The medical potential of AI and metabolites

Many diseases are driven by metabolites -- small molecules in your body like fat, glucose and cholesterol -- but we don't know exactly what they are or how they work. Biotech entrepreneur and TED Fellow Leila Pirhaji shares her plan to build an AI-based network to characterize metabolite patterns, better understand how disease develops -- and discover more effective treatments.

In 2003,

when we sequenced the human genome,

we thought we would have the answer
to treat many diseases.

But the reality is far from that,

because in addition to our genes,

our environment and lifestyle
could have a significant role

in developing many major diseases.

One example is fatty liver disease,

which is affecting over 20 percent
of the population globally,

and it has no treatment
and leads to liver cancer

or liver failure.

So sequencing DNA alone
doesn't give us enough information

to find effective therapeutics.

On the bright side, there are
many other molecules in our body.

In fact, there are
over 100,000 metabolites.

Metabolites are any molecule
that is supersmall in their size.

Known examples are glucose,
fructose, fats, cholesterol --

things we hear all the time.

Metabolites are involved
in our metabolism.

They are also downstream of DNA,

so they carry information
from both our genes as well as lifestyle.

Understanding metabolites is essential
to find treatments for many diseases.

I've always wanted to treat patients.

Despite that, 15 years ago,
I left medical school,

as I missed mathematics.

Soon after, I found the coolest thing:

I can use mathematics to study medicine.

Since then, I've been developing
algorithms to analyze biological data.

So, it sounded easy:

let's collect data from all
the metabolites in our body,

develop mathematical models to describe
how they are changed in a disease

and intervene in those
changes to treat them.

Then I realized why no one
has done this before:

it's extremely difficult.

(Laughter)

There are many metabolites in our body.

Each one is different from the other one.

For some metabolites,
we can measure their molecular mass

using mass spectrometry instruments.

But because there could be, like,
10 molecules with the exact same mass,

we don't know exactly what they are,

and if you want to clearly
identify all of them,

you have to do more experiments,
which could take decades

and billions of dollars.

So we developed an artificial
intelligence, or AI, platform, to do that.

We leveraged the growth of biological data

and built a database of any existing
information about metabolites

and their interactions
with other molecules.

We combined all this data
as a meganetwork.

Then, from tissues or blood of patients,

we measure masses of metabolites

and find the masses
that are changed in a disease.

But, as I mentioned earlier,
we don't know exactly what they are.

A molecular mass of 180 could be
either the glucose, galactose or fructose.

They all have the exact same mass

but different functions in our body.

Our AI algorithm considered
all these ambiguities.

It then mined that meganetwork

to find how those metabolic masses
are connected to each other

that result in disease.

And because of the way they are connected,

then we are able to infer
what each metabolite mass is,

like that 180 could be glucose here,

and, more importantly, to discover

how changes in glucose
and other metabolites

lead to a disease.

This novel understanding
of disease mechanisms

then enable us to discover
effective therapeutics to target that.

So we formed a start-up company
to bring this technology to the market

and impact people's lives.

Now my team and I at ReviveMed
are working to discover

therapeutics for major diseases
that metabolites are key drivers for,

like fatty liver disease,

because it is caused
by accumulation of fats,

which are types
of metabolites in the liver.

As I mentioned earlier,
it's a huge epidemic with no treatment.

And fatty liver disease
is just one example.

Moving forward, we are going to tackle
hundreds of other diseases

with no treatment.

And by collecting more and more
data about metabolites

and understanding
how changes in metabolites

leads to developing diseases,

our algorithms will get
smarter and smarter

to discover the right therapeutics
for the right patients.

And we will get closer to reach our vision

of saving lives with every line of code.

Thank you.

(Applause)