The medical potential of AI and metabolites | Leila Pirhaji
TED Talks Daily
TED
4.1 • 12.1K Ratings
🗓️ 29 October 2019
⏱️ 5 minutes
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Summary
Many diseases are driven by metabolites -- small molecules in your body like fat, glucose and cholesterol -- but we don’t know exactly what they are or how they work. Biotech entrepreneur and TED Fellow Leila Pirhaji shares her plan to build an AI-based network to characterize metabolite patterns, better understand how disease develops -- and discover more effective treatments.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This TED Talk features biotech entrepreneur Leila Pierhaji, recorded live at TED 2019. |
| 0:09.7 | In 2003, when we sequenced the human genome, we thought we would have the answer to treat many diseases. |
| 0:19.6 | But the reality is far from that. Because in addition to our genes, |
| 0:25.6 | our environment and lifestyle could have a significant role in developing many major diseases. |
| 0:32.7 | One example is fatty liver disease, which is affecting over 20% of population globally, and it has no |
| 0:41.1 | treatment and leads to liver cancer or liver failure. So sequencing DNA alone doesn't give us |
| 0:49.5 | enough information to find effective therapeutics. On the bright side, there are many other molecules in our body. |
| 0:57.0 | In fact, there are over 100,000 metabolites. |
| 1:01.0 | Metabolites are any molecules that are super small in their size. |
| 1:06.0 | Known examples are glucose, fructose, fats, cholesterol, things we hear all the time. |
| 1:13.2 | Metabolites are involved in our metabolism. |
| 1:16.7 | They are also downstream of DNA, so they carry information from both our genes as well as lifestyle. |
| 1:26.1 | Understanding metabolites is essential to find treatments for many diseases. |
| 1:31.7 | I've always wanted to treat patients. Despite that, 15 years ago, I left medical school as I missed |
| 1:39.3 | mathematics. Soon after, I found the coolest thing. |
| 1:45.0 | I can use mathematics to study medicine. |
| 1:48.0 | Since then, I've been developing algorithms to analyze biological data. |
| 1:55.0 | So it sounded easy. |
| 1:58.0 | Let's collect data from all the metabolites in our body, |
| 2:01.9 | develop mathematical models to describe |
| 2:04.6 | how they are changed in a disease, |
| 2:07.0 | and intervene those changes to treat them. |
... |
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