my son is five and goes to year one here
in this wonderful institution and at
this age he is fascinated with nature
and animals so we like to play at home
this kind of a fun game by which there
are questions and answers and he tries
to challenge my understanding of nature
and this is a fun game to me actually
but if I have to be totally honest with
you it’s a little bit disappointing
because as it happens I do not know most
of the answers to his questions actually
for example I don’t know which is the
animal that is the smelliest things like
that and I should know because I’m a
professional biologist but recently my
son did ask me a question which I’m sure
I knew he asked me that
what is the deadliest animal in the
world and I knew the answer but as
usually I asked my son to lead the
conversation and he made some
interesting proposals is it a shark is
it the snake it’s a dinosaur well I will
start teaching evolution to my son in a
few years but that’s a nice proposal and
he also said my favorite the neighbor’s
cat you may be laughing but you have not
so I think it came to a surprise to my
son when I’d actually said without
blinking and I its the mosquito and of
course there is nothing about the size
of the mosquito or his particular
aggressive behavior what happens is that
the mosquito carries different pathogens
that affect human health I’ve been a
very proud during most of my career to
work for malaria and dengue so let me
give you some perspective in terms of
numbers in 2015 alone
malaria claimed the lives of over
400,000 people the incidence of the
anger has been rising at a very high
rate of change during my lifetime and
this is caused to your initiation of
course
international air travel and climate
change an estimated 400 million
infections occur every year and from
those around 20 thousand and up in death
this is the geographical distribution of
dengue each in its present in 128
countries in tropical and subtropical
areas this is a little bit over more
than half of the world population and
around 3.5 billion of people are at a
risk of course the boundaries of then
the geographical boundaries are
expanding slowly but steadily due to
climate change so what is happening here
so basically the dengue actually carry
the dengue virus which scientifically
speaking is denoted by then V is
transmitted when you are bitten by
female Aedes aegypti mosquito and that
happens typically in Yerevan and
suburban area so you need to actually
watch your home and take care of of that
for most of us dengue just a very strong
flu illness it has high fever has a
characteristic skin rash and muscle and
joint pain and for some this pain is
very very very strong however
occasionally in some people dengue
actually progresses into a more Rajic
fever and this is really
life-threatening especially it’s one of
the leading cause of death in children
in this part of the world there is no
specific treatment for dengue fever
except one rash and go to the hospital
and get proper proper hospital care if
you do that the fatality rates can be as
low as less than 1% however this is true
for places like Singapore as you can
imagine not everybody in the tropics has
access to high quality public health so
the World Health Organization recommends
prevention of dengue through two steps
one is of course removal of the habitat
of the mosquito and the use of
insecticides but also the World Health
Organization thinks that to find a safe
and effective vaccine for dengue is a
high priority and why they would say
that let me remind you that from
economical perspective a technological
perspective and a scientific perspective
vaccines are one of the most cost
effective ways to save lives vaccines
prevent approximately two to three
million
of death per year and they have greatly
reduced the burden of infectious
diseases around the world some of them
do not exist anymore like a smallpox now
we carry in our bodies a system that has
a fantastic properties that make
vaccines work the immune system the
immune system is able to get information
process information and memorizes it
now when I say information in the case
of the immune system I mean molecular
patterns of the pathogens that could be
a protein a piece of a protein a peptide
DNA piece of sugar etc now there is an
other system in the universe that has
the same properties as the immune system
is our central nervous system and this
is why education works ladies and
gentlemen we may argue about the details
why education wars or does not work how
education systems may be improved over
time what elements of education are old
fashioned and they don’t work anymore
but overall education works because
actually the properties of our brain let
me just say that how brain memory works
and immunity memory works are completely
different they use different different
cellular and molecular basis so what are
the tools that we immunologist have to
educate our immune system and that are
vaccines now there are lots of ways of
doing vaccines you can approach this in
different ways the vaccine I’m working
on it’s a live attenuated vaccine that
means that it actually it’s the whole
vaccine is the whole thing very similar
to the dengue by
boots in the wild however it has been
modified genetically and so by doing
that this this this virus is attenuated
is weakened is slower at replicating so
when you in one is a person what will
happen is that the dengue will just go
to the target cell and hijack the
biochemical machinery of the cell to
replicate itself and make more copies of
it now this is it does this at a very
slow pace as the normal wild-type dengue
so the immune system has time to mount
and very effective immune response its
able to see it recognize it it learns
how to produce antibodies over time and
eventually this antibodies will do two
things they will bind to the virus so
they will render the virus neutralized
and also these antibodies will help
other parts of the immune system to
actually clear up the virus from your
body
this happens typically in around two to
three weeks in humans so next time you
your you get a bite you your body will
not wait two weeks to mount an immune
response it will be there up and running
in our works so now we want to move to
my involvement in all this which is the
actual development of vaccine and there
are also different strategies to
approach any problem and this is a
technical problem like any other you can
approach it in different ways I’m
showing here one such possibility by
which a scientific idea could be
translated directly on human beings
does anybody of you see anything wrong
here or questionable yeah there are no
safety check points built in in the
system
so we done now if the vaccine work or
the vaccine is toxic or Direction
adverse effects we were not aware of
simply because we still don’t know 100%
how the human body works however this is
how vaccines were developed in the past
I’m talking about 200 years ago and this
is for example in England
dr. Jenner produced a smallpox vaccine
in this way now he did not have a
biotechnology and but this is something
we have to the biotechnology allow us to
put between the scientific and idea and
the person the patient all these
checkpoints by we we constantly test and
evaluate for efficacy and safety and
what we want to do is make sure that the
benefit always outweigh the harm in
reality what we do is that we want to
put the harm at at a statistically as
close as zero as possible and I’m very
glad to say that this is very often
possible however I want to remind you
that every single intervention that be
an expedient that be in a biological
that being the vaccines of the future
which probably will be made out of DNA
alone every intervention will have a
risk the only thing that we have to
manage the risk so scientists and
engineers we team up together to
manufacture all these large amounts of
vaccine prototypes that are required in
every single step of that process you
see and then because there are liters
and liters of vaccine needed to carry
out all the experimental program and all
the clinical assay program and this is
for example without going into details
how we do it
today so basically we have a specific
cell type and we just infect the cell we
assemble the cells own together we put
the cells one on top of the other and
then we put them in a bioreactor and we
do that with the four serotypes of
dengue and this is how we harvest fruit
material after some days and as an
example that is how a bioreactor look
back in the 50s and that was used for
the creation of penicillin
so things have evolved at a very short
period of time so we have this glutton
material we harvest and what we do with
it we stabilize it we eliminate
impurities then we need to concentrate
it to a usable volume and then we freeze
it down that is called the drug
substance and remember we have four
because the dengue is caused by four
types of virus when we are ready to
formulate we blend the four serotypes
together we stabilize again the clinical
formulation we freeze and drag it and
then that’s our final vaccines is there
is the vial you are with a cake inside
that you are reduced to say and then
that’s ready for distribution to the
field or to the scientist to carry on an
experiment now in every one of those
steps we take samples called
intermediate and those are continuously
tested and evaluated to make sure that
the vaccine is manufacture as intended
what that means it means that the
vaccine has the right specifications now
everything that is manufacturer has
specifications
claims cars iPhones in the case of
vaccines specifications mean that the
vaccine has the desired physical
chemical and biological properties and
characteristics then when the
specifications are okay my team and I
will release the vaccine
meaning that we give permission for the
clinical trial to comments so far the
vaccine has played out very well it has
passed all the tests with flying colors
it’s very effective it’s not toxic and
now it’s entering phase 3 which actually
is the last stage and it’s ongoing so
looking at it I feel very optimistic
about this program and I wanted finalize
by showing that actually transforming
scientific ideas into life-saving
medicines is actually collaborate
collaborative and multidisciplinary
effort of many types of scientists
engineers mathematicians and medical
doctors and this is truly put powerful domino effect so thank you for listening
in this wonderful institution and at
this age he is fascinated with nature
and animals so we like to play at home
this kind of a fun game by which there
are questions and answers and he tries
to challenge my understanding of nature
and this is a fun game to me actually
but if I have to be totally honest with
you it’s a little bit disappointing
because as it happens I do not know most
of the answers to his questions actually
for example I don’t know which is the
animal that is the smelliest things like
that and I should know because I’m a
professional biologist but recently my
son did ask me a question which I’m sure
I knew he asked me that
what is the deadliest animal in the
world and I knew the answer but as
usually I asked my son to lead the
conversation and he made some
interesting proposals is it a shark is
it the snake it’s a dinosaur well I will
start teaching evolution to my son in a
few years but that’s a nice proposal and
he also said my favorite the neighbor’s
cat you may be laughing but you have not
so I think it came to a surprise to my
son when I’d actually said without
blinking and I its the mosquito and of
course there is nothing about the size
of the mosquito or his particular
aggressive behavior what happens is that
the mosquito carries different pathogens
that affect human health I’ve been a
very proud during most of my career to
work for malaria and dengue so let me
give you some perspective in terms of
numbers in 2015 alone
malaria claimed the lives of over
400,000 people the incidence of the
anger has been rising at a very high
rate of change during my lifetime and
this is caused to your initiation of
course
international air travel and climate
change an estimated 400 million
infections occur every year and from
those around 20 thousand and up in death
this is the geographical distribution of
dengue each in its present in 128
countries in tropical and subtropical
areas this is a little bit over more
than half of the world population and
around 3.5 billion of people are at a
risk of course the boundaries of then
the geographical boundaries are
expanding slowly but steadily due to
climate change so what is happening here
so basically the dengue actually carry
the dengue virus which scientifically
speaking is denoted by then V is
transmitted when you are bitten by
female Aedes aegypti mosquito and that
happens typically in Yerevan and
suburban area so you need to actually
watch your home and take care of of that
for most of us dengue just a very strong
flu illness it has high fever has a
characteristic skin rash and muscle and
joint pain and for some this pain is
very very very strong however
occasionally in some people dengue
actually progresses into a more Rajic
fever and this is really
life-threatening especially it’s one of
the leading cause of death in children
in this part of the world there is no
specific treatment for dengue fever
except one rash and go to the hospital
and get proper proper hospital care if
you do that the fatality rates can be as
low as less than 1% however this is true
for places like Singapore as you can
imagine not everybody in the tropics has
access to high quality public health so
the World Health Organization recommends
prevention of dengue through two steps
one is of course removal of the habitat
of the mosquito and the use of
insecticides but also the World Health
Organization thinks that to find a safe
and effective vaccine for dengue is a
high priority and why they would say
that let me remind you that from
economical perspective a technological
perspective and a scientific perspective
vaccines are one of the most cost
effective ways to save lives vaccines
prevent approximately two to three
million
of death per year and they have greatly
reduced the burden of infectious
diseases around the world some of them
do not exist anymore like a smallpox now
we carry in our bodies a system that has
a fantastic properties that make
vaccines work the immune system the
immune system is able to get information
process information and memorizes it
now when I say information in the case
of the immune system I mean molecular
patterns of the pathogens that could be
a protein a piece of a protein a peptide
DNA piece of sugar etc now there is an
other system in the universe that has
the same properties as the immune system
is our central nervous system and this
is why education works ladies and
gentlemen we may argue about the details
why education wars or does not work how
education systems may be improved over
time what elements of education are old
fashioned and they don’t work anymore
but overall education works because
actually the properties of our brain let
me just say that how brain memory works
and immunity memory works are completely
different they use different different
cellular and molecular basis so what are
the tools that we immunologist have to
educate our immune system and that are
vaccines now there are lots of ways of
doing vaccines you can approach this in
different ways the vaccine I’m working
on it’s a live attenuated vaccine that
means that it actually it’s the whole
vaccine is the whole thing very similar
to the dengue by
boots in the wild however it has been
modified genetically and so by doing
that this this this virus is attenuated
is weakened is slower at replicating so
when you in one is a person what will
happen is that the dengue will just go
to the target cell and hijack the
biochemical machinery of the cell to
replicate itself and make more copies of
it now this is it does this at a very
slow pace as the normal wild-type dengue
so the immune system has time to mount
and very effective immune response its
able to see it recognize it it learns
how to produce antibodies over time and
eventually this antibodies will do two
things they will bind to the virus so
they will render the virus neutralized
and also these antibodies will help
other parts of the immune system to
actually clear up the virus from your
body
this happens typically in around two to
three weeks in humans so next time you
your you get a bite you your body will
not wait two weeks to mount an immune
response it will be there up and running
in our works so now we want to move to
my involvement in all this which is the
actual development of vaccine and there
are also different strategies to
approach any problem and this is a
technical problem like any other you can
approach it in different ways I’m
showing here one such possibility by
which a scientific idea could be
translated directly on human beings
does anybody of you see anything wrong
here or questionable yeah there are no
safety check points built in in the
system
so we done now if the vaccine work or
the vaccine is toxic or Direction
adverse effects we were not aware of
simply because we still don’t know 100%
how the human body works however this is
how vaccines were developed in the past
I’m talking about 200 years ago and this
is for example in England
dr. Jenner produced a smallpox vaccine
in this way now he did not have a
biotechnology and but this is something
we have to the biotechnology allow us to
put between the scientific and idea and
the person the patient all these
checkpoints by we we constantly test and
evaluate for efficacy and safety and
what we want to do is make sure that the
benefit always outweigh the harm in
reality what we do is that we want to
put the harm at at a statistically as
close as zero as possible and I’m very
glad to say that this is very often
possible however I want to remind you
that every single intervention that be
an expedient that be in a biological
that being the vaccines of the future
which probably will be made out of DNA
alone every intervention will have a
risk the only thing that we have to
manage the risk so scientists and
engineers we team up together to
manufacture all these large amounts of
vaccine prototypes that are required in
every single step of that process you
see and then because there are liters
and liters of vaccine needed to carry
out all the experimental program and all
the clinical assay program and this is
for example without going into details
how we do it
today so basically we have a specific
cell type and we just infect the cell we
assemble the cells own together we put
the cells one on top of the other and
then we put them in a bioreactor and we
do that with the four serotypes of
dengue and this is how we harvest fruit
material after some days and as an
example that is how a bioreactor look
back in the 50s and that was used for
the creation of penicillin
so things have evolved at a very short
period of time so we have this glutton
material we harvest and what we do with
it we stabilize it we eliminate
impurities then we need to concentrate
it to a usable volume and then we freeze
it down that is called the drug
substance and remember we have four
because the dengue is caused by four
types of virus when we are ready to
formulate we blend the four serotypes
together we stabilize again the clinical
formulation we freeze and drag it and
then that’s our final vaccines is there
is the vial you are with a cake inside
that you are reduced to say and then
that’s ready for distribution to the
field or to the scientist to carry on an
experiment now in every one of those
steps we take samples called
intermediate and those are continuously
tested and evaluated to make sure that
the vaccine is manufacture as intended
what that means it means that the
vaccine has the right specifications now
everything that is manufacturer has
specifications
claims cars iPhones in the case of
vaccines specifications mean that the
vaccine has the desired physical
chemical and biological properties and
characteristics then when the
specifications are okay my team and I
will release the vaccine
meaning that we give permission for the
clinical trial to comments so far the
vaccine has played out very well it has
passed all the tests with flying colors
it’s very effective it’s not toxic and
now it’s entering phase 3 which actually
is the last stage and it’s ongoing so
looking at it I feel very optimistic
about this program and I wanted finalize
by showing that actually transforming
scientific ideas into life-saving
medicines is actually collaborate
collaborative and multidisciplinary
effort of many types of scientists
engineers mathematicians and medical
doctors and this is truly put powerful domino effect so thank you for listening
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