0:00:00.000,0:00:03.000
So it was about four years ago, five years ago,

0:00:03.000,0:00:05.000
I was sitting on a stage in Philadelphia, I think it was,

0:00:05.000,0:00:08.000
with a bag similar to this.

0:00:08.000,0:00:11.000
And I was pulling a molecule out of this bag.

0:00:11.000,0:00:14.000
And I was saying, you don't know this molecule really well,

0:00:14.000,0:00:17.000
but your body knows it extremely well.

0:00:17.000,0:00:21.000
And I was thinking that your body hated it, at the time,

0:00:21.000,0:00:24.000
because we are very immune to this. This is called alpha-gal epitope.

0:00:24.000,0:00:28.000
And the fact that pig heart valves have lots of these on them

0:00:28.000,0:00:32.000
is the reason that you can't transplant a pig heart valve into a person easily.

0:00:32.000,0:00:34.000
Actually our body doesn't hate these.

0:00:34.000,0:00:37.000
Our body loves these. It eats them.

0:00:37.000,0:00:40.000
I mean, the cells in our immune system are always hungry.

0:00:40.000,0:00:44.000
And if an antibody is stuck to one of these things

0:00:44.000,0:00:47.000
on the cell, it means "that's food."

0:00:47.000,0:00:49.000
Now, I was thinking about that and I said, you know, we've got this

0:00:49.000,0:00:52.000
immune response to this ridiculous molecule

0:00:52.000,0:00:56.000
that we don't make, and we see it a lot in other animals and stuff.

0:00:56.000,0:00:59.000
But I said we can't get rid of it,

0:00:59.000,0:01:01.000
because all the people who tried to transplant heart valves

0:01:01.000,0:01:03.000
found out you can't get rid of that immunity.

0:01:03.000,0:01:05.000
And I said, why don't you use that?

0:01:05.000,0:01:08.000
What if I could stick this molecule,

0:01:08.000,0:01:10.000
slap it onto a bacteria

0:01:10.000,0:01:14.000
that was pathogenic to me, that had just invaded my lungs?

0:01:14.000,0:01:16.000
I mean I could immediately tap into

0:01:16.000,0:01:18.000
an immune response that was already there,

0:01:18.000,0:01:21.000
where it was not going to take five or six days to develop it --

0:01:21.000,0:01:24.000
it was going to immediately attack whatever this thing was on.

0:01:24.000,0:01:26.000
It was kind of like the same thing that happens when you,

0:01:26.000,0:01:30.000
like when you're getting stopped for a traffic ticket in L.A.,

0:01:30.000,0:01:33.000
and the cop drops a bag of marijuana in the back of your car,

0:01:33.000,0:01:36.000
and then charges you for possession of marijuana.

0:01:36.000,0:01:40.000
It's like this very fast, very efficient way to get people off the street.

0:01:40.000,0:01:42.000
(Laughter)

0:01:42.000,0:01:44.000
So you can take a bacteria

0:01:44.000,0:01:46.000
that really doesn't make these things at all,

0:01:46.000,0:01:48.000
and if you could clamp these on it really well

0:01:48.000,0:01:50.000
you have it taken off the street.

0:01:50.000,0:01:52.000
And for certain bacteria

0:01:52.000,0:01:54.000
we don't have really efficient ways to do that anymore.

0:01:54.000,0:01:56.000
Our antibiotics are running out.

0:01:56.000,0:01:59.000
And, I mean, the world apparently is running out too.

0:01:59.000,0:02:02.000
So probably it doesn't matter 50 years from now --

0:02:02.000,0:02:05.000
streptococcus and stuff like that will be rampant --

0:02:05.000,0:02:07.000
because we won't be here. But if we are --

0:02:07.000,0:02:09.000
(Laughter)

0:02:09.000,0:02:11.000
we're going to need something to do with the bacteria.

0:02:11.000,0:02:15.000
So I started working with this thing,

0:02:15.000,0:02:17.000
with a bunch of collaborators.

0:02:17.000,0:02:20.000
And trying to attach this to things that were

0:02:20.000,0:02:24.000
themselves attached to certain specific target zones,

0:02:24.000,0:02:26.000
bacteria that we don't like.

0:02:26.000,0:02:30.000
And I feel now like George Bush.

0:02:30.000,0:02:32.000
It's like "mission accomplished."

0:02:32.000,0:02:35.000
So I might be doing something dumb, just like he was doing at the time.

0:02:35.000,0:02:39.000
But basically what I was talking about there we've now gotten to work.

0:02:39.000,0:02:43.000
And it's killing bacteria. It's eating them.

0:02:43.000,0:02:47.000
This thing can be stuck, like that little green triangle up there,

0:02:47.000,0:02:50.000
sort of symbolizing this right now.

0:02:50.000,0:02:53.000
You can stick this to something called a DNA aptamer.

0:02:53.000,0:02:55.000
And that DNA aptamer will attach specifically

0:02:55.000,0:02:57.000
to a target that you have selected for it.

0:02:57.000,0:03:01.000
So you can find a little feature on a bacterium that you don't like,

0:03:01.000,0:03:04.000
like Staphylococcus -- I don't like it in particular,

0:03:04.000,0:03:07.000
because it killed a professor friend of mine last year.

0:03:07.000,0:03:10.000
It doesn't respond to antibiotics. So I don't like it.

0:03:10.000,0:03:13.000
And I'm making an aptamer that will have this attached to it.

0:03:13.000,0:03:16.000
That will know how to find Staph when it's in your body,

0:03:16.000,0:03:19.000
and will alert your immune system to go after it.

0:03:19.000,0:03:22.000
Here's what happened. See that line on the very top

0:03:22.000,0:03:24.000
with the little dots?

0:03:24.000,0:03:27.000
That's a bunch of mice that had been poisoned

0:03:27.000,0:03:29.000
by our scientist friends down in Texas,

0:03:29.000,0:03:32.000
at Brooks Air Base, with anthrax.

0:03:32.000,0:03:35.000
And they had also been treated with a drug that we made

0:03:35.000,0:03:38.000
that would attack anthrax in particular,

0:03:38.000,0:03:40.000
and direct your immune system to it.

0:03:40.000,0:03:42.000
You'll notice they all lived, the ones on the top line --

0:03:42.000,0:03:44.000
that's a 100 percent survival rate.

0:03:44.000,0:03:47.000
And they actually lived another 14 days,

0:03:47.000,0:03:49.000
or 28 when we finally killed them,

0:03:49.000,0:03:52.000
and took them apart and figured out what went wrong.

0:03:52.000,0:03:54.000
Why did they not die?

0:03:54.000,0:03:57.000
And they didn't die because they didn't have anthrax anymore.

0:03:57.000,0:03:59.000
So we did it. Okay?

0:03:59.000,0:04:01.000
(Applause)

0:04:01.000,0:04:03.000
Mission accomplished!

0:04:03.000,0:04:10.000
(Applause)