A Conversation with Great Minds (17 May 2021)

distinguished colleagues ladies and gentlemen good evening good afternoon good morning wherever you are welcome to this special session of the 24th session of commission on science and technology for development cst this even conversation with great minds is an eagerly anticipated segment of our commission's annual session where we hear from eminent scientists including nobel laureates the conversation which is usually the curtain raiser for our annual session sets the tone for discussions on the pressing science and technology policies of old time our commission is known for stimulating discussions on what is new what matters what is changing what is the impact and how this affects development a sustainable future for all in this context two renowned scientists will momentarily discuss issues from the field of biotechnology i am delighted to introduce the esteemed speakers of our great minds for this year's session firstly i'm honored to introduce one of the co-pioneers of the revolutionary crispr gene editing technology 2020 nobel prize winner in chemistry dr jennifer doughtner of the university of california berkeley dr darwin welcome to the cs tv thank you i'm also honored to introduce our second speaker dr catalin corico senior vice president of biontech rna pharmaceutical company her research on the genetic technology messenger rna led to a breakthrough in fighting diseases including against the kobit-19 virus dr kariko welcome to the cstd thank you and i'm pleased to welcome back our winning journalist mr titi akinyan to moderate the conversation didi has been a star wars collaborator with the cstd having moderated the previous two conversations with great minds welcome back before i hand the flow to a moderator just a quick note on housekeeping this event is taking place on the zoom and is being live streamed on facebook after the initial conversation we might be able to make time for a couple of questions those who are connected to zoom can type their questions in the chat box and time permitting we can try to address one or two i'm now pleased to hand the floor to our moderator diddy you have the flow thank you very much and good morning distinguished ladies and gentlemen and for me welcome to the conversation with great minds my name is didi aquinolure and it's an honor to moderate this session ladies and gentlemen today we are living in a world where recent advances in biotechnology is allowing us to tackle some of the most complex health challenges from the revolutionary gene editing to crispr successfully used to develop rapid diagnostic tests for covid19 to messenger rna technology used to develop covid19 and cancer vaccines and that's not all the opportunities are there and the potential is huge these biotech innovations are known to have transformative potential for tackling various sustainable development areas from ebola cancer hiv malaria to a food insecurity to name a few biotechnology is a critical tool in achieving the sustainable development goals as these scientific advances have the potential to provide solutions to many of humanity's most pressing challenges but while they open up new avenues of promising research there are also concerns around inclusivity ethics and regulatory concerns there are questions that need to be answered and we must encourage an inclusive a global conversation around biotech innovation as this will inform public policy making especially for developing countries where many of the challenges that these technologies promise to address are prevalent so for the next 40 to 45 minutes it's an absolute pleasure to join in the conversation and to tap into the great minds of dr jennifer doudner and dr catalin carrico these are two powerful women breaking through the glass ceiling their contributions and scientific breakthroughs have in many ways allowed life to start to return to normal for some of us after months of the lingering culvert 19 pandemic dr jennifer with the crispr technology now used in developing rapid covid19 diagnostic tests and dr catelyn's decades of research on mrna a once dismissed idea now used in developing the pfizer biontech and moderna vaccines ladies and gentlemen once again please join me in welcoming dr jennifer doudner nobel laureate in chemistry from uc berkeley and dr catelyn carrico senior vice president at biontech rna pharmaceuticals i'd like to urge our great minds to keep your answers tight uh two to three to five minutes per on um answer would be an ideal time frame to keep in mind as we do have quite a lot to get through over the next forty to five um uh 45 minutes so let's kick things off i'll start with you uh dr jennifer as one of the co-inventors of crispr technology perhaps you could start by giving us background information on this technology where we are now with it and why it's so groundbreaking thank you dede for that fabulous introduction well the crispr technology is a way that scientists are now able to manipulate the dna in cells and organisms in a precise and programmable fashion so it's a tool that can be used to understand the function of genes like never before but importantly it can also be used to change the dna in cells in ways that will have clinical impact as well as important opportunity offering very important opportunities in agriculture as well and i'll just give one quick example it's already a technology that's being used clinically to treat sickle cell disease a disorder that has been known for a long time has a well-established genetic cause and crispr is being used to effectively cure this disease in multiple patients demonstrating the the future opportunities with this exciting technology right and dr jennifer i i have to say this you must be immensely proud of the contribution that this technology is making the fight against the covet 19 pandemic i mean the past 18 months have been tough for all of us and the pandemic is far from over in many parts of the world but perhaps you could put into a few words what the past 18 months have meant for you and your work been an extraordinary time as you said dede and i think for me it's been a great opportunity to pull together with my colleagues at the innovative genomics institute here in the san francisco bay area to create a clinical testing laboratory at uc berkeley that is providing a lot of the testing around our area for covid19 and also as you mentioned to develop new approaches to diagnostics for the future one of which is based on the crispr technology crispr was identified in research as and it's found in nature as an adaptive immune system and bacteria so it's quite appropriate i think to harness its its power now as a diagnostic tool for covert 19. now pretty much the same thing for you dr catalin for those who are perhaps unfamiliar with messenger rna technology perhaps you could tell us what it is why it's so groundbreaking uh in not just covet 19 vaccine development but in the development of cancer vaccines thank you so messenger rna itself was exactly was described 60 years ago actually in the nature of may 1961 and it took 20 some years we were be able or scientists were able to make mrna in a tube and later on very much depending on the delivery system they could introduce to the different type of cells and scientists for for decades tried to overexpress therapeutic proteins and other antigens and others uh therapeutic value and there was some problem with this immunogenicity that was was our contribution to it to make the mrna non-immunogenic and using this mrna like 15 years ago we uncovered that how to make it non-immunogenic you know other scientists and companies started to use it and for therapeutic purposes as well as for vaccines and the vaccine which was developed for the coronavirus against the coronaviruses was not the first one prior to that already human trial was made also with in against influenza with the same type of vaccine and for cancer there is a more than 20 years messenger rna was in use of course you know we have to identify the proper target so it's still a challenging part but many other application is already in clinical phase clinical trial where mrna sometimes you know polarization or sometimes induced immune reaction or just coding for a therapeutic protein and dr kazan like i mentioned at the start and i mean you just said it now you know you've been working on mrna technology for decades and your research was initially dismissed and here we are today reliant on this technology in the development of vaccines in the fight against the pandemic and your story is so inspiring and i'd really like you to share that back story or give us a summary that led to this remarkable breakthrough so the um messenger messenger rna because this is by nature is labeled actually the first paper is described at unstable you know and then it is really unstable but i try to see that there is an advantage something is not stable because many things including you know the spike protein we don't want to do the rest of our lives so it is good that it degrades the rna is gone and the protein is gone so um so those at the beginning people try to use it for gene therapy and and so they thought that you know this mrna is so labile even in the shelf life that it will be never be a medicine and um you know uh we try to prove it wrong and that what is important that uh you know i myself had always some colleagues who were enthusiastic and just like i was and then we proceeded and didn't listen too much those who said it cannot be done and we insisted to this project and and you know we had sometimes incremental uh improvement and sometimes a big jump and then it always gave us you know enough ammunition to keep going and improving the system fantastic now it's quite clear that these congratulations to both of you by the way it's quite clear that these biotech innovations are truly revolutionary but there are concerns around its use and let's look at the controversial side uh of things the use of crispr editing in humans is a controversial topic that's raised ethical concerns uh dr jennifer despite the fact that you have developed this technology what are some of your concerns around its use and what are the requirements for developing ethical frameworks well the crispr technology is extraordinarily powerful it's as we discussed a wonderful tool for research and for clinical use but it um it also brings along with it certain ethical considerations one is the potential to use crispr to make heritable changes in human beings that can be done by modifying the dna and embryos or eggs or sperm that are then used to create a pregnancy so this is a you know something that became clear very early in the development of the technology as a possibility and as many people may be aware it's actually been used in that fashion as was announced in late 2018 and so i'm i'm you know been very involved over the last few years in increasingly global discussions around this and um and the the need for the scientific community to pull together a set of of uh universal guidelines that will we hope really guide the use of the technology in ways that could cause uh real harm if used improperly and i'll just quickly mention another uh area of potential concern is the use of crispr in the environment to create changes that can spread quickly through a population for example of insects that could be beneficial if used to control the spread of disease for example mosquito-borne disease but could also be uh have environmental impacts if this led to um you know destruction of certain environmental niches right and dr catherine what are your thoughts around um developing ethical guidelines uh um that sometimes around you know biotech innovations you know because of you know the concerns that sometimes uh come hand in hand with these innovations i mean there are people concerned about even the vaccine the messenger rna vaccine that it will incorporate to the genome but obviously that we know that there is no precedent that rna from the cytoplasm would enter you know into the nuclei there is you know a process a biological process rather transcription incorporation so you know those who are not knowing the knowledge they don't have the knowledge that what it requires they just believe it and i try to explain scientifically to those that you know not to worry but because they do not understand any of those basic science so it is kind of ending up to who the person is believing whether i am believable saying that it won't happen and so if would happen you know all of mrna is in the nuclei they would incorporate to our our chromosome our chromosome will be so huge and would change everything you know that so so people are are concerned i can understand because they have black knowledge and we as a scientist and as yourself as a reporter we have to educate the public better and use terms and words that they understand and and maybe they will be not as much concerned if they are more educated yeah education is really important i mean um dr catherine i read that you know one of the reasons for the initial doubt uh surrounding mrna technology was the fact that um you know its use in animal studies triggered dangerous immune reactions um so you know i i guess this is all about finding ways to mitigate you know those risks that you know may happen so perhaps you could talk a little bit about you know what is being done at the moment of course you know you know you're still you're part of this very crucial in the research around um mrna so what are some of the steps that are being taken now to mitigate uh risks so so indeed the messenger rna was used even for vaccine in the 1993 for example but the messenger rna was so immunogenic and it was not a good vaccine so our uh finding that one of the building block the uridine is responsible for this immune activation we discovered that and we changed that and what we changed what we replaced this uridine which is the one of the base four nucleotide we changed with the pseudo-uridine which is an other form of uridine which is present in our body this is the pseudo-urine is the fifth most abundant nucleotide nucleoside in our body so we are not doing any chemical forain modification so it we made an rna and actually ten years later it was discovered that our messenger rna which is in our body coming out from the nuclei also has pseudo-uridine at the time when we incorporated that it was not known that naturally we have that so we are making an rna which is almost identical to what we have in our own bodies so there is not a foreignness to it it is everything is natural and and we are other structural element which we incorporated is now is also everything is a natural part the rna looks like a natural rna it is just the difference that we are delivering from outside but now that we're changing the urine from delivering outside from the cell the cell immune cells will not recognize that it is foreign and um i'd like to ask you the same thing dr jennifer you know what we must do to mitigate the risk because when you see you know headline especially concerns around gene editing that say you know gene editing could drive entire species extinct or create ecological disasters and you see that in the news it's very worrying but um what what do you think we should do to mitigate those types of risks well i agree with dr carrico that you know a lot of it comes down to education and making sure that it's clear um where the technology is today where it's headed uh what what's actually possible um and what's really science fiction so that so i think that's critical i also agree that we need to find ways to communicate about our science that are straightforward so we're not using language that is unclear using uh words that are unfamiliar to people because honestly in the end you know i think what both of us are doing is uh research that is is is very relatable to people because it really does come down to um you know using molecules that are you know naturally occurring and finding ways to use them to mitigate disease and to detect a disease in you know in in ways that are that are frankly quite safe if used appropriately absolutely i mean education is important and governments all over the world must educate um their people and everyone must you know try to understand this uh better and you know there are debates around politicians and regulation is another huge concern over how to uh regulate the research around biotech innovation uh dr catalin what type of enabling environment is needed to support such a breakthrough research and of course you know you've done you know so much research over decades you know in mrna um in other words what are the tools and policies that need to be in place to foster biotechnology innovation you know when i would say you know to have some money for research but in my life i got only one grant so it was still important that at least you know other people get again so that's that's fine and as long as you know they support the program then then it is good and uh so uh i don't uh i i find it you know that uh a lot of uh reading in in our sciences most of the thing is like onology that is there a precedent for that and then how we further uh come up with ideas and so education reading and um and practicing so for me for example even for education in elementor in high school was so critical that we did with our hands different things made crystals or took apart plants and and other things so that was the process and then of course in in the laboratory setting is you know practicing and good laboratory practice which helped and a lot of reading and i i was at the bench i was 58 years old i was still doing all of this experiment with my own hands of course because i didn't have money so i have no technicians so i did everything and it it i got a lot of ideas doing that so i don't know jennifer might have different experience what helps yeah jennifer perhaps we could you know get you in here as well um what are some of those tools and policies that you think need to be in place you know to foster these biotechnology innovations well i i think um it's probably fair to say that for both of us and our lines of work it was essential to have support whether it was financial or you know support in other ways that enabled us to do very fundamental research that ultimately led to these breakthroughs christopher is a you know a technology that came from curiosity driven science small science not big science right it was a small scale um you know trying to understand how bacteria fight viruses that type of question that led to the the breakthrough in using it as a technology and as we heard from dr carrico similarly with mrna vaccines it was research that goes back you know many years that invested in understanding how rna is recognized in cells how it's stabilized how it occurs naturally in our in our bodies as dr carrico explained so i think critically we have to have uh funding for that type of open-ended research but i'll also add that it's critical to also have ways to translate that into real world applications and you know in my case i'm you know i founded the innovative genomics institute at uc berkeley and ucsf for exactly that reason we're a non-profit organization within the university that helps scientists like me who do very fundamental work advance our discoveries in real world applications whether it's in clinical medicine or in agriculture and in the case of dr carrico obviously you know you have now you are now working a company that is at the front end of developing your own technology which is very exciting dr carrick would you like to talk about that as well tell us a little bit more so i have to tell you that moving from the university where you know academic setting more than 30 years and then going to a small company at that time bayern tech was a small company we didn't had a uh even a website and it was 2013. i was so delighted somewhat that you know the goal was not more paper another paper and other commitment something you know which was sometimes so distracted from the real science of people but the goal was we have to make something which is uh which is helpful useful and have somebody to you know and under those people are not asking that who made the drug just have some kind of drug that will help the person and it was also what was for delighted for me that everybody worked together there were not anymore that who's the last out of first outer and immediately we don't even start in academic work and already you know we are distracted that oh i'm not first one second one and what happens you know and it's because in in an academic setting you need to get the grant you have to be you know a lead out or the best paper and here there is no paper just some drug had to be useful and that everybody pulled together and then everybody is doing and that that was for me as a great delight that finally okay now we are doing this so i was so happy and i'm not mentioning now that with later with the large you know pharmaceutical company that their ability that how they can scale up how they can run a trial i mean everybody has their own role the university is more flexible small company can do the trans transformation translational part and then large company can seize and then help it and bring to the people so it was a delight this course yeah i mean i i like that you mentioned that because of course you know one of the concerns is you know how we scale these you know technologies in the first place uh you know so obviously when you have big you know private companies with lots of money um you know you can do this research over time over years you know lots of money can be pumped into it um and in in in some countries in the world you know which is probably moving you know two concerns around inequality um you know these types of you know big uh private companies are you know probably not you know in existence uh or they're not targeting those companies so um i guess my question for you then um jennifer is um i guess you could you know make a comment on on scaling these technologies and also scaling them to ensure um that nobody is left behind in this biotech revolution yeah that's a great point so let's go back to the example of sickle cell disease that i mentioned earlier as exciting as it is to see patients who are being cured using crispr that technology today costs about two million dollars a patient so it's clearly not not a sustainable not an affordable price point how do we get this to a point where it can help everybody who needs access to it and i believe it's kind of a two-pronged approach one is thinking about how we continue to develop the technology to be um more more accessible more widely available so one of the things we're doing at our institute here is focusing on the delivery technology for crispr how we can deliver it into patients without needing a bone marrow transplant for example would be very enabling and coming up with other simpler ways to introduce crispr into cells and tissues of clinical value i think will be really really important but along with that comes uh the scale as you mentioned that's not something that we do in academia very well we're just not it's just not you know we're not set up to to sort of scale up manufacturing the way one would need to again to help reduce cost there i think we need partnerships with companies and we have a number of ways that we're working with our our commercial partners to enable them to do the kind of scaling that ultimately will help drive down costs as well and i know um dr catelyn you know you've already talked about scale you know in scaling and you know working with um a you know big private company like um biotech but i i i want you to you know make a comment as well about you know scaling these technologies to ensure that you know other people are left um are not left out of this biotech revolution especially developing countries of the world so you know the innovation itself is important to um to include those other other countries so what what happened i would mention that 2013 the messenger rna therapy meeting was organized by kurvek and we gathered in uh in europe in germany later every other year in in the us and we are inviting people from all over the world who are starting to make rna and they need advice maybe they need how to scale up so they in these meetings who you know we include from korea iran and other other parts of the world they are coming and then they learn how to do messenger rna they might have a formulation and they want to do experiment and they can learn there from others they know that what is the regulation and how to develop a company so not just that providing some drug for them but learning so they are they will learn how to develop themselves and i thought that we always took care of small companies that could participate we introduced them the that what they do what they need and how to enter to trial and regulatory authorities are presenting on these meetings so last year it was virtual and 600 people you know participated and learned that if they have some kind of molecules whether they need rna and they already could get or whether they have formulation where they could get the rna or where they could get the formulation so so we we as a we became a messenger on a community and what is interesting is that the smaller companies or who are participating and organizing like bioenter moderna you know we are rooting for each other because we felt that if the rna fails in one company that it's kind of the rna fails and all of us fail so we make sure that everybody is doing uh good and valuable yeah and um fantastic and you know i want to touch on that as well with uh dr jennifer that you know education aspect um uh working with other scientists uh in development in developing countries or organizations in developing countries is this something that you've done or you're planning to do with the crispr technology at all so i personally have not done that i'm very interested in those opportunities and um i think it's been a little bit maybe early days um you know with with crispr up until now i think a lot of the you know we're still kind of really really developing the the technology at its fundamental uh levels and learning about its capabilities that being said i absolutely agree that we want to see this technology rolled out and labs around the world enabled to use it and to get access to it and what are the best ways to do that and i think again as you know as we heard it's i think it's very valuable to have meetings that are open to everyone that open up the opportunities to come and learn about this one of the great things about crispr actually is that it's a technology that is widely accessible it's you know that's one of the reasons it's been so transformative it's that it's not it's not expensive to get a hold of it it's uh not you know incredibly uh onerous to learn how to use it and so i do think it opens up the door to making it available globally uh faster than maybe certain other technologies have been uh opened right yeah please i did hear about that excellent and i mean we've talked about sort of private support so we have these big um tech companies investing in um these innovations uh but i wonder what you know what's coming when it comes to uh support from governments and you know the type of um experiences that you have you know working with the public sector because um you know one of the things that we want to do is you know to engage you know uh politicians to uh support um you know the research um a biotech research for national uh development so i want to talk uh of you to talk i'll start with you um dr catelyn um what should governments be doing here or what should politicians and i know that we have you know some of them you know uh listening what should they be doing here to support research of biotech innovations in order to promote the commercialization of scientific research it's a good question so so as i worked in the us and i work in europe now for eight years i can see a big difference that somehow that i don't know whether in the us they are teaching how to those who are working at the university if they have an idea you know spin out and they would receive support from maybe government as i also created a company once with drew weissman and we get government funding and so there is there is such uh such thing in the us and the and also the private investors are more likely to risk their money and there are almost you can see that people with ideas immediately forming a little company they are trying pushing and then somehow it is less so in in europe as i could see but maybe uh i am not i was not in an academic setting in europe but it seems seems to me that maybe somehow has to happen you know the [Music] innovation and giving money and supporting different ways you know here we are with jennifer both of us are women we have child and you know and maybe helping also the women on a way that they can return to to work for us and for this part maybe europe is better because here they have modernity leave and fraternity leave and they can be away for one year and and the system is more supportive for in europe in that aspect than in the us so yeah maybe both both sides can learn from the others and helping the women and also you know that they can be innovators and support financial support yeah yeah we're actually gonna you know touch on that you know you know being uh women and breaking through that glass ceiling but i want dr jennifer to you know touch on that question as well the types of support you've got from you know um from governments perhaps in the us uh what's been your experience it's uh it's very spotty in in the us in my experience and i think this is still the case that it's uh very much up to the individual institutions um regarding especially child care and affordability and access to child care i think you know things have gotten better over the time that i've been running an independent laboratory because when i started my career back in the mid 90s there was essentially no um provision made for maternity leave and certainly really none for paternity leave no one had really heard of that wow it's a it's a you know it's a common expectation that when a um you know a family expands new child is on the scene that you know both parents will have the opportunity to take time away for their family and that's not seen as a negative so i think that's been real progress but i still think there's work to be done in terms of making child care as you know as much as possible universally available and affordable yeah absolutely and i just wanted to ask one thing um what about from a regulatory environment you know so in terms of you know types of regulations because you you you hear a lot of you know developing countries talking about how they're not positioned um to benefit from advancements in biotechnology because there's just not a friendly regulatory environment that is provided so have you found it easier you know from say from a regulatory environment um in your research dr jennifer well in my experience um again it's kind of mixed you know i think that there's been a lot of interest in the in the crispr technology here in the u.s and i've been you know fortunate to attend a number of meetings at the food and drug administration for example who are very eager to learn about the capabilities of this technology and really think about how it will be regulated going forward what kinds of guidelines need to be in place for clinical trials for example that will apply to a you know a technology that is exciting partly because it can be personalized but that also raises various challenges when you think about how to do appropriate clinical trials for those kinds of applications the agricultural side just quickly i'll mention that uh you know i think there my institute here has been very involved in uh discussions with the us department of agriculture as well as with the number of agencies in europe and you may know that the regulatory framework around crispr and other genome manipulating technologies in agricultural products is quite different in different countries so that presents its own set of challenges yeah i want to ask sort of a very quick question um to each of you um it's really you know what's next what you know what is is next for your technologies what are you most excited about if you go into that in maybe 20 seconds starting with dr catelynn yeah so so that i am very excited about that mrna will code for therapeutic protein because this is what i wanted to do from day one i never wanted to do vaccine it is just happened this way so i am very optimistic about that and also at bayern tech with uh using messenger rna for to treat autoimmune disease and this is animal model where multiple sclerosis could be treated in an animal model and then you know many people you know waiting for that we would start a trial so i am excited about that all right and dr jennifer i'm excited about increasing opportunities to have an impact in medicine and in agriculture and frankly also in climate change using using crispr technology these are all opportunities that are now in front of us given the rapid advancement of this of this technology and as we discussed it's uh you know because it is available to laboratories globally it's a it really does invite global participation in that effort absolutely now i want to ask one final question before i throw this question to a q a because there are questions coming in and i want to leave five minutes for that but you know you're both successful women remarkable um incredibly inspiring achievements what is one tip that you would give to other female scientists that are inspired by your journey or story doctor catalin first [Music] we don't have the whole afternoon just one word just you know be themselves so and and you know doing uh their work and not influencing uh that was for me important that do not let other people define me and i knew that what i'm doing is important and then if people are saying otherwise that uh you know listen what they say but you know which is not constructive just forget it and don't bother with that all right and dr jennifer my advice would be never give up you have to have to have an idea and go after it and if you're convinced that your idea is worth pursuing you have to do that without uh being dissuaded by naysayers ah thank you so much um i just want to say a big thank you to both of you uh dr jennifer dalton and dr catherine carrico thank you for sharing your great minds with us today and for the revolutionary work that you have done and that you continue to do ladies and gentlemen and that's it from me i urge you to continue the conversation wherever you are so that together we can encourage further innovation in the biotech sector with the goal of achieving a better and more sustainable future for all my name is didi aquinole it's been an honor to be your moderator and i'll pass over now to peter i guess there are a few questions thank you thank you both catelyn and jennifer it was a great conversation uh i have a few questions i'm going to read out uh the first one i'm curious about president's opinion about open science and pattern waivers dr jennifer can you start sure so um yeah this is a very very interesting very important question because it does relate to access to technology development of technology crispr has been a very interesting case in point because it has a complicated patent landscape around it there's ongoing patent disputes about crispr uh i would just say that you know in my experience so far at least the those disputes have not impeded the progress of the science which is very important there still have been you know many many uh companies that have been founded and uh companies that have gotten access to crispr technology as well as lots of non-profit and academic groups that are using it so um in our case at least you know the the science really does proceed regardless of the um the patent situation thank you catalin yes i am sure that in the mrna field is the same so the science can progress and people can make messenger rna test it out for different applications i know that it has some kind of edge here related to the accessibility of the vaccine for all but i also you know carefully read about right now that maybe making it free for all is not the best way to provide as quickly as possible for vaccine for all of the others because you know maybe it is very popular answer to say but i understand that what it takes to make a vaccine and and right now the companies large companies in the position to to provide and so but i i i'm not an expert you know i am a biochemist and i don't try to be you know expert on everything yeah well the next question how do you see the advancement in computing such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing affect the future of drug discovery and biotechnology wow so who will take it first artificial intelligence quantum computing could it affect your field and if so in what way i mean we are using and and of course it improves selecting uh epitopes and others you know learning from the clinical results and seeing that how we can improve the better selection for the epitopes for cancer treatment and others of course has important role you agree with that jennifer yeah i do agree that in in our field artificial intelligence you know algorithms are being used increasingly to mine out the kind of data that are coming from crispr based studies that help us understand better not not only the function of individual genes but really how they interact and you know how they affect um you know everything from disease phenotypes to the way that any individual will respond to particular types of therapies and drugs so it's uh i i just see it playing an increasing role honestly in in the development of therapeutics thank you well uh i think uh first of all i thank diddy and i think we have covered a lot this afternoon and uh i'm really very grateful to you uh thank you uh dr doughtner thank you dr carrico for your presence and for your your ideas and exchange and uh as you know the whole session has been recorded so probably uh those who didn't have the chance to to follow us they can view it and i thank all the viewers who joined us thank you and have a nice day wherever you are thank you goodbye thank you thank you

2021-05-23 16:02

Other news