James Dooley: Transforming clinical treatment of neuroinflammatory conditions

Listen to Dr James Dooley get interviewed on The Big Experiment, about life, science and business:

Imagine being able to internalise the pharmaceutical factory into the human.

You could avoid the contamination risks and need for purification in biologic production.

In this episode I am joined by Dr James Dooley who is doing just this with his work at Aila Biotech. James and his team developed technology to drive the production of immune-regulating biologics at the exact site of disease. Through precise spatial and temporal control over biologic expression, Aila Biotech can prevent neuroinflammatory damage in brain injury.

James discusses his journey into science and how this work began. As well as the challenges that come with having to focus on the business, not just the science. He also reflects on what he might do differently if he were to start again.

“We really think we can have a dramatic effect on people's quality of life long term” – James Dooley

You’ll hear about:

01:50 – James’ journey into science

06:52 – James on drug delivery by adeno associated viruses

13:26 - What's the specificity of infection?

19:38 - Is there an invisible downside?

23:32 – James on the challenges of focusing on the business

28:47 – Will James be taking the therapy into the clinic?

36:25 – Would James do anything differently next time?

Harnessing our lived experience for science communication

Thanks to Nature Reviews Immunology for the chance to write about incorporating our lived experiences into effective science communication! A few tips on making your science communication effective and accessible to everyone:

First, find your passion! Reach out to the communities that you have connections to, and use a medium that you enjoy. You don't need to be an extravert to do public engagement! If you prefer to interact online, do so - there are audiences that want it. Content creation without any face-to-face interaction such as VirusFighter sci-comms too!

Second, harness your lived experience! Being slotted into a generic event that doesn't resonate with your life is a major turn-off. Using your identity in your comms builds the authenticity that audiences respond to, e.g. my efforts writing kids books, like Maya's Marvellous Medicine, are rooted in my life experience as a daddy.

Third, find collaborators with complementary skills. If you have a vision for an innovative outreach project, the talent is around you to make it happen! Those kids books needed artistic talent, via Sonia Agüera Gonzalez, our computer game needed coding expertise, via Simon Andrews, and our next project started after a chat in the pub revealed the talents of Yulia Lapko!

Finally, look to extend your reach! Taking a pro-active approach to inclusivity dramatically extends your impact. Look to reach the communities that are usually overlooked, such as Erica Tandori and her drive to make sciart accessible to the blind and low vision community through Sensory Science!

After the Smoke Clears: Scars on the Immune System

Check out this article written in The Scientist by Danielle Gerhard, on the epigenetic marks of smoking on the immune system. A few quote from me in the piece:

“There is no human immune system; there is everyone's individual immune system,” said Adrian Liston, an immunologist at the University of Cambridge who was not involved in the study. “We really need to study things at the scale that the group in Paris is studying if we want to understand what's going to be relevant to human health at a population level.”