will hear from the innovators transforming this critical sector. Read all of our WIRED Health coverage here.
Alejandro Madrigal has published more than 250 scientific papers from the forefront of cancer research. But his last one is different: it's his first novel. Dias de Rabias depicts the philosophical journey of a young doctor fighting for his patient's life, a boy supposedly suffering from rabies, in a small Mexican town riddled by corruption. "It's a story about the ways you can make a difference by being there," says Madrigal, who will be speaking at WIRED Health on April 29. An internationally respected specialist in the fields of stem cell transplantation, histocompatibility and immunogenetics, Madrigal has led innovative research in bone marrow transplantation. And now he's working on a treatment that could dramatically increase the number of people who beat leukaemia.
In Spanish, he explains, "rabias" both means rabies disease and a state of rage, of being out of control and needing a change. The efforts of the anonymous young doctor, who is also called "the poet," reflect this change. He quotes Octavio Paz: "The most dangerous communities are the ones who are afraid of making a change."
Although fictional, the hero is Madrigal's alter ego: a doctor and a poet, with a fierce passion for medicine and a hope to change lives. "The only patients I have lost, I have lost them to cancer," says Madrigal. The idealist has declared cancer his "main enemy" and given himself "a mission" to fight it.
His talk at WIRED Health, "How we can all help to cure leukaemia," will reflect his trust in what he calls the maximum level of human altruism: our capacity of giving to save a life by becoming a donor. The focus of his latest research is how genetically selected cells could soon eliminate tumours without transplantation.
Just like his younger, fictional avatar, Alejandro Madrigal is from Mexico. Born in Mexico City in November 1953, he studied medicine at Mexico's Universidad Nacional Autónoma before specialising in immunology and cancer. His university and research credentials include Harvard, University College London, Oxford and Stanford. Since 1993, he has been working as scientific director for the Anthony Nolan Research Institute, a UK charity for patients with leukaemia who need a bone marrow transplantation.
Research to cure leukaemia has advanced a lot since he started studying medicine, he says, but bone marrow transplantation, or haematopoietic stem cell transplantation, is still the only treatment that can cure leukaemia. And it's not without risks: from inflammation to graft-to-host disease, only 60 per cent of patients who have been transplanted survive. "We should increase it to 90 or 100 percent," he says. "So I am working to develop genetic strategies to optimise the donor selection." Matching the good donor with the patient helps to improve the outcome of the transplantation substantially, says Madrigal.
Madrigal's current research, the EU-funded T-control project, focuses on "educating" cord blood cells to fight cancer cells, by selecting the cells that can control inflammation and prevent graft-to-host disease. "In a cord blood unit, some cells, called regulatory T-cells, control the hyper reaction of the other cells and insure the proper balancing of body," he explains. "We isolate them to give them to the patient who lack them." Madrigal has led this international immunotherapy research project since 2014. It will soon enter the testing phase. "It's a global effort," he says.
Madrigal's effort is a global one, too. The more donors available, the better chance of a perfect match, and therefore of success of transplant. Hence the importance of donor registries, a concept first developed by the Anthony Nolan Trust, that Madrigal has helped expand worldwide. "The majority of the registries are from Caucasian countries," he explains.
"I have travelled to many countries in Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America countries to help develop their own registries." He also teaches international PhD students at UCL. "They're the ones who will have the opportunity to treat leukaemia without transplant. If we can specifically target tumour cells, it will become an obsolete procedure."
Madrigal doesn't sleep much. "I also like painting, and I own a telescope. I am a sort of Renaissance man," he says. At dawn, before starting his day, he works on his novels. Dias de Rabias, he says, is an ode to Camus' The Plague, a book that resonates with him. "My doctor, just like the one in The Plague, wonders if he's doing the right thing, if he should give up. But he has to keep doing it. It's his mission. And that's the beauty of our society: when we commit to make a change, we have to do very little to make a difference."
WIRED Health 2016 will take place on 29 April in London. From helping humans live longer and hacking our performance, to repairing the body and understanding the brain, WIRED Health will hear from the innovators transforming this critical sector.
Now in its third year, tickets are still available for this incredibly popular one-day event. Discounts are available for NHS and government employees and for people working for health sector startups.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
