Another titanic undertaking in the field of biomedicine is about to begin. Is called Human Immunome Project (HIP) and, through the creation of the largest and most complete immunological database in the world, has the very ambitious goal of providing an interactive map of the immune system. By changing immunological variables, for example, it will be possible to predict reactions to a vaccine or drug. HIP is supported by an international consortium of government agencies, universities and companies.
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Human Immunome Project
Any vaccine or drug will never have the same effects (intended or side effects) on everyone. Suffice it to say that not even one of the best vaccines produced so far, that for hepatitis B, is effective in 100% of the population: there always remains a share of vaccinated people who does not develop or lose immunity. What are the differences due to? This is the question that the experts who designed the Human Immunome Project want to answer, because finding out could open the doors to systems that allow us to predict how a certain population or even a single person might react to a prophylaxis or therapy.
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This is not a new question for science: some attempts to identify differences in the human immune system with predictive significance have already been made. Many, however, are isolated studies, involving a few people in specific communities and aimed at evaluating responses to certain factors (a particular vaccine or drug, or a certain virus). Some, such as the US NIH’s “All of Us” program (which collected genomic and clinical data from a million Americans) and Verily’s Project Baseline (which cataloged data on Covid-19 infection), have yes involved millions of people, but drew limited information from them or created private databases (such as Project Baseline).
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The HIP, however, will be a global initiative that will involve hundreds of centers in all inhabited continents to understand immune diversity in human beings and its meaning. Each site will analyze the same variables in a maximum of 10 thousand people of all ages (from newborns to centenarians), belonging to different socio-economic levels, healthy and with health problems (cancer, autoimmune diseases, allergies, etc.).
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The bulk of the recruitment should start in 2027, but already this year – he told Science Magazine Hans Keirstead, CEO of the project – a first phase of the initiative will be launched: around ten research centers, already competent in data collection and analysis, will involve around 500 people to measure immune variables such as the number of different types of immune cells , the activity of genes involved in immunity mechanisms, the concentrations of some metabolites. From this mass of data, some variables will be selected which will be the basis of an immune monitoring kit, i.e. a standard series of analyzes which will then be used by all the centers involved in the second part of the project.
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The infinity of data (it is estimated that they will amount to 2 trillion measurements) will be collected in a public database and will feed a future artificial intelligence model which, starting from the immune profile and other information (age, economic status, etc.), should be able to predict the response to a certain pathogen or drug. A similar tool, according to the creators of the project, would be very useful both to doctors and to developers of new drugs, and to national health institutions to improve precision medicine, with a possible reduction in healthcare costs.
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The development of such artificial intelligence, which would both predict and simulate the functioning of the immune system, “has never been done before” – Kierstead said. Which perhaps explains why there is a bit of skepticism about its success in the scientific world. For such an ambitious project, 5 million dollars per year are currently available, but it is estimated that to achieve the objectives it could require a much larger overall investment, up to 3 billion dollars over 10 years.