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TEDx Talks
Published: 2017-08-25
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVeARm_zvWk
cancer it's everywhere literally if I can ask all of the women in this room to take a look to your right take a look at your left one of the three of you will have cancer in your lifetime if I can get the man to take a look to your right and that's all you need to do one of the two of you will have cancer
in your lifetime now let's try it this way if you know someone who has cancer raise your hand and keep it up please if you know someone who has had cancer raise your hand keep all your hands on look around the room and while the statistics show that there's an increase in the number of people who have cancer we also know but nobody touched by this
disease is simply a statistic I like most of you has have have had my own touch points with cancer and that's one of the reasons why I'm standing here with you today now I have to be honest on paper it might look a little strange and that this liberal arts graduate who learned Russian when I was in middle school high school and college because I wanted
to be a CIA agent terms stay at home mom who became an entrepreneur who got into politics a little bit and then went back to my entrepreneurial roots seems strange I suppose that I would be standing here running a biotech today I found my way into running a biotech because I wanted to use my unique skill sets to advance a technology that can bend the curve
on cancer the hidden link in everything that I've done in my career comes down to three peas people possibility and promise and one of the first questions I asked you highlighted a dire set of statistics my talk today I hope it is not as depressing as that might have sounded the fact is is that even though cancer rates are increasing the number of cancer survivors are
also increasing as the cancer death rate is going down we are finally turning the corner on cancer and the trends show that progress is being made but there is a lot left to do today I want to share a message about an ultra small technology that can have a huge impact a message of hope not hope that is a faraway dream for the next generation but
hope that is here now and delivered in a way that used to be the stuff of science fiction some of you are you may remember a movie called the fantastic voyage from the late nineteen sixties I have to admit I wasn't born then %HESITATION but is the youngest of eight was six older brothers I often saw movies that %HESITATION many girls my age never imagined they
would see take a look but now a film called fantastic voyage has broken through in an unexpected direction create an adventure of astonishing suspense and beauty one of the medical show of the four men and a beautiful go off on a fantastic voyage actually entering inside the human body exploring an unknown universe no I don't remember that will be four men in a beautiful girl so
the movie is about the crew of a miniature submarine and the shrink to microscopic size and they are sent into the body of an injured scientists to fix a clot in his brain the submarine is literally injected into the scientists and they have one hour to fix the one because if they don't think the blood clot will revert back to the regular size Susan you can
imagine that would not have turned out well himself no happen this movie at the time was absolutely fan in terms of what he was trying to communicate putting aside the bad special effects just for a moment I ask you to not dismiss the idea concretely the good news is that we don't have to shrink anybody we do need however smart vessels that have the ability to
deliver drugs directly to a certain spot in the body as if the doctor was right there just like the fantastic voyage surmised so the concept of ultra small solutions like those found in nanotechnology are not tomorrow's science they're here today it's not science fiction in labs in Minnesota in well beyond these technologies are being developed and neither technology can provide solutions that were only previously just
dreamed about and the potential for nanotechnology in health care it's extremely exciting so you might ask why wine with all of the money being spent on research and development why are those the disease is continuing to out pace the solutions to be sure there's progress being made but the body is a worthy adversary and fundamentally improving treatments for challenging diseases such as cancer have had a
rough pathway so it should be no surprise because the body is a complex place the body has tremendous ability to fight off diseases and here's the diseases are smart they find ways around the body's defenses by either impacting jeans over time or manipulating the body's defenses are finding ways to get past them and it takes drugs that are just as smart drugs that are targeted to
specific cells and drugs that have the ability to get there essentially it comes down to this if a drug cannot be delivered in a way that they can target a specific disease cell we won't be able to treat that disease specifically and if you can target the disease cell but you don't have the ability to deliver that drug so we can reach that disease sound we
won't be able to treat that either if you can target it and have the ability to reach that disease cell but you can't get inside of it to deliver to the drug specifically inside of that cell you won't be able to treat it effectively if you can't treat it effectively you can't beat it that's the challenge that we're facing billions of dollars are being spent to
develop drugs that fight diseases but this will not be well spent unless we also advanced solutions that have the capabilities of getting these new drugs to where they need to go in the body and that's why precision targeted ultra small vessels not to my nanotechnology have been developed by other companies like ours in the scientists across the country these developments are revolutionary and critical let's connect
the dots and nanotechnology and how it can be used in healthcare magic's nanotechnology with a brain I nano capsule that effectively is programs you find a specific disease based on what we put on the outside of the nanoparticle this old your small mammal capsule then he is designed with the ability to navigate the body's main and to find it through its stealth pathways to get past
the liver which by the way is the area that stalls many therapeutic advancements so this now counsel has the ability to get beyond the liver and the liver cells directly into a disease sell only while leaving healthy cells alone these type of treatments should lower toxicity and bad side effects an improved outcomes for patients so in order to give you a little context on size of
the nanoparticles because I untie you it's really crazy when you think of household they really are take a look at those vile it's about a third full up to about here it contains over ten million or ten billion excuse me yeah particles pretty darn small ten million nanoparticles what's interesting about that is that's ten billion vehicles for delivering here's for cancer and other diseases what we're
talking about creating the therapies for cancer or other genetic diseases at every turn self specific it targeted drug delivery could be transformative yesterday is fantastic voyage that we all got in chuckle honor of on the screen I sneeze Nina therapeutics these solutions can happen and the solutions are happening nanotechnology it's small but its potential may pack a punch to knock out cancer using nanotechnology we are
on the cusp okay needling precision targeted drug delivery in a way that can catalyze the next generation of new therapeutics so to finish us off I'm gonna have you engage with me again and having all please stand up if you could if you if you were also in twenty thirty no man or the woman standing next you may still likely have had cancer but in twenty
thirty when the ten X. attendees stand here and look to their rights and look to their left with delivery platforms driven by nano technology like those are scientists have developed there is a powerful chance that each and everyone of you could be standing next to a cancer survivor or be that survivor yourself we can do better and we will do better the life of every third
