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leaders in health: dr. pere santamaria and 'finding new pathways' to treat autoimmune diseases

dr. pere santamaria paved the way for immunology research and continues to work toward finding new ways to treat autoimmune disease.

by angelica bottaro
published jun 13, 2024
last updated jun 14, 2024
read time 7 minute read
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read time 7 minute read
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dr. pere santamaria understands the gravity of the his discoveries in immunology, but isn’t quick to call anything a miracle drug or a cure for any disease. supplied
around the time dr. pere santamaria was only 15 years old, he was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune disease that causes damage to the muscles that control eye movements. he was born and raised in manresa, spain, and spent the better part of his adolescence in hospitals instead of hanging out with friends playing sports and going to dances, as kids tend to do during those formative years.
while the diagnosis became a challenging hurdle for dr. santamaria to overcome, it directly influenced his future path of becoming a medical researcher in the field of immunology.
“it (his diagnosis) influenced my perception of life and my choices as well,” he said. “i suppose that played a great deal in me wanting to go into research.”
after graduating from the university of barcelona with an md and phd, he made his way across the pond to the united states to study at the university of minnesota. in 1992, following his postdoctoral studies in the u.s., he was offered a position at the university of calgary, a place he still calls home.
today, dr. santamaria is currently a professor in the department of microbiology, immunology and infectious diseases at the university of calgary cumming school of medicine and founder and chief scientific officer for parvus therapeutics, a pharmaceutical company based in san francisco, california.

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his work in the immunology field led to him discovering navacims, which are nanoparticles thought to be able to protect against autoimmune activity in the body. these nanoparticles work unlike any other treatment for autoimmune disease by binding to t-cell receptors, the cells in the body that fight against foreign pathogens. through the binding process, navacims trigger a regulatory mechanism that stops those cells from attacking healthy cells in the body that are accidentally marked as foreign and harmful.
this is a great leap forward in the treatment of autoimmune disease because as it stands, current therapies target the immune system as a whole, but navacims are targeted to only attack those cells that are working improperly, effectively fighting the disease without having to hinder the entire immune system.

planning a future around autoimmune disease

dr. santamaria’s early diagnosis of his autoimmune disease sparked a passion for research and medicine in him that has led to his well-revered and impressive career. but before that, he was simply a boy trying to navigate the world with a chronic and incurable disease.
“i couldn’t move my eyelids. i couldn’t move my eyes properly. i would see double,” he said of the symptoms he experienced. “it was a very important time in my life. i was becoming an adolescent; things are changing for you, you don’t know where you’re going. you’re interested in sports; you’re interested in other things.”
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even though he didn’t have an “in” into the world of medical research, as some others do if born into a family of medical professionals, he wasn’t letting anything keep him from feeding his curiosity about the body’s defence system and all that can go wrong with it.
what he did have, alongside his passion and drive to become a medical researcher, was two incredibly supportive parents who had his back every step of the way while he worked tirelessly to become a part of the medical research world.
“my parents were factory workers,” he said. “they were very supportive, of course, but i did not have a father or a mother who were physicians or researchers, so they just encouraged me to pursue what i wanted to do regardless of what i wanted to do. the choice was entirely mine, and i think my disease affected that.”

the early days of research

during his postdoctoral studies at the university of minnesota, dr. santamaria explored immunology through type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disorder driven by the autoimmune destruction of insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.
it was 1988 at the time, and research and data surrounding type 1 diabetes were scarce. this lack of research sparked a new direction for dr. santamaria. in 1992, he took a job offer as lead researcher for a team working towards understanding more about type 1 diabetes at the university of calgary.
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“i discovered the population of cells in the human pancreas samples of type 1 diabetic patients was very prominent, and at that time, the cells were understudied or believed to not play a very significant role in type 1 diabetes in humans,” he said, speaking of his work. “so i said, ‘okay, these cells are very prevalent in this human sample, so i need to understand how they are generated, how they become activated.”
once he made the discovery, he began testing it with genetically engineered mice so that cells in their immune system, specifically white blood cells, began to attack and kill cells that made insulin. he traced the behaviour of those cells using a molecular imaging tool, designed to give insight into how white blood cells accumulated in the pancreas in mice with type 1 diabetes.
the molecule used as the imaging tool ended up opening pandora’s box because, not only could it be used for imaging, but it could also be used to create new medications.
“along the way, it occurred to me through … serendipity because serendipity is really important in biomedical research, or any other research for that matter, that led to me testing something that was engineered to not being a drug but rather a molecule that was designed to be an imaging tool,” he said.
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the imaging tool molecule that dr. santamaria researched led to the discovery of navacims, which can be used therapeutically as drugs because of their ability to target specific areas in the body and do “beautiful things in the immune system.”
dr. santamaria reiterates that his research was important in and of itself, but it wasn’t the most significant aspect of what he was doing at the time because of how it managed to open a brand new door to the immunology research of today using the imaging molecule, and the subsequent discovery of navacims.

following curiosity to create new ways to treat autoimmune disease

over the course of his career, dr. santamaria has authored over 200 publications surrounding immunology. his genuine curiosity and perseverance in the field have now led to the creation of drugs that, if all goes well in future trials, could be incredibly beneficial for people living with autoimmune diseases because of the navacims discovery.
“the drugs that we discovered can actually reprogram the immune system that causes autoimmunity without affecting anything else,” he said.
before making the discovery of navacims, designing a drug that could specifically treat various autoimmune diseases, as opposed to the current therapies that work by hindering the action of the entire immune system, would have “been impossible” with what was known about autoimmune disease and immunity at the time.
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“the things i discovered about these drugs, i could have never predicted,” dr. santamaria said. “even to this day … they’re helping us discover new pathways of immunology. that’s the contribution that i think is important.”
it wasn’t easy for dr. santamaria to follow through on this research. during the early days, none of what he and the research team were finding seemed to make sense, and he couldn’t shake the confusion. this led to him feeding his curiosity and, in the end, watching as it paid off.
he and the team were encouraged to simply wash their hands of the data they acquired, as it was seemingly leading to nowhere. but dr. santamaria wasn’t ready to sweep anything under the bed.
“i’m the guy that doesn’t let go. sometimes it can be a curse, but it can be a blessing,” he said.

what’s next for dr. santamaria

dr. santamaria understands the gravity of the new discovery but isn’t quick to call anything a miracle drug or a cure for any disease.
as a medical researcher, he knows that it’s essential to stay grounded and balanced and see the research for only what it is as it stands now—even if the potential could be off-the-charts exciting.
“i don’t like when people say, ‘oh, we’re going to cure this, we’re going to cure that,” he said. “that’s what we would like to do, but to use the word cure … would be irresponsible of me.”
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the new drug that dr. santamaria has played a major role in creating, which has the potential to be a viable therapeutic approach to autoimmune diseases unlike anything else out there, has yet to be used in humans. that’s the next step in his journey.
“it took a long time and a lot of money to be able to do it, but we’ve overcome those obstacles and now are ready to go into the real thing, which is testing them in people,” he said of the drugs he and his research and biotechnology firm have created. testing is to begin this upcoming fall.
the field of medical research is full of setbacks and, in some cases, failures. but even with new testing on the horizon, dr. santamaria understands that, because of the significance of what he’s doing, the job is never quite done.
“being wrong to me is not a problem. a problem for me is to not try. if you have something … you think is important, you pursue it until the end,” he said.
angelica bottaro
angelica bottaro

angelica bottaro is the lead editor at healthing.ca, and has been content writing for over a decade, specializing in all things health. her goal as a health journalist is to bring awareness and information to people that they can use as an additional tool toward their own optimal health.

read more about the author

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