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TED Health

TEDxSHORTS: Tal Zak

TED Health

TED

Health & Fitness, Fitness, Shoshana Ungerleider, Medicine, How To Be Healthier, Ted Shoshana, Ted Talks Health

4.21.5K Ratings

🗓️ 2 March 2021

⏱️ 6 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today we're sharing another podcast from TED: TEDx SHORTS. Chief Medical Officer of Moderna Tal Zaks offers a look into the future of personalized medicine and how tailored vaccines might someday be used in the fight against cancer. This talk was filmed at TEDxBeaconStreet. All TEDx events are organized independently by volunteers in the spirit of TED's mission of ideas worth spreading. If you enjoyed this episode, you can subscribe to TEDxSHORTS wherever you’re listening to this.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Today, here about the arguably miraculous science behind the coronavirus vaccine now being

0:22.3

distributed to protect populations from COVID-19.

0:26.1

If you're looking to add a short eye-opening idea into your day every day, then subscribe

0:31.0

to TEDxShorts wherever you're listening to this.

0:56.1

Today to tell you that we're actually hacking the software of life and that it's changing

1:01.5

the way we think about prevention and treatment of disease.

1:06.4

So here's all the biology you need to know in 30 seconds.

1:10.7

Our body is made out of organs, our organs are made out of cells, and in every cell there's

1:17.3

this thing called messenger RNA or mRNA for short that transmits the critical information

1:23.4

from the DNA or genes to the protein, which is really the stuff we're all made out of.

1:29.3

This is the critical information that determines what a cell will actually do.

1:34.7

And so we think of it like an operating system.

1:38.0

And it's not just in every cell of our body, it's actually in every cell of every organism

1:43.6

alive.

1:44.6

It's the same thing.

1:46.4

And so if you could actually change that, which we call the software of life, you could

1:52.6

introduce a line of code or change a line of code.

1:57.6

It turns out that has profound implications for everything from the flu to cancer.

2:04.6

And I'm going to demonstrate that with three short examples.

2:08.8

Let's start with the flu.

2:10.7

So many of us get a vaccine.

2:12.7

It is an injection in our arm where we get bits and pieces of the virus, the proteins,

...

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