so I’m going to start by addressing you
a couple of questions and I would like
you to raise your hand if your answer is
yes are you with me
right okay so the first question is
would you test a drug on yourself and I
don’t mean a you know what kind of drug
I mean a perfectly new medicine that no
human has ever tried before raise your
hand if you do it not seeing so many
hands
what about testing the same drug on on
your baby would you test it on your baby
raise your hand if you do it okay and so
many hands what about an animal how
would you feel about testing a drug on
an animal see many of you still have a
problem with that they are so cute after
all what about a computer how would you
feel about testing a drug on a computer
raise your hand if you do it oh I see
many of you not don’t have a problem
with that and your answer is quite
sensible as I must tell you no computer
has ever overdosed no computer ever had
dangerous side effects no computer ever
became addicted no computer ever forgot
to take its tablets and this is why I as
a bio pharmacist I can proudly say my
computer is on drugs
we need new drugs humans are still
suffering from thousands of diseases
that like a cure diseases for which
current treatments have stopped working
or diseases that most humans can’t
afford to treat antibiotic resistance
alone kills around 700
thousand people worldwide each year
humanity desperately needs new
affordable and effective medicines
pregnant women children babies all
desperately need new safe medication but
it’s a tricky process to go through
human testing would you want your
healthy baby to be injected with an
experimental drug
probably not but would you want a well
tested cure if your baby was sick of
course but you can’t have one without
the other
possibly until now the journey that a
medicine must take in order to reach
patients is an incredibly long
complicated and risky one
and it involves testing drugs on animals
in order to get an idea of the effects
in humans but there are at least two
major problems with this firstly and
most importantly it’s not the most
considerate thing to do and secondly
animals are not humans they have
different genetics and biology and
response to treatments for example the
intestine of a dog is more far more
liquor than a human intestine
so they can get stuff faster from their
guts and into their bloodstream good if
you’re a dog not so good if your bio
farming system so the best way to test
new medicines is with humans it’s so
much more reliable but here’s a problem
humans are also different we are all
built in a slightly different way the
effects of a drug on a fit healthy 20
year old male might not be the same as
the effect of the same drug on a fragile
70 year old grandma moreover sometimes
human trials can go wrong test patients
sometimes won’t even respect
rules of the trials I heard of study
volunteers who got kicked out of paid
trials for stashing snacks into the
bathroom of the test center to
supplement their standardized meals
another study sent 3,600 volunteers to
India Guatemala and Mexico to test this
new vaccine patch against travelers
diarrhea here volunteers had to hand
over their poop in case they had
diarrhea and the last thing you have to
do if you want to do if you have the
runs is to catch it in a bag transfer it
to a lunch box add formaldehyde and
drive it to the nearest clinic is that
the most tempting thing to do which was
spare time and surprisingly many
volunteers lied about their toilet
dilemmas and the pharmaceutical company
didn’t have the correct data to make the
right decision about the drug it was
quite an expensive mistake to make
simply because people don’t enjoy
collecting their own poop and saving it
for later who would have thought well
it’s sad to know that all the efforts
and hard work put into developing a new
vaccine can be ruined by an unsuccessful
trial and what most people don’t realize
is that the price of these unsuccessful
trials get rolled into the price of the
drug when it finally hits the market
it’s amazing to see just how crucial
these clinical trials really are the
more we can test new drugs the better we
can predict how the real affect each and
every one of us but we’re all different
we’re all built in a slightly different
way but what if we could harness a lot
of computing power to zoom in and
simulate human biology and physiology in
all its beauty and intricate details in
the last decades new and exciting
technologies have been developed which
allowed taking drug testing to
a virtual space where scientists can use
mathematical models to model the pathway
that a drug will make into our bodies so
now instead of testing a new drug on you
you or you’ll I can give my computed
drugs and I hope I will never have to
ask my computer to poop in a bag ever
again where I’m currently working on is
contributing to building the
computational model for the gut the guts
or intestine is built of a tight barrier
of cells which only lets specific drugs
or nutrients get into our bloodstream
it’s my job to figure out how a virtual
gut my function when given drugs so I
grow cells in the lab the tissues in the
lab which mimic the intestine and then I
go and test how drugs with specific
characteristics get absorbed to my lab
build tissue this part is what I call
the experimental way or even better the
frustrating way as so many of you doing
lab research knows that growing live
tissues in the lab and experimenting on
them takes an eternity at the same time
as working with my lab built-in testing
I use my computer to model the behavior
of the same drugs on future humans with
virtual intestines a virtual intestine
is built by harvesting all the knowledge
that humanity has about the specific
organ the interesting physiology and how
its structured information about
different subcomponents and layers and
processes happening at the layer level
of this organ and then I compare if what
I model on my computer fits with the
experimental data I get on my lab unit
in testing and then with clinical data
obtained in real humans my virtual
intestine as helps me answer questions
like what is the preferred pathway of a
specific drug does it go through the
cells or in between the cells does it
use any special molecules to help you
and then the beauty of this is that we
can connect this virtual intestine with
a bunch of other model organs design in
the same way the organs are put together
like pieces of a virtual puzzle to form
a whole organism a virtual human being
and then we go even further and we model
a whole populations population of humans
which reflects the variability between
each individual we can make a virtual
grandma a virtual athlete a virtual baby
and even a virtual you imagine building
up a virtual human which has the same
age weight height and health
characteristics as yourself a medically
identical virtual twin you could test a
new treatment on your virtual
doppelganger to get an idea what’s the
if the right dosage that would be
effective in you and won’t harm him it’s
a lot better to discover these negative
effects inside a computer than inside a
live human being especially when things
go wrong my prediction for the future is
that one day patients like you will be
able to build virtual versions of the
cells and precise with those the amount
of those that will cure them while
helping them avoid all those side
effects overdoses or negative effects so
are you curious how my virtual intestine
might look like in our mothers we use
the physiology and properties of the
specific organ in my case the gut
the red parts and then we input the
quantity and properties of the drug and
then we run a simulation to see how much
drug is able to get into the bloodstream
which gives an indication of how
efficient effective is a drug but also
of any potential risk of overdosing
it might look mathematically mild ooh
geeky but this is just a tiny part
the story of what happens inside your
body every time you take a pill and each
of our body is different our bodies are
different
it may look mathematical but it’s
surprisingly human sometimes a little
too human at some point I even started
giving names to my virtual patients it’s
kind kind of lonely sitting in my lab in
my office giving drugs to my imaginary
patients you can get some bit attached
to some of them but every now and then I
might have to kill them sometimes on
purpose sometimes by accident but the
good news is that every time a virtual
patient dies we can just reboot them
that’s a feature that human patients
really like the beauty of my simulations
is that things can be undone and redone
there is more space for mistakes and
there is where I can thrive most as a
scientist because I can get creative
without much risk especially without
risk on real humans so now I’m going to
leave you with a few examples of what
one can do with this animal and human
mothers firstly in the in the animal
testing phase of drug trials the first
question is what is the right dosage so
a range of doses is given sometimes
extreme to reach the sweet spot of
efficacy and this can have terrible
effects to some animals by using these
computer simulations we can predict
where this sweet spot will be and reduce
any more suffering in the lab secondly
we can predict if two or more drugs
taken together like a drug cocktail can
influence it can influence each other
many times its own so it’s awesome if we
can predict this and adjust the dose of
each drug given to the patient so both
are equally effective and not toxic and
thirdly we could create a virtual twin
so we can see how these drug
combinations can affect your body if you
ever wondered why had it been my work my
work work well for you
but not for your friend this approach
could provide the answer
it might take decades before we’ll be
able to simulate every tiny aspect of
human biology and physiology but these
technologies are aiming at zooming into
our biological features to the extent
that we can create virtual models they
can provide valuable predictions that
can help mitigate the suffering of
thousands of humans and animals we can
develop and test new drugs faster and
safer than ever before I’d love to live
in a world where my computer simulation
is so powerful and so reliable that we
never have to test drugs on human
subjects ever again and this is why I
can proudly say my computer is on drugs
thank you
[Applause]
[Laughter]
[Applause] [Music]
a couple of questions and I would like
you to raise your hand if your answer is
yes are you with me
right okay so the first question is
would you test a drug on yourself and I
don’t mean a you know what kind of drug
I mean a perfectly new medicine that no
human has ever tried before raise your
hand if you do it not seeing so many
hands
what about testing the same drug on on
your baby would you test it on your baby
raise your hand if you do it okay and so
many hands what about an animal how
would you feel about testing a drug on
an animal see many of you still have a
problem with that they are so cute after
all what about a computer how would you
feel about testing a drug on a computer
raise your hand if you do it oh I see
many of you not don’t have a problem
with that and your answer is quite
sensible as I must tell you no computer
has ever overdosed no computer ever had
dangerous side effects no computer ever
became addicted no computer ever forgot
to take its tablets and this is why I as
a bio pharmacist I can proudly say my
computer is on drugs
we need new drugs humans are still
suffering from thousands of diseases
that like a cure diseases for which
current treatments have stopped working
or diseases that most humans can’t
afford to treat antibiotic resistance
alone kills around 700
thousand people worldwide each year
humanity desperately needs new
affordable and effective medicines
pregnant women children babies all
desperately need new safe medication but
it’s a tricky process to go through
human testing would you want your
healthy baby to be injected with an
experimental drug
probably not but would you want a well
tested cure if your baby was sick of
course but you can’t have one without
the other
possibly until now the journey that a
medicine must take in order to reach
patients is an incredibly long
complicated and risky one
and it involves testing drugs on animals
in order to get an idea of the effects
in humans but there are at least two
major problems with this firstly and
most importantly it’s not the most
considerate thing to do and secondly
animals are not humans they have
different genetics and biology and
response to treatments for example the
intestine of a dog is more far more
liquor than a human intestine
so they can get stuff faster from their
guts and into their bloodstream good if
you’re a dog not so good if your bio
farming system so the best way to test
new medicines is with humans it’s so
much more reliable but here’s a problem
humans are also different we are all
built in a slightly different way the
effects of a drug on a fit healthy 20
year old male might not be the same as
the effect of the same drug on a fragile
70 year old grandma moreover sometimes
human trials can go wrong test patients
sometimes won’t even respect
rules of the trials I heard of study
volunteers who got kicked out of paid
trials for stashing snacks into the
bathroom of the test center to
supplement their standardized meals
another study sent 3,600 volunteers to
India Guatemala and Mexico to test this
new vaccine patch against travelers
diarrhea here volunteers had to hand
over their poop in case they had
diarrhea and the last thing you have to
do if you want to do if you have the
runs is to catch it in a bag transfer it
to a lunch box add formaldehyde and
drive it to the nearest clinic is that
the most tempting thing to do which was
spare time and surprisingly many
volunteers lied about their toilet
dilemmas and the pharmaceutical company
didn’t have the correct data to make the
right decision about the drug it was
quite an expensive mistake to make
simply because people don’t enjoy
collecting their own poop and saving it
for later who would have thought well
it’s sad to know that all the efforts
and hard work put into developing a new
vaccine can be ruined by an unsuccessful
trial and what most people don’t realize
is that the price of these unsuccessful
trials get rolled into the price of the
drug when it finally hits the market
it’s amazing to see just how crucial
these clinical trials really are the
more we can test new drugs the better we
can predict how the real affect each and
every one of us but we’re all different
we’re all built in a slightly different
way but what if we could harness a lot
of computing power to zoom in and
simulate human biology and physiology in
all its beauty and intricate details in
the last decades new and exciting
technologies have been developed which
allowed taking drug testing to
a virtual space where scientists can use
mathematical models to model the pathway
that a drug will make into our bodies so
now instead of testing a new drug on you
you or you’ll I can give my computed
drugs and I hope I will never have to
ask my computer to poop in a bag ever
again where I’m currently working on is
contributing to building the
computational model for the gut the guts
or intestine is built of a tight barrier
of cells which only lets specific drugs
or nutrients get into our bloodstream
it’s my job to figure out how a virtual
gut my function when given drugs so I
grow cells in the lab the tissues in the
lab which mimic the intestine and then I
go and test how drugs with specific
characteristics get absorbed to my lab
build tissue this part is what I call
the experimental way or even better the
frustrating way as so many of you doing
lab research knows that growing live
tissues in the lab and experimenting on
them takes an eternity at the same time
as working with my lab built-in testing
I use my computer to model the behavior
of the same drugs on future humans with
virtual intestines a virtual intestine
is built by harvesting all the knowledge
that humanity has about the specific
organ the interesting physiology and how
its structured information about
different subcomponents and layers and
processes happening at the layer level
of this organ and then I compare if what
I model on my computer fits with the
experimental data I get on my lab unit
in testing and then with clinical data
obtained in real humans my virtual
intestine as helps me answer questions
like what is the preferred pathway of a
specific drug does it go through the
cells or in between the cells does it
use any special molecules to help you
and then the beauty of this is that we
can connect this virtual intestine with
a bunch of other model organs design in
the same way the organs are put together
like pieces of a virtual puzzle to form
a whole organism a virtual human being
and then we go even further and we model
a whole populations population of humans
which reflects the variability between
each individual we can make a virtual
grandma a virtual athlete a virtual baby
and even a virtual you imagine building
up a virtual human which has the same
age weight height and health
characteristics as yourself a medically
identical virtual twin you could test a
new treatment on your virtual
doppelganger to get an idea what’s the
if the right dosage that would be
effective in you and won’t harm him it’s
a lot better to discover these negative
effects inside a computer than inside a
live human being especially when things
go wrong my prediction for the future is
that one day patients like you will be
able to build virtual versions of the
cells and precise with those the amount
of those that will cure them while
helping them avoid all those side
effects overdoses or negative effects so
are you curious how my virtual intestine
might look like in our mothers we use
the physiology and properties of the
specific organ in my case the gut
the red parts and then we input the
quantity and properties of the drug and
then we run a simulation to see how much
drug is able to get into the bloodstream
which gives an indication of how
efficient effective is a drug but also
of any potential risk of overdosing
it might look mathematically mild ooh
geeky but this is just a tiny part
the story of what happens inside your
body every time you take a pill and each
of our body is different our bodies are
different
it may look mathematical but it’s
surprisingly human sometimes a little
too human at some point I even started
giving names to my virtual patients it’s
kind kind of lonely sitting in my lab in
my office giving drugs to my imaginary
patients you can get some bit attached
to some of them but every now and then I
might have to kill them sometimes on
purpose sometimes by accident but the
good news is that every time a virtual
patient dies we can just reboot them
that’s a feature that human patients
really like the beauty of my simulations
is that things can be undone and redone
there is more space for mistakes and
there is where I can thrive most as a
scientist because I can get creative
without much risk especially without
risk on real humans so now I’m going to
leave you with a few examples of what
one can do with this animal and human
mothers firstly in the in the animal
testing phase of drug trials the first
question is what is the right dosage so
a range of doses is given sometimes
extreme to reach the sweet spot of
efficacy and this can have terrible
effects to some animals by using these
computer simulations we can predict
where this sweet spot will be and reduce
any more suffering in the lab secondly
we can predict if two or more drugs
taken together like a drug cocktail can
influence it can influence each other
many times its own so it’s awesome if we
can predict this and adjust the dose of
each drug given to the patient so both
are equally effective and not toxic and
thirdly we could create a virtual twin
so we can see how these drug
combinations can affect your body if you
ever wondered why had it been my work my
work work well for you
but not for your friend this approach
could provide the answer
it might take decades before we’ll be
able to simulate every tiny aspect of
human biology and physiology but these
technologies are aiming at zooming into
our biological features to the extent
that we can create virtual models they
can provide valuable predictions that
can help mitigate the suffering of
thousands of humans and animals we can
develop and test new drugs faster and
safer than ever before I’d love to live
in a world where my computer simulation
is so powerful and so reliable that we
never have to test drugs on human
subjects ever again and this is why I
can proudly say my computer is on drugs
thank you
[Applause]
[Laughter]
[Applause] [Music]
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