Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff. This is the story, and today
Speaker 1: I'm here with Cara Price. Hey os Hey, Cara. This
Speaker 1: week's story is one that is quite personal to me,
Speaker 1: and it has to do with the technology that we
Speaker 1: use to detect and treat cancer.
Speaker 2: You know, I think cancer is unfortunately one of those
Speaker 2: things that many people have confronted. Even if you have
Speaker 2: never received a cancer diagnosis, many people have watched loved
Speaker 2: ones struggle to overcome the disease.
Speaker 1: That's right, and my parents separated when I was very
Speaker 1: very young one. In fact, my parents are sort lived
Speaker 1: in different countries, so I was often shuttling around between
Speaker 1: them in the company of a nanny who was essentially
Speaker 1: a third parent, and she unfortunately got with breast cancer
Speaker 1: that was detected too late. She had a double mistectomy,
Speaker 1: but the cancer already metastasized and she died. And it's
Speaker 1: one of the great sadnesses of my life.
Speaker 2: In fact, I'm sorry to hear that, you know, it's
Speaker 2: unfortunately an all too common story.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. So I got connected with this guy called Andre
Speaker 1: Zor a few months ago, and he's a biochemist and
Speaker 1: also the co founder of a company called Loomis cell
Speaker 1: which is a company that's changing how cancer surgeries are performed.
Speaker 1: So I was pretty intrigued.
Speaker 2: So can you just explain to me what is wrong
Speaker 2: with the way that surgeries are being done now?
Speaker 1: Well, I was pretty surprised to hear from andre that
Speaker 1: cancer surgery isn't as precise as perhaps we might imagine
Speaker 1: or hope. He says that there's actually a fair amount
Speaker 1: of art to the science of detecting and then removing
Speaker 1: tumors in surgery.
Speaker 3: I think it's one of those dirty secrets in medicine
Speaker 3: that people don't really realize. Cancer surgery is extraordinarily imprecise,
Speaker 3: and even the best surgeons in the world will miss
Speaker 3: cancer because, contrary to common perception, cancer cells are really
Speaker 3: not that.
Speaker 4: Different from normal tissue.
Speaker 3: It's very difficult to tell in real time during a surgery,
Speaker 3: with everything going on, where does the tumorand and the
Speaker 3: healthy tissue start.
Speaker 1: In fact, Andrei told me that the best cancer surgeons
Speaker 1: are considered the best because they're so good at detecting
Speaker 1: where the cancerous tissue ends and where the healthy tissue begins.
Speaker 1: This is through a process called palpating, which is basically
Speaker 1: a fancy way of saying feeling out by touch, the
Speaker 1: difference between healthy cells and cancerus cells.
Speaker 3: I've been there, and I've tried, and I can't feel
Speaker 3: a damn thing. It's not something that the untrained fingers
Speaker 3: are able to detect. But all of the world's best
Speaker 3: surgeons is able to tell whether there's cancer left behind
Speaker 3: by pile paiding around where the primary tumor was and
Speaker 3: deciding in real time whether more tissue needs to be
Speaker 3: taken out or not. But most cancer surgeries are imperfect,
Speaker 3: and on average, if we look at all cancer surgeries,
Speaker 3: thirty to forty percent of the time, thirty to forty
Speaker 3: percent of the time there will be cancer left behind,
Speaker 3: not on purpose, unintentionally.
Speaker 2: That seems like a high percentage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, of course, is not to say that
Speaker 1: cancer surgery is ineffective. Alongside drugs, these procedures have saved
Speaker 1: millions of lives in the past few decades. Andrew thinks
Speaker 1: we can do better and save more lives, and so
Speaker 1: he set out to solve this problem, and his company
Speaker 1: has now created a technology to more precisely detect cancerous tissue.
Speaker 1: It's called Loomis cell, and so far it's being used
Speaker 1: to treat breast cancer patients. But Andre doesn't want to
Speaker 1: stop at just one type of cancer. He wants to
Speaker 1: treat them all, and he has a deeply personal reason
Speaker 1: to do so. He told me that he watched one
Speaker 1: of the women who he loved most in his life,
Speaker 1: a woman he grew up with, suffer from an unsuccessful
Speaker 1: avarian cancer treatment. Andre tells it best, So here's the
Speaker 1: rest of our conversation. And I've lived through the tragedy
Speaker 1: of an unsuccessful cancer treatment, and so of you, and
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if you could tell that story.
Speaker 3: It was one of those incredibly sad stories that her
Speaker 3: cancer was called relatively late. It was a varian cancer,
Speaker 3: and he was a varian cancer that had metastasized to.
Speaker 4: What we call the peroneal cavity.
Speaker 3: That is the cavity where all the reproductive organs of
Speaker 3: the women are, as well as several other Bible ord
Speaker 3: And there is really no way to identify where cancer
Speaker 3: has metastasized in the peritoneal cavity other than palpating around
Speaker 3: and trying to figure out where the cancer is. And unfortunately,
Speaker 3: more often than not, they failed. The vast majority of
Speaker 3: times they failed.
Speaker 1: What was the name of the friend that you lost.
Speaker 4: Her name was Monica.
Speaker 1: If I remember from our last conversation, though, you really
Speaker 1: lived through the journey with Monic current and you may
Speaker 1: have promised to her, I think before she passed away.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was one of these things that you never forget,
Speaker 3: you know, we went through this journey together.
Speaker 4: She was in Mexico at the time I was here
Speaker 4: in Boston, and so.
Speaker 3: Because I was privileged to work with a lot of
Speaker 3: top physicians in the field, I was able to put
Speaker 3: her in contact with some of the best doctors in
Speaker 3: the varian cancer and you know, the incredible team at
Speaker 3: MD Anderson was able to extend her life by almost
Speaker 3: nine months, which is unheard of or a stage four
Speaker 3: over a cancer patient. She had just had a baby, Emilia,
Speaker 3: who unfortunately grew up not knowing his mom. Her doctor,
Speaker 3: David at m D Anderson said, look, we're at the
Speaker 3: end of the line here, We're done here, and she
Speaker 3: needs to find peace on the fact that she fought
Speaker 3: with all her will, but it's time for her to
Speaker 3: let go. And so I flew to Mexico City and
Speaker 3: the whole family was there and we're talking, and you know,
Speaker 3: she was making jokes, and then at some point we
Speaker 3: were left alone and she said, I don't understand the
Speaker 3: why why aren't we doing better? Why is in the
Speaker 3: field doing something that will give women like me who
Speaker 3: just gave birth to beautiful, healthy baby, the opportunity to
Speaker 3: leave longer to do something with our lives. Why why
Speaker 3: aren't you doing more? And I said, well, you know,
Speaker 3: it's a combination of factors where she's like, look, I
Speaker 3: don't want to hear you have to promise me, and
Speaker 3: I did that you're going to do everything in your power,
Speaker 3: everything you can to make sure this doesn't ever happen
Speaker 3: again to another woman. That when a woman gets diagnosed
Speaker 3: with a variant cancer, breast cancer, correctal cancer, whatever it
Speaker 3: may be, and they tell her that she needs to
Speaker 3: go to surgery, that they're not going to tell her
Speaker 3: at the end of the surgery what they told me,
Speaker 3: which is there's some cancer left behind and you have
Speaker 3: weeks to leave. You have to promise me that you're
Speaker 3: going to do everything in your power and you're not
Speaker 3: going to rest until you have figured out a solution
Speaker 3: to this. And I did. I, you know, held her
Speaker 3: hand in mind, and I said, I promise you.
Speaker 4: I will do that.
Speaker 3: She passed away a few weeks later. We didn't discuss
Speaker 3: this ever again, and you know, it was kind of
Speaker 3: stuck in the back of my mind for a couple
Speaker 3: of years. So I was like, Okay, well I made
Speaker 3: this promise. And then you know, I met my co
Speaker 3: founder David. He had just lost his wife to breast cancer,
Speaker 3: and I saw the opportunity to partner up with.
Speaker 4: Somebody who was as heart and as deeply.
Speaker 3: Moved by the fact that we can do better by
Speaker 3: these women, that we can't do better by their families,
Speaker 3: and you know, we have the power to do something
Speaker 3: to change it.
Speaker 4: And so that's how a fifteen year journey started.
Speaker 1: Fifteen years almost to the date. Let's talk about what
Speaker 1: is loumicell, What does it do, how does it work.
Speaker 3: What we know is that if you catch cancer early,
Speaker 3: surgery can be curative if you get all the cancer
Speaker 3: cells out, But most cancer surgeries are imperfect. When you
Speaker 3: do a breast conserving surgery, the problem is that thirty
Speaker 3: to forty percent of the time, the surgeon will inadvertently
Speaker 3: leave cancer cells behind. So what loomicell does, for the
Speaker 3: first time in history is it gives the surgeons a guideline,
Speaker 3: a signal where they are able to identify in real
Speaker 3: time during the surgery whether there are cancer cells left
Speaker 3: behind or not. How well, you get a Nobel Price
Speaker 3: winner and you get a couple of really smart people
Speaker 3: from MIT, and you define the problem. And that's what
Speaker 3: people from MIT do. They go and solve problems, right,
Speaker 3: And so in this case, Munjigu Weendi, Jorge Ferreer and
Speaker 3: David Leif they sort of joined me in this journey
Speaker 3: and said, all right, well, we need something that is
Speaker 3: extraordinarily safe, inexpensive that can be injected before surgery and
Speaker 3: will give surgeons the ability to make cancer cells illuminate,
Speaker 3: be fluorescent under normal light.
Speaker 4: Only it's purple light.
Speaker 3: And so the surgeon will switch off the big lamp
Speaker 3: that you see on the ceiling on the operating room,
Speaker 3: and the device that we use has purple light coming
Speaker 3: out of it, and when it hits the cells that
Speaker 3: are cancers, those cells fluores back and can be detected
Speaker 3: and displayed on the screen so the surgeon can take
Speaker 3: action immediately. The way it works at the molecular level
Speaker 3: is proteins have a function, and if you can tailor
Speaker 3: protein function you can make some real magic happen. And
Speaker 3: so what we do is we take advantage of a
Speaker 3: protein that is abundant in cancer cells. It's a protein
Speaker 3: that cancer cells use to cut tissue that is surrounding
Speaker 3: the tumor. One of the most important features of cancer
Speaker 3: is that it destroys its environment so that it can grow.
Speaker 4: Otherwise it just doesn't grow right.
Speaker 3: And so we detect that protein by providing it something
Speaker 3: too cut. And when it cuts that substrate that we provide,
Speaker 3: that's when light happens. Think about one of those little
Speaker 3: sticks that you use, a glow stick, right that when
Speaker 3: you crack it, it emits light. Well, the same but
Speaker 3: at a molecular level. When you crack this little mini
Speaker 3: glow stick, and the only way to crack it is
Speaker 3: by a protein that is primarily expressed in cancer cells,
Speaker 3: it gives you a luminous signal.
Speaker 1: So you're injecting a substance into the patients, which you
Speaker 1: know that the cancer will destroy. When it destroys the substance,
Speaker 1: it emits this light, which is visible under purple light.
Speaker 1: Correct well, and where are you on delivering on that promise?
Speaker 3: So we were incredibly fortunate that the FDA approved this
Speaker 3: product last year. Hospitals started using it in the first
Speaker 3: quarter of this year, and it's being used now at
Speaker 3: several hospitals across the US.
Speaker 4: Stanford was the first adopter.
Speaker 3: There are three surgeons at Stanford that are essentially doing
Speaker 3: every single cancer surgery that they do using the Loomi
Speaker 3: cell technology.
Speaker 1: Breast cancer surgery or beyond breast cancer.
Speaker 4: Breast cancer.
Speaker 3: At this point, of course, the journey will continue for
Speaker 3: a long time because I'm not going to rest until
Speaker 3: we are successful in a varian cancer.
Speaker 4: Ovarian cancer.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, in the list of difficult cancers to treat, ovarian
Speaker 3: cancer is kind of at the top of one of
Speaker 3: the hardest ones to treat, right up there next to
Speaker 3: brain cancer and so on. And so right now there's
Speaker 3: trials on going on sophageal called recto prostate cancer and
Speaker 3: so on, and eventually we will get two complicated things
Speaker 3: like brain cancer and varian cancer. But to know that
Speaker 3: patients are going in big academic cancer centers like Stanford
Speaker 3: and relatively small regional hospitals like Baker in Florida, and
Speaker 3: patients are going in there and they're leaving the surgery
Speaker 3: room and the doctor is saying we got it all.
Speaker 3: And when they say we got it all, before they
Speaker 3: had a seventy percent certainty that they got it all
Speaker 3: based on our clinical data. Now they have like a
Speaker 3: ninety eight percent.
Speaker 4: Certainty that they did in fact get it on.
Speaker 1: What did it feel like to watch the technology being
Speaker 1: deployed for the first time?
Speaker 3: You know, you can never get over the loss, especially
Speaker 3: the loss of somebody as incredible, as beautiful, as full
Speaker 3: of energy and love and life as Monica was. There's
Speaker 3: nothing that will ever substitute for having her around. There's
Speaker 3: nothing that will fill that hole. But to fulfill a
Speaker 3: promise that it's made under those conditions is one of
Speaker 3: the most gratifying things that you can do in life, right,
Speaker 3: because it's not an empty promise. This is not going
Speaker 3: to benefit hurt, It's not going to benefit me. It's
Speaker 3: going to benefit hopefully millions of people.
Speaker 4: Who who get the news that they have cancer and
Speaker 4: that they need to have surgery. That is unique.
Speaker 3: And while it doesn't make up for the loss of
Speaker 3: somebody that you love, the fact that you got fifteen
Speaker 3: years worth of disappointments and failure and restarts and falling
Speaker 3: down having to get up again, because you have this
Speaker 3: energy that is propelled by the problems that you made.
Speaker 3: I don't think that there's any other motivation that is
Speaker 3: as strong as that. It is that kind of energy
Speaker 3: that's like I can't quit. I don't have the right
Speaker 3: to quit ever.
Speaker 1: Zooming out a little bit to the wider field of
Speaker 1: technology and cancer, I mean, you laid it out, I
Speaker 1: think very well. Which is better detection allows for earlier intervention? Obviously?
Speaker 1: You know nowadays in the US, one and eight women
Speaker 1: are expected to be diagnosed with breast cancer at some
Speaker 1: point in their lives, but the mortality rate has been
Speaker 1: in steady decline. Where are we on the bigger picture
Speaker 1: of beating cancer? I mean where there was an article
Speaker 1: in the New York And not too long ago about
Speaker 1: how detection is getting better but doesn't necessarily mean better outcomes.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of excitement around you know, AI, personalized drugs.
Speaker 1: You know, taking a step back, what is the state
Speaker 1: of the nation, of the wider field of technology's ability
Speaker 1: to kill cancer?
Speaker 4: You're right to take a wider view, right, We're going
Speaker 4: to live longer.
Speaker 3: And most mechanical things we will be able to fix,
Speaker 3: including the heart, which at the end is a mechanical pump.
Speaker 3: So cancer is the ultimate frontier if we continue to
Speaker 3: improve our health as a society or be sitting the
Speaker 3: US notwithstanding because that's a problem. But you know, if
Speaker 3: you look at the rest of the world, people are
Speaker 3: living longer and longer, and cancer is becoming the primary
Speaker 3: cause of death, and so at some point we have
Speaker 3: to address this in a much more efficient manner than
Speaker 3: we are today. We have some wonderful drugs, and I'm
Speaker 3: not against drugs at all. In fact, some cancers there's
Speaker 3: nothing you can do surgery wise, and you have to
Speaker 3: use drugs. So we are making significant advances and eventually
Speaker 3: we will find drugs that are highly specific that are
Speaker 3: going to be able to target cancer cells in ways
Speaker 3: that we couldn't imagine ten years ago without the side
Speaker 3: effects that we used to have with raw chemotherapy. But
Speaker 3: I believe and I think most physicians will agree that
Speaker 3: surgery will remain the front line way to deal with
Speaker 3: cancer for the simple fact that if you have to
Speaker 3: kill cancer cells, it's better to kill less cells, and
Speaker 3: the more you can get out of the body, the
Speaker 3: less cells you have to kill later on. And if
Speaker 3: you can ensure that you didn't leave any cells in
Speaker 3: the primary tumor site, then you're going to be better off.
Speaker 3: And there's no question about that. So my prediction is
Speaker 3: we will see cancer quote unquote end within our lifetimes.
Speaker 1: That's a big prediction.
Speaker 4: I think it's going to happen.
Speaker 3: I think our understanding of biology, the biology of cancer
Speaker 3: over the next forty years is going to get us
Speaker 3: to the point where we can address cancer very very
Speaker 3: effectively through a combination of surgery and incredibly targeted therapies.
Speaker 1: How big a role do you think lo Miiselle could
Speaker 1: play in that.
Speaker 3: I think lou Miisell will become the center of care
Speaker 3: for cancer surgery for all cancers. I do believe that
Speaker 3: we do. In the US, we do about a million
Speaker 3: to two million cancer surgeries every single year. That's across
Speaker 3: all cancers. Breast cancer is one of the highest ones,
Speaker 3: with three hundred thousand surgeries a year. I would say
Speaker 3: that this year we're probably going to do a couple
Speaker 3: of thousand surgeries, and then that is going.
Speaker 4: To grow pretty quickly from there. So right now we.
Speaker 3: Are in either full use or testing at about a
Speaker 3: dozen hospitals in the US. We expect to be in
Speaker 3: about twenty to thirty hospitals by the end of the year,
Speaker 3: and the projection for the following years to be at.
Speaker 4: About one hundred health centers across the United States.
Speaker 1: And if lou Misselle doesn't become the standard of care
Speaker 1: for cancer surgery, why will that be What would have happened,
Speaker 1: would have.
Speaker 3: Gone wrong, because somebody will come up with a better
Speaker 3: solution and that will.
Speaker 4: Be a happy day. Technology is only as good as
Speaker 4: technology is good. Right. We all used to use AOL At.
Speaker 3: One point, I still have a Yahue email account, and
Speaker 3: I may be one of the only ones left. And
Speaker 3: then technology got better and everybody moved to something else,
Speaker 3: and that's entirely fine.
Speaker 4: That's what we want. We want to create ever rising bars.
Speaker 3: So that people get over them. We don't create barriers
Speaker 3: so that people can't get over them. We create barriers
Speaker 3: so that stronger will.
Speaker 1: Prevail after the break. How Andrea is working to improve
Speaker 1: another industry, our food system.
Speaker 5: Stay with us.
Speaker 1: I'd have to know a bit more about you and
Speaker 1: what brought you to the field of biotechnology.
Speaker 3: You know, I grew up in Mexico City, not really
Speaker 3: knowing what I wanted to do.
Speaker 4: With my life.
Speaker 3: I always thought I wanted to be a doctor. I
Speaker 3: had the opportunity, after finishing college in Mexico to come
Speaker 3: to Boston and become.
Speaker 4: A part of M I. T. And Harvard, which.
Speaker 3: Opened up an entire new universe of of what could
Speaker 3: be done with biology. Very early on, I got interested
Speaker 3: in a very specialized field, which is how proteins, which
Speaker 3: of course are the building blocks of nature, how their
Speaker 3: structure relates to their funk. And it opened up a
Speaker 3: brand new universe to me that I was just not
Speaker 3: aware of that. You know, all these little, tiny, microscopic
Speaker 3: machines regulate everything that happens in nature in an incredibly
Speaker 3: powerful way. And so the more I learned about that
Speaker 3: microscopic biological world, the more.
Speaker 4: I wanted to know.
Speaker 3: And then, of course, you know, I learned that they
Speaker 3: could be used to cure disease, which is what I
Speaker 3: wanted to do all my life. You know, growing up
Speaker 3: in a lower middle class household, my mom was teacher,
Speaker 3: my dad worked in construction. You know, you're kind of
Speaker 3: wondering what am I going to do with my life,
Speaker 3: And there was always this desire to try to help
Speaker 3: other people, and I really didn't know how, and so
Speaker 3: this universe that opened up before my eyes gave me
Speaker 3: an opportunity to say, if I can figure out some
Speaker 3: of this very unique processes that happen in our bodies
Speaker 3: at a microscopic level, I could help cure disease. I
Speaker 3: could help make a better life for people. And that
Speaker 3: was just incredible.
Speaker 1: When green Light Biosciences, your other company, was publicly listed,
Speaker 1: you talked about having two missions in life. One was
Speaker 1: quote the ability to provide solutions for healthcare, which we've discussed.
Speaker 1: The other was to grow food sustainably and cleanly, which
Speaker 1: we haven't discussed yet. This also begins with a personal story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that personal story is a lot cuter because
Speaker 3: of course nobody died, but it also involves My favorite
Speaker 3: person in the world was my son Alex. And Alex
Speaker 3: had something that you know, I think a lot of
Speaker 3: parents will relate to, which was Alex didn't need a
Speaker 3: lot and he was super thin and losing weight, and
Speaker 3: a lot of the things that we would feed him
Speaker 3: would make him sick, and we were just like racking
Speaker 3: our brain trying to figure out what the hell was
Speaker 3: going on. Like one of the only things he would
Speaker 3: eat was bananas. He would eat bananas all day long.
Speaker 3: And I remember my mom being like, let me bananas
Speaker 3: is you know, when have you ever seen a you know,
Speaker 3: a sickly gorilla and only it is bananas.
Speaker 4: They don't only eat bananas or whatever. But you know,
Speaker 4: it made sense because bananas are protected.
Speaker 3: They have this incredibly strong peel that protects them from
Speaker 3: basically everything that is outside. And so one of the
Speaker 3: things that would make Alex really sick, for example, would
Speaker 3: be strawberries, and we couldn't figure out why. My wife,
Speaker 3: who is not a scientist, eventually figure it out that
Speaker 3: it wasn't the strawberry itself, or the salary or the
Speaker 3: carrot or whatever, it was whatever chemical leftovers where on
Speaker 3: that particular food. Chemical synthetic pesticides were the.
Speaker 4: Biggest s culprit.
Speaker 3: There were others, like some of the colorings would make
Speaker 3: him fairly anxious, but what would make him really sick
Speaker 3: would be And we later identified a class of insecticides
Speaker 3: called organo phosphates.
Speaker 4: Of phosphates.
Speaker 3: If you google or akin of phosphates, they're nerve agents.
Speaker 3: Most famous or kind of phosphate of all times sarrying gas.
Speaker 3: So here's human wisdom in full display for you. We
Speaker 3: take a nerve agent that was used to kill people,
Speaker 3: millions of people, okay, and we chemically modify it, and
Speaker 3: we to solve it in water and dilute.
Speaker 4: It down, and then we spray it on.
Speaker 3: The same foods that we're going to feed our kids.
Speaker 3: And so what I discovered is that we use thousands
Speaker 3: of chemicals, none of which are particularly safe or specific
Speaker 3: or bio degradeable or clean, and that if we don't
Speaker 3: use them, by the way, we would lose seventy to
Speaker 3: eighty percent of our food. So it's all like we
Speaker 3: have an option. So a lot of people will tell you, ah,
Speaker 3: it just short, all should just go organic.
Speaker 4: Okay, Well, then we're going to need another eight planets to.
Speaker 3: Feed the soon to be ten billion people that we
Speaker 3: have on this planet, and there's no room for that.
Speaker 4: In fact, thirty to twenty.
Speaker 3: Percent of our food gets destroyed on the farm before
Speaker 3: we have an ability to harvest it. That's an insane number.
Speaker 3: It's billions of metric tons of food that get destroyed
Speaker 3: by pests because we cannot control them with the chemicals we.
Speaker 1: Have, because they've become resistant.
Speaker 3: Because most of the bogs have become resistant to the
Speaker 3: chemicals we have, and so there came another impossible idea, right,
Speaker 3: which is, okay, well, let's replace those chemicals with something
Speaker 3: that is here's a list of stuff that we have
Speaker 3: to come up with. First of all, cheap, because you know,
Speaker 3: farmers are the engine or society. They already don't make
Speaker 3: enough money. We can't give them something that's going to
Speaker 3: be three times the price of what they're paying today.
Speaker 3: That's just not going to work. So it's got to
Speaker 3: be inexpensive. It's got to be potent, because they're not
Speaker 3: going to sacrifice their yield. In fact, it has to
Speaker 3: be more potent than the chemicals they're using today so
Speaker 3: that they can recover more of their food.
Speaker 4: But it has to be one hundred percent safe.
Speaker 3: It cannot affect the environment, It can't affect beneficial insects,
Speaker 3: can't affect pollinators, it cannot affect obviously human health, and
Speaker 3: it cannot accumulate in our food because otherwise it'll end
Speaker 3: up in our kids.
Speaker 4: And so, you know, that's the list of things that
Speaker 4: we had to come up with.
Speaker 3: And it's kind of interesting when you put a list
Speaker 3: of features that is that impossible you eliminate a lot
Speaker 3: of things really really quickly, and the only thing that
Speaker 3: was left was this wonder molecule called right on nucleic
Speaker 3: acid RNA. And so it turned out that RNA was
Speaker 3: at that point we thought would be, and now we
Speaker 3: have proved that it is the solution to a lot
Speaker 3: of those problems.
Speaker 1: RNA has become famous since the COVID pandemic as something
Speaker 1: that you can inject to in a sense, change the
Speaker 1: DNA of an organism, in our case humans. Is that
Speaker 1: is that a fair assessment?
Speaker 4: Incorrect? Okay? The messenger on a Vaccines do not change
Speaker 4: the DNA. First.
Speaker 3: Now, RNA acts in two ways, right the way in
Speaker 3: which we all know, which is the way we learn
Speaker 3: in high school, which is our DNA gets transcribed into RNA,
Speaker 3: So the RNA is a faithful copy of the DNA.
Speaker 3: That RNA then gets read by a ribosome and it
Speaker 3: gets translated into a protein. That's the machinery of the body.
Speaker 3: DNA goes to RNA, RNA goes to proteins. That's what
Speaker 3: we learn in high school. What we didn't learn in
Speaker 3: high school is that there's another function of RNA, which
Speaker 3: is a function of interference, and that means that there
Speaker 3: are RNAs, they're called small interfering RNAs whose job is
Speaker 3: actually to silence down some of the messenger RNAs that
Speaker 3: are not needed. So why is that, Well, imagine that
Speaker 3: your body says I have too much of this messenger RNA,
Speaker 3: that I don't need it.
Speaker 4: I don't need more.
Speaker 3: Insulin or more growth RM or more cortisol or whatever it.
Speaker 4: Is that your body is producing at the time.
Speaker 3: And so what your body does is then it produces
Speaker 3: this small interfering RNase to suppress the excess messenger RNA
Speaker 3: that is out there so that you don't end up
Speaker 3: with an overproduction of a protein.
Speaker 4: So now you can take that tool that is natural.
Speaker 4: It's nature. We're using nature. We're not using something artificial.
Speaker 4: This is a natural pathway.
Speaker 3: But what you're doing, instead of saying we're just going
Speaker 3: to suppress the excess messenger in a you can say
Speaker 3: I'm going to suppress all of the messenger RNA that
Speaker 3: leads to the production of something that is vital to
Speaker 3: a fungi or a weed or an insect. Now, the
Speaker 3: best part about this is it won't work on vertebrates.
Speaker 3: It won't work on fish, birds, humans, cats, dogs. So
Speaker 3: because we have this built in protection, it is quite
Speaker 3: literally impossible for our products to have any impact on
Speaker 3: human health or the health of a whole bunch of organisms.
Speaker 4: The best part, however.
Speaker 3: Is that you can finally tune the sequence of that
Speaker 3: RNA to only affect the pest that you're interested in
Speaker 3: affecting and nothing else, and you can be extraordinarily specific
Speaker 3: in that sense.
Speaker 4: Let me give you an example.
Speaker 3: Our very first product is an insecticide against something called
Speaker 3: the Colorado potato beetle.
Speaker 4: It's just a beetle.
Speaker 3: It's about yay, big, has big stripes on its back.
Speaker 3: Another beetle that you should be very familiar with is
Speaker 3: the lady bog. The ladybug is in fact a beetle,
Speaker 3: and it is very closely related to the Colorado potato beetle.
Speaker 4: They are like first cousins.
Speaker 3: If you apply any chemical synthetic pesticide that will kill
Speaker 3: the Colorado potato beetle, you will likely destroy the ladybug.
Speaker 4: Colonies that are in your field or in your.
Speaker 3: Surrounding areas and so on. Okay, because they're so closely
Speaker 3: related that anything chemical that will impact the potato beetle
Speaker 3: will impact the lady Our product is designed to affect
Speaker 3: the Colorado potato beetle without having any impact whatsoever on
Speaker 3: the ladybog, even though they share like ninety five percent
Speaker 3: of their genes. We can tailor we can fine tune
Speaker 3: our RNA to kill one and not have any impact whatsoever.
Speaker 4: On the other one. And not only the ladybug is faired.
Speaker 3: Honey Bees, butterflies, earthworms, et cetera, et cetera are not
Speaker 3: affected by this RNA because this RNA specific to the
Speaker 3: gene that exists in the potato.
Speaker 1: Beet And where's it being used today?
Speaker 3: This product right now, it's the number one selling product
Speaker 3: in potatoes in the US, and so it's approved in
Speaker 3: the US. It's now its sales have now surpassed the
Speaker 3: sales of all of the leaning chemical pesticides in potato
Speaker 3: fields treating the Colorado potato beet So in two years
Speaker 3: we became the market lead and we're incredibly happy with
Speaker 3: its performance.
Speaker 1: Now, you said a moment ago that is not GMO,
Speaker 1: But there have been some criticisms that in a sense,
Speaker 1: my releasing this biological agent and effecting the internal mechanism
Speaker 1: of these insects that you're in essense to playing god
Speaker 1: or intervening in nature in a way that's kind of
Speaker 1: could have unpredictable consequences. How do you respond to some
Speaker 1: of those criticisms.
Speaker 3: I love that question because like, oh, you're playing God. No, no, no,
Speaker 3: We've been playing god for one hundred years. Agriculture is
Speaker 3: not the natural state of planet Earth.
Speaker 4: It's a human invention.
Speaker 3: Look, we scientific community have the responsibility to be extraordinarily
Speaker 3: transparent about the mechanism of action, about the testing that's
Speaker 3: been done, about how we've done it, about why we
Speaker 3: feel so strongly that our products are safe and effective
Speaker 3: and better for society and for nature than the products
Speaker 3: that we're replacing. So, if we're going to sustain ten
Speaker 3: billion people on this planet, we need industrial agriculture. It's
Speaker 3: no way around it. And if we're going to do that,
Speaker 3: it's much better to spray something that is highly targeted,
Speaker 3: that is safe, that is a natural pathway, that is bithgradable,
Speaker 3: that does not accumulate raise some chemical that is derived
Speaker 3: from oil that is going to drill a hole or
Speaker 3: destroy the brain of every insect that it comes in
Speaker 3: contact with. If I had my choice, I would move
Speaker 3: to a different planet, and I would keep the population
Speaker 3: low and we would all leave off the land.
Speaker 4: Okay, that's not a choice we have.
Speaker 3: And we have a responsibility to another nine billion humans
Speaker 3: to provide them with clean, inexpensive, sustainably grown food. That's
Speaker 3: the state of reality. I love people who argue that
Speaker 3: society's gone wrong. Okay, great, we know all right. It's
Speaker 3: not our responsibility to bitch and wine about it. It's our
Speaker 3: responsibility to fix it.
Speaker 1: We like bold predictions on this show. You have one
Speaker 1: very bold prediction earlier about effectively curing cancer within our lifetimes.
Speaker 1: What's your bold prediction for where this RNA technology might
Speaker 1: lead us within our lifetimes?
Speaker 3: Well, I think green Light is going to have dozens
Speaker 3: of products in the market.
Speaker 6: I think that we will provide tools to farmers in
Speaker 6: every continent, will allow them to add more tools to
Speaker 6: their toolkit to deal with destructive bests.
Speaker 4: What I can't tell you is if other companies will follow.
Speaker 3: Suit and come up with other biological solutions that are
Speaker 3: as good as effective.
Speaker 4: As ours are.
Speaker 3: My hope is they will, because farmers need them. Chemicals
Speaker 3: are on their way out, whether we like it or not.
Speaker 3: They are just not working anymore.
Speaker 1: You opened this conversation talking about growing up in a
Speaker 1: middle class house in Mexico and with Monica got very sick.
Speaker 1: She said to you know, we didn't send you to
Speaker 1: Boston for no reason. What do you think that your
Speaker 1: global perspective? I mean, the fact that you grew up
Speaker 1: in Mexico brings you as a technologist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really interesting and it's hard not to get
Speaker 3: political about this.
Speaker 4: But disease knows no boundaries.
Speaker 3: Disease in any form, whether it's human disease, plant disease,
Speaker 3: crop disease, animal disease doesn't care about the lines that
Speaker 3: we humans have artificially painted on maps.
Speaker 4: They don't care about what rays you are. Cancer affects
Speaker 4: every race more or less equally. They don't care whether
Speaker 4: you were born in the US or not. It's global.
Speaker 3: We are fighting global battles, and we are increasingly using
Speaker 3: local armies. Can't find a global battle using local armies.
Speaker 4: You need to be global.
Speaker 3: You need to make the tools that you have affordable
Speaker 3: and accessible in the US to everybody. It is the
Speaker 3: right thing to do. It is the only way in
Speaker 3: which you can achieve global equilibrium. We have people from
Speaker 3: one hundred countries working at Greenland, and we're only three
Speaker 3: hundred people.
Speaker 4: Science is not Science is global.
Speaker 3: No matter what religion you are or what political system
Speaker 3: you subscribe to, it is our responsibility to think globally
Speaker 3: because these global problems affect us all. And so my
Speaker 3: mission has always been from day one to make all
Speaker 3: these solutions, whether it's in cancer, whether it's in our
Speaker 3: ability to grow food global.
Speaker 4: Andrew, thank you, thanks my pleasure, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: For tech Stuff. I'm as Valoshian and I'm Kara Price.
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by Eliza Dennis and Adriana Tapia.
Speaker 2: It was executive produced by me Ozwaaloshan and Kate Osborne
Speaker 2: for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Norvell for iHeart Podcasts. Jack Insley
Speaker 2: mixed this episode and Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song.
Speaker 1: Join us on Friday for the Weekend Tech when Karen
Speaker 1: and I will run through the tech headlines you may
Speaker 1: have missed.
Speaker 2: Please rate, review, and reach out to us at tech
Speaker 2: Stuff podcast at gmail dot com.