Mark Davis, PhD, illuminates the “black box” of the human immune system
“Flexible funding gives us the freedom to innovate. One idea we’re pursuing is an easy-to-use blood test patients can use to see how their immune systems are doing.”
- Mark Davis, PhD
Why do kids eat dirt? Mark Davis may know why. The human immune system is an incredibly complex learning machine. It “remembers” all the pathogens you encounter so it can fight them off in the future. Mark suspects the urge to make (and eat) mud pies might have evolved to train our immune systems to meet the challenges of life in a messy world.
Despite the central role it plays in our health, human immunity is so complex that most of its inner workings are still a mystery. Plus, much of our understanding is based on a mouse model, and while laboratory mice have served us well in our efforts to understand the basic principles of immunity, they aren’t very much like us. Bred to be genetically similar, they live their entire lives in sterile, controlled environments.
That’s a far cry from how we were raised, no matter how spotless our parents kept the house. We’re exposed to thousands of germs every day of our lives. We’re also genetically diverse. Which begs the question: how much can we really learn about human immunity from mice?
Mark thinks we should look to ourselves for answers. He calls his approach “immunity taught by humans,” and with technology developed here at Stanford, he and his team are digging into human immunity like no one ever has before.
At the Stanford Human Immune Monitoring Center (HIMC), Mark and his team can take more than 50,000 different measurements from a single blood sample – more than a hundred times the information that shows up in a typical blood panel. By casting such a broad net, they can analyze immunity in exquisite detail, and not just on an individual level. Working with big data experts like Atul Butte, they’re comparing millions of data points from thousands of patients and healthy people to establish a baseline picture of a normal immune system. From there, real understanding of how human immunity works – in all its wondrous complexity – will finally be within reach.
It’s an audacious endeavor, and Mark credits philanthropy for getting it off the ground. With just $2 million raised solely from donors, he and his colleagues founded the HIMC in 2007. Since then, it’s generated more than $70 million in grant funding, and is now used by researchers and clinicians across Stanford. Mark is also the Burt and Marion Avery Family Professor of Immunology, and the income from this endowment has given his group the freedom to explore new ideas. “I give most of it to my grad students,” he says, “so they can work on really exciting stuff.”