WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 So it was about four years ago, five years ago, 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:05.000 I was sitting on a stage in Philadelphia, I think it was, 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:08.000 with a bag similar to this. 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:11.000 And I was pulling a molecule out of this bag. 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:14.000 And I was saying, you don't know this molecule really well, 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:17.000 but your body knows it extremely well. 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:21.000 And I was thinking that your body hated it, at the time, 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:24.000 because we are very immune to this. This is called alpha-gal epitope. 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:28.000 And the fact that pig heart valves have lots of these on them 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:32.000 is the reason that you can't transplant a pig heart valve into a person easily. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:32.000 --> 00:00:34.000 Actually our body doesn't hate these. 00:00:34.000 --> 00:00:37.000 Our body loves these. It eats them. 00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:40.000 I mean, the cells in our immune system are always hungry. 00:00:40.000 --> 00:00:44.000 And if an antibody is stuck to one of these things 00:00:44.000 --> 00:00:47.000 on the cell, it means "that's food." 00:00:47.000 --> 00:00:49.000 Now, I was thinking about that and I said, you know, we've got this 00:00:49.000 --> 00:00:52.000 immune response to this ridiculous molecule 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:56.000 that we don't make, and we see it a lot in other animals and stuff. 00:00:56.000 --> 00:00:59.000 But I said we can't get rid of it, 00:00:59.000 --> 00:01:01.000 because all the people who tried to transplant heart valves 00:01:01.000 --> 00:01:03.000 found out you can't get rid of that immunity. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:03.000 --> 00:01:05.000 And I said, why don't you use that? 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:08.000 What if I could stick this molecule, 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:10.000 slap it onto a bacteria 00:01:10.000 --> 00:01:14.000 that was pathogenic to me, that had just invaded my lungs? 00:01:14.000 --> 00:01:16.000 I mean I could immediately tap into 00:01:16.000 --> 00:01:18.000 an immune response that was already there, 00:01:18.000 --> 00:01:21.000 where it was not going to take five or six days to develop it -- 00:01:21.000 --> 00:01:24.000 it was going to immediately attack whatever this thing was on. 00:01:24.000 --> 00:01:26.000 It was kind of like the same thing that happens when you, 00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:30.000 like when you're getting stopped for a traffic ticket in L.A., 00:01:30.000 --> 00:01:33.000 and the cop drops a bag of marijuana in the back of your car, 00:01:33.000 --> 00:01:36.000 and then charges you for possession of marijuana. 00:01:36.000 --> 00:01:40.000 It's like this very fast, very efficient way to get people off the street. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:42.000 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:42.000 --> 00:01:44.000 So you can take a bacteria 00:01:44.000 --> 00:01:46.000 that really doesn't make these things at all, 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:48.000 and if you could clamp these on it really well 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:50.000 you have it taken off the street. 00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:52.000 And for certain bacteria 00:01:52.000 --> 00:01:54.000 we don't have really efficient ways to do that anymore. 00:01:54.000 --> 00:01:56.000 Our antibiotics are running out. 00:01:56.000 --> 00:01:59.000 And, I mean, the world apparently is running out too. 00:01:59.000 --> 00:02:02.000 So probably it doesn't matter 50 years from now -- 00:02:02.000 --> 00:02:05.000 streptococcus and stuff like that will be rampant -- 00:02:05.000 --> 00:02:07.000 because we won't be here. But if we are -- 00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:09.000 (Laughter) 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:11.000 we're going to need something to do with the bacteria. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:15.000 So I started working with this thing, 00:02:15.000 --> 00:02:17.000 with a bunch of collaborators. 00:02:17.000 --> 00:02:20.000 And trying to attach this to things that were 00:02:20.000 --> 00:02:24.000 themselves attached to certain specific target zones, 00:02:24.000 --> 00:02:26.000 bacteria that we don't like. 00:02:26.000 --> 00:02:30.000 And I feel now like George Bush. 00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:32.000 It's like "mission accomplished." 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:35.000 So I might be doing something dumb, just like he was doing at the time. 00:02:35.000 --> 00:02:39.000 But basically what I was talking about there we've now gotten to work. 00:02:39.000 --> 00:02:43.000 And it's killing bacteria. It's eating them. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:43.000 --> 00:02:47.000 This thing can be stuck, like that little green triangle up there, 00:02:47.000 --> 00:02:50.000 sort of symbolizing this right now. 00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:53.000 You can stick this to something called a DNA aptamer. 00:02:53.000 --> 00:02:55.000 And that DNA aptamer will attach specifically 00:02:55.000 --> 00:02:57.000 to a target that you have selected for it. 00:02:57.000 --> 00:03:01.000 So you can find a little feature on a bacterium that you don't like, 00:03:01.000 --> 00:03:04.000 like Staphylococcus -- I don't like it in particular, 00:03:04.000 --> 00:03:07.000 because it killed a professor friend of mine last year. 00:03:07.000 --> 00:03:10.000 It doesn't respond to antibiotics. So I don't like it. 00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:13.000 And I'm making an aptamer that will have this attached to it. 00:03:13.000 --> 00:03:16.000 That will know how to find Staph when it's in your body, 00:03:16.000 --> 00:03:19.000 and will alert your immune system to go after it. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:19.000 --> 00:03:22.000 Here's what happened. See that line on the very top 00:03:22.000 --> 00:03:24.000 with the little dots? 00:03:24.000 --> 00:03:27.000 That's a bunch of mice that had been poisoned 00:03:27.000 --> 00:03:29.000 by our scientist friends down in Texas, 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:32.000 at Brooks Air Base, with anthrax. 00:03:32.000 --> 00:03:35.000 And they had also been treated with a drug that we made 00:03:35.000 --> 00:03:38.000 that would attack anthrax in particular, 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:40.000 and direct your immune system to it. 00:03:40.000 --> 00:03:42.000 You'll notice they all lived, the ones on the top line -- 00:03:42.000 --> 00:03:44.000 that's a 100 percent survival rate. 00:03:44.000 --> 00:03:47.000 And they actually lived another 14 days, 00:03:47.000 --> 00:03:49.000 or 28 when we finally killed them, 00:03:49.000 --> 00:03:52.000 and took them apart and figured out what went wrong. 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:54.000 Why did they not die? 00:03:54.000 --> 00:03:57.000 And they didn't die because they didn't have anthrax anymore. 00:03:57.000 --> 00:03:59.000 So we did it. Okay? NOTE Paragraph 00:03:59.000 --> 00:04:01.000 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:04:01.000 --> 00:04:03.000 Mission accomplished! NOTE Paragraph 00:04:03.000 --> 00:04:10.000 (Applause)