Your immune system keeps a record of everything it’s ever fought, from the common cold to chronic disease. Neuroscientist and TED Fellow Beck Brachman explains how, by decoding this archive, scientists may be able to identify the root causes — and thus deduce the cures — of devastating illnesses like multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia, potentially one day taking the “chronic” out of “chronic disease.” (Recorded at TED2025 on April 9, 2025)
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Here’s a teaser. What if I told you
that cures for chronic disease were hidden in our own immune systems? If only we could read
that information out. So let’s take multiple sclerosis, for example. Multiple sclerosis
is a debilitating autoimmune disease where our own cells attack the brain. And for years we didn’t know
what caused it, which makes it very difficult to treat. So in January 2022, a study came out where they followed 10 million people for 20 years, and they found that Epstein-Barr virus — so mono, the kissing disease — increased the risk
of multiple sclerosis by 32 times. It’s a big deal. You might have seen it in the news. So three days later, another study came out in “Nature”
showing not just a correlation, but a direct link between
Epstein-Barr virus and multiple sclerosis. Using just 12 people, and sampling, like, once. So 10 million people, 20 years — 12 people in, like, a day. How did they do that? So the team, Robinson and Lanz, used a snapshot of information
stored in our memory immune cells to infer backwards what had come before
and triggered the disease, or what I like to call
forensic immunology. And in Robinson’s case, they already knew
what they were looking for: Epstein-Barr virus, myelin. So they only had to decode
a tiny part of the massive, distributed, ever evolving archive that is the memory immune system. So the immune system stores an imprint
of everything it encounters: infections, allergies,
autoimmunity, toxins, cancer. It’s basically a web browser history. It’s also how vaccines work. So though we may not know
what is causing a disease, the immune system probably does. And if we could decode
the immune archive at scale, we could apply forensic immunology to diseases where
we don’t yet know the cause. So that is exactly
what my team aims to do. And so I am thrilled to announce publicly, for the first time in print, a forensic immunology
Focused Research Organization or FRO, building machine learning
and experimental tools to identify the hidden causes of
and cures for chronic disease. Currently, we are generously supported
by Eric and Wendy Schmidt, Convergent Research,
and the City of New York. We’re also — yeah, New York, right? (Applause and Cheers) And everyone else. We’re also going to apply these tools
to intractable chronic diseases, particularly neurological
and psychiatric disorders. So why neuropsych, right? Emerging evidence,
including some of my own work, suggests that a lot of what we are calling
psychiatric disorders are actually immune diseases. So, for example, the immune system
stores a memory of psychological stress and is involved in stress resilience. And a lot of cases of schizophrenia
are actually turning out to be driven by
underlying autoimmune disease. And the shingles vaccine
might prevent dementia. And there’s also everything
that we saw during the pandemic. COVID causing de novo
psychiatric disorders, long COVID. So really we are in the middle
of an immunotherapy revolution for cancer. Some cancers that had
90 percent mortality rates 50 years ago now have 90 percent cure rates. What if we could extend that revolution to autoimmunity, diabetes, dementia, depression? Maybe in 15 years, if we can learn what the immune system already knows, we could take the chronic
out of chronic disease. Thank you. (Applause and cheers)
