OMRF Stories - Spring 2007 - Live, Long and Prosper

Growing up, Judith James rarely passed up an episode of Star Trek. From her living room in Pond Creek, she sat transfixed as Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise boldly went where no man had gone before. For the future physician and medical researcher, the workings of the ship’s doctor, Leonard “Bones” McCoy, held a special interest.

“I was always intrigued when Dr. McCoy scanned his fellow shipmates with a tricorder,” says James. On the show, which was set in the 23rd century, the—fictional—handheld device allowed McCoy to scan individuals (human or alien) to diagnose illness. The medical tricorder even predicted when an apparently healthy being eventually would fall prey to disease.

“I loved the idea that you could tell people they were going to get sick before it happened,” says James. “But I thought that concept was completely in outer space, far beyond anything that would happen in my own lifetime.”

Turns out that future may not be so far away. And the one-time Trekkie is at the forefront of transforming yesterday’s science fiction into today’s reality.

James, who now holds the Lou C. Kerr Chair in Biomedical Research at OMRF, has pioneered the study of how molecules called autoantibodies can predict whether a healthy person will one day develop an autoimmune disease, a broad category of disorders that encompasses conditions such as lupus, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and type I diabetes. A simple blood test can detect the presence (or absence) of autoantibodies.

In a groundbreaking study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, James and fellow OMRF researchers Drs. John Harley and Hal Scofield showed that in patients who ultimately developed lupus, certain autoantibodies appeared in their blood years before they developed symptoms. That work, which was the product of almost two decades of research, represented a crucial milestone in the emerging field of predicting disease.

Using autoantibodies as a sort of diagnostic crystal ball, doctors may soon be able to tell seemingly healthy people that they will develop lupus or other autoimmune diseases. Yet this work holds the potential to do more than see the future. “With this kind of information,” says James, “we also could begin fighting disease before symptoms ever appear.”

It’s a mind-boggling concept, the idea of treating a disease before it’s done any harm. Perhaps those treatments could delay disease onset. Perhaps they also could lessen the brunt of the illness when it eventually reared its head. Or maybe, just maybe, therapy could prevent that disease altogether.

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