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[ Inaudible Discussion ]
>> Well, good afternoon and thanks for coming and thanks
for all the folks who are online.
I think you're in for a real treat this afternoon
for our next Innovation Lecture Series speaker and I'd
like to introduce Dr. Lisa Kennedy to you,
who is the Chief Marketing Officer
for GE's Healthymagination.
It's a 6 billion dollar commitment to health,
through improving cost, quality and access
for people all over the world.
In her current role, she leads marketing,
strategy and innovation.
Lisa holds a Bachelor's Degree in Economics from the University
of California at Davis, a Master's Degree in Management
and Economics and a PhD in Economics from University
of Saint Andrews in Scotland.
Lisa joined GE Healthcare as chief economist and then
as global head of Marketing Operations, where she was part
of the team that launched Healthymagination.
She'll talk just today about It Takes a Village,
GE crowdsourcing, a Solution
to Beat Cancer [corrupt audio] explain that any further to you.
I'm going to turn it over to Lisa Kennedy.
Thanks for coming.
>> Great. Thanks very much.
Chris, start with a video.
[ Noise ]
>> Please put your phones on mute.
[ Noise ]
[Background Music]
>> Our machines help identify early stages of cancer
and it's something that we're extremely proud of.
>> You see someone who's saved because of this technology,
and you know that things that you do in your life matter.
>> If I did have opportunity to meet a cancer survivor,
I'm sure I could take something positive away from it.
>> My name is Jocelyn and I'm a cancer survivor.
I had cancer.
I have no evidence of disease now.
I would love to meet the people that made the machines.
I had such an amazing group of doctors and nurses.
It would just make such a complete picture
of why I'm sitting here today.
>> From the moment we walked in the front door just to see me
and not as a cancer patient but as a person that had been helped
by their work, I was just blown away.
Life's been good to me.
I feel like one of the luckiest guys in the world.
[ Noise ]
>> I have to say, I've seen that video,
I think now about 30 times
and I always run [inaudible] them like that.
But the point of it is these actually take a village.
I think to start to ask you guys a question.
What do you think are the 2 most successful animals on earth?
Have you guys got any idea?
Want to take any guesses?
[Inaudible Remark] Well, yeah.
[Laughter] From an evolutionary biology perspective.
Man is one of them, for sure.
>> Cockroach.
>> Cockroach, it's not the cockroach.
[Laughter] Oh boy.
>> Ants.
>> Ants. It's ants absolutely.
Why do you think it's ants?
>> They work well together.
>> Yeah. Exactly, yeah,
they work really well together, they cooperate.
They're 1 of 2 creatures of social evolution.
I mean they're very different from us.
They're small.
We have 2 legs, they have 6,
but that's the thing we have in common.
I think this was put most eloquently
by an evolutionary biologist,
E.O. Wilson's book recently published.
And he says, "The key to the origin
of the human condition is not to be found
in our species exclusively is it's
because the story did not start and end with humanities."
It comprises 2 phenomena connected by cause and effect.
The first phenomena, is that animals
of a land environment are dominated by species
with the most complex social systems.
The second thing he says is this phenomenon is
that these species have evolved only rarely in evolution.
So this is really rare, cooperation,
being able to work together is really very rare.
I think actually over the next couple of centuries,
we're just really scratching the surface on this evolution but,
you know, I think what we can take away from this,
every time we cooperate, every time we crowdsource,
every time we crowd fun, we're evolving.
Now today, I want to tell you
about in this talk is really how all the things
that are happening in health.
So what's disrupting healthcare right now is the innovations
disrupting healthcare.
I'll also be telling you about why today more than ever before
in history is the time to be an entrepreneur or somebody
with an idea, all the tools, the democratization of innovation,
all technologies and how the ease of access
to those technologies, the drop in cost of those technologies,
and then really how to take all of these tools
to solve really big problems like cancer.
So, to kind of begin with to ask you,
what do you think is disrupting health innovations.
I'll take you through 5 trends?
The first one is Big Data NAI.
So, you see this is something that was reported back in March.
IBM's Watson Computer is MSK's newest staffer.
Now, you may actually think that Domino's Pizza knows more
about you than your ***.
But who in the next few years, Big Data will come into its own.
Your doctor will know, you know, across your whole life.
Our data will no longer be limited to the 4 walls
in which we seek care.
And so Big Data will be coming together
and then we'll actually be putting supercomputers on it.
So things like Watson that will actually get very,
very insightful wisdom about you that allows your doctor
to really tailor your individual care
in a way that's never going to be possible today.
And if you actually look,
all these data are actually existing today.
It's in black and white.
We just can't get to them, and so there's a lot of data,
it's a matter of bringing it together
and getting these supercomputers on top of it.
Now, I think what's really interesting is in the future,
most of us will have our--
we hope, most of us will have our human genome decoded.
And so there'll be millions of data points.
And this actually will point
to a new era whereby the next generation
of diagnostics won't be hardware,
but they'll be dominated by software, so algorithms that go
into your data and really analyze it in detail.
Next disruptive innovation health is what I call Mobility
in Everything.
So health is going on the road.
This is where you're drawing the lines between home and hospital.
The first example you see on the right is the Vscan,
that's a portable ultrasound with the size of a mobile phone
with the power to see all kinds of things in the body.
Now, more and more of those things attach
onto your mobile phone, so your HTC or your iPhone.
This is a very interesting example that's just been
developed and it's being developed by CellScope,
and the idea is if you are a patient at--
I'm sorry, a parent at home and you have a child
that you suspect might have an ear infection,
you can use this scope on your phone, look in their ear,
send a picture to your doctor, and your doctor will be able
to prescribe prescriptions on the basis of that
without you ever having walkout out of your home.
And I think if we come see where virtual consultations are going,
I think as much as 40 to 50 percent of consultations
in the future could be virtual based
on these types of technologies.
Quantifiable self is another big trend that we're seeing.
I love this advertisement.
This is from Under Armour.
It says, "How good are you?
Just ask the shirt."
This is a shirt that measures all kinds of things.
So it measures you heart rate, your breathing rate,
it measures your body positioning,
so it has a body positioning interface.
And it also looks at G-force and your horsepower,
so how fast you're going, so all kinds of things.
There are 150 different devices that you could wear
that are available to buy that measure all kinds of things,
from sleep, to your blood pressure, to your hear rate,
to your weight, all kinds
of interesting-- to your stress level.
This is a tremendous amount.
And those actually [noise] in the things that we wear
and also in, you know, our telephones
that we take everywhere with us-- sorry.
[Inaudible Remark]
>> For those at the line, if you would please move--
mute your phones so we don't read any feedback here
in the auditorium.
Thank you.
>> Okay, so increasingly, we're seeing things in our phones,
things-- just snap on that are actually built into it.
And so there's a really cool app that, I don't know
if you've seen this, by Azumio.
You actually put your finger on the LEDs,
anyone familiar with this?
So the LED lights up and it will measure your pulse.
It will also measure your stress level based
on the consistency of your heart rate.
And you can see how good it is.
I'm not sure how well validated it is,
but it's certainly interesting.
It's very interesting way to use the telephone.
The next big trend is concierge medicine,
this will be a disruptor--
>> Building 30.
>> And if you actually think about concierge medicine.
This is basically moving
from what would be an episodic care models
of pain each time something happens to you
or insurance model to what would be a subscription model.
So you subscribe to care and it's--
I think that's 5000 physicians or more
that are practicing this type of medicine.
It is something where those 47 million venture capitalists
actually put-- I'm sorry 47
from Venture Capital in this fund alone.
And I think, what's interesting is it can potentially cut
out every 40 cents of every dollar you spent
on health insurance.
A lot of PCPs will say that 50 percent
of their claims are rejected.
This is something that could potentially disrupt health care.
Another trend is latent vulnerability, so what I mean
by this is health security.
I went to a talk recently which was called Health Security,
and I thought, "My goodness this is going to be really dull."
It could not have been further from the truth.
This guy completely opened my eyes
to what's happening in health security.
An example he gave is 35 million electronic patient records were
stolen from the State of Virginia and then the guy
who stole had the-- or it could have been a lady.
They had the goal to try the ransom it
for 10 million dollars back to the State of Virginia
or he said he was going
to release it all out into the public.
Another case, a very sad case where a hacker hacked
into a patient's electronic medical record.
She had been tested for--
screened and tested for breast cancer and the hacker came
to change her records so that the doctor erroneously told her
that she had breast cancer when she didn't.
Example that you see here today,
there are 60,000 implantable cardiac defibrillator devices
and a lot of other implantable devices that have their own URL,
so their own individual website.
And it opens up the possibility that a hacker could hack
into that site and shock a patient and I'm not a doctor
but I think that could potentially kill you.
You might think this is science fiction, but it was proven
over 4 years ago in 2008 on this Medtronic device.
So I've taken you through-- and I'm sorry you can't quite see,
but I've taken you through approximately 5 trends.
The remaining 3 which is rapid sequencing, crowdsourcing,
disease solutions and small batch biomanufacturing,
I'll take you through it in a different context
and that is democratizing innovation.
So the barriers to innovation are decreasing.
It's easier to access technology.
It's cheaper.
Really now more than ever before is the time to have an idea
or be an entrepreneur.
So the example of this is coding.
So if you can code any of the computer,
you can start a business and 15,000 help apps on the--
available on your iPhone is testament to this.
It's also being used to just solve big problems.
I think you had Eva Guinan--
>> Guinan.
>> Guinan came and-- she came and spoke
to you back in September.
This is an example of some
of the great work that they've done.
They put together Harvard University and the University
of London had an algorithm genomics challenge
in Immunotics.
They put 6,000 dollars, so only 6,000 dollars are part
of this challenge.
In that day got 122 programmers who gave 644 submissions.
And in 2 weeks, just 2 weeks they had 9 distinct approaches.
And this was an approach that they actually--
the top 34 entries outperformed the standard algorithm
by a factor of 10 to the 5.
I recently spoke to a very talented gentleman,
a program director at the National Institute of Heath,
David Hale and Dave actually reorganized their entire
drug database.
And what he did is he went to America's Hackers,
it's a conference apparently.
And he got some really-- [Laughter] --
he got some really talented coders.
And based on that, he was able to, you know, work with them
to code and really reorganize that database,
so much more user friendly.
And it's a really interesting example, he had a sophomore
in high school who wrote an algorithm, a telephone,
so a set of telephone questions would help anybody
with holding a pill to answer a set of questions
that would tell them exactly what that pill was.
It was all programmed by a sophomore in high school.
I think another thing is really the rapid drop
of technology cost and we talked a little bit about--
I mentioned fast sequencing just a minute ago.
This is such an amazing example
of how these technologies are dropping faster
than Moore's Law.
I don't think you can talk about innovation today
without presenting something on Moore's Law.
The cost for genome has started at 90 so to sequence the genome
in 2001 started at 95 million, today it's less than a million.
Two companies had come and actually answered a challenge
to sequence a genome for less than 1 million.
So the pace it's dropping, it will continue to go
and pretty soon, this will be a very,
very accessible technology I think for most of us.
But it's not just rapid sequencing that's dropping,
it's a lot of other technologies, censors, storage
and cloud computing, computing power and also 3D printing.
3D printing is something that also can be used for health.
So here's a picture of me at the NASA site
in Northern California.
Autodesk came for a conference that I was at,
at the Singularity University
and that's me holding an artificial limb,
all that has been printed out on a 3D printer.
I think the implications for this are growing fast.
There're all kinds of creative ways
in which you can potentially use this technology.
Here's an example of a prototype--
or I should just say a product that's actually for sale today.
It's called the Glif on the left hand side.
Now I have to say, when I asked my--
my husband looked at this, he said, "Wow."
He says, "You can use 3D printing
to printout the Golden Gate Bride?"
I said "No, no, it's not quite there yet."
[Laughter] But it's this little device that you see
on the bottom that I'm pointing to with the little arrow.
This was-- it's a little tripod that holds your computer
as it holds your phone and allows you
to take pictures, so very steadily.
The entrepreneurs were able to build this out and print out 500
for sale with a 3D printer at minimum cost.
Now, they were-- grow their business with 35,000 dollars
of seed funding and now they've gone to mass manufacturing,
but it shows an example about how you can start a business
and produce equipment and products in a way
that you've never been able to before
at very, very limited cost.
Now, this technology is evolving
so you can see how it's being used for consumer products
but up here on the upper right hand corner is an example
of how it's being used on the cellular level
to print out blood vessels.
In the lower right hand corner, this is a story
that broke 4 days ago from BBC Scotland.
This is an example about how they're using this in Glasgow,
this technology to print out drugs.
So they think that potentially you could print
out drugs in the future.
I'm sure that the FDA will absolutely love this.
[Laughter] And, you know,
you might think this is something that's high technology
but you see in this example, this is MakerBot.
This is something that you can buy for your home.
It' a personal 3D printer, if you want to get this and print
out all your toys for less than 2000 dollars.
The future might be a future whereby we can say,
"Hey, you know what?
I'm going to e-mail you a shirt or I'm going
to e-mail you a pair of shoes."
That could potentially be where this could go.
And you can see it's becoming very, very accessible in cost.
Another big trend that we've seen is the Hive Mind,
so health sharing.
This is from our data visualization.
It's a listening platform
that tells us any given time what anybody is talking
about in breast cancer.
I won't demo it right now but what I want to show you--
what you can actually see there is there's 5000 re-tweets
about somebody who has discovered that glycoprotein
and selenium is found in human ***
which can reduce breast cancer in women by almost 50 percent
and that's been re-tweeted 500 times.
You can't make this stuff up.
This is what health sharing-- whether it's erroneous or not,
it's becoming very, very popular.
This is how the Hive Mind started.
One of really-- example, the great listening platform
that was used about 10 years ago, so it's still being used
as a global pandemic health information network.
So it does exactly what it says it does.
It monitors pandemics.
What was able to do-- so how it was proven its utility was it
found SARS about 3 month before the WHO report came
through because it could monitor the internet continually
across a number of countries including China
to see what pandemics are rising much, much earlier
than we've ever been able to detect them before.
Speaking of SARS, we actually look
at how people are collaborating.
It took us 5 years to find ***.
It took us 5 weeks collaborating to decode SARS.
It's a very, very interesting example of collaboration.
Another example is in gaming.
I love this example.
If how-- and we're now using gaming crowds in gaming
to compete and find solutions to things.
This is a program called Foldit, so fold.it and it's a platform
to the folding of proteins.
Last year-- so just last year they were able to find gamers.
So gamers were able to solve a 15-year-old *** problem
in protein folding, they did it in 10 days.
Now, what's not widely reported is the person
who won that challenge.
They weren't a Nobel laureate, they weren't a high scientist,
they were a laboratory technician.
And I saw her speak recently and she said, "You know,
what's really interesting is the people who are really good
that compete on teams--
you know, the people who are really good
at this aren't necessarily those with the science background."
She said, "One of the people--
the best people on our team is somebody who's a construction
contractor," because of his spatial reasoning.
This is probably what computers aren't very good at,
this phenomenal ability around spatial reasoning
and that's why they've been able to really excel here.
This organization recently and actually--
I think that's a really great example how--
about how people who couldn't normally be able to innovate
in this type of context.
These platforms are allowing them to share
and making it much more accessible for them
to come together, you know, as a hive to solve these problems.
Another example is this organization ran a--
they run a regular competition I think every 2 years.
One of the most recent winners was a 13-year-old boy
and the organizer, he said, "You know,
this is what we're looking for, we're looking
for child prodigies who could fold proteins
and understood spatial reasoning."
One of the things that we did recently was our Ecomagination
Challenge about 2 years ago.
In the eco challenge, this was our first big challenge
that we put out from an open innovation perspective
and response really surprised us.
We had 74,000 users on the site
and 40,000 people voted for different ideas.
The idea around it was-- so we've have 2 phases,
phase 1 was powering the grid.
It was launched in July 2010.
Phase 2 was really around powering your homes,
so it was launched in January 2011.
But all those ideas got 5000 business plans, 5000 ideas
and from that, we were able
to invest 130 million in these ideas.
So it's a really interesting example how people can come
together about something they're really passionate about.
In this case, sustainability really come
up with ideas in a common platform.
What are we going to do next?
We're going to take 20 million and invest
in this new business ecosystem to pull up some
of these really interesting ideas
and see how we can incubate them.
And that is a really good example of our next trend
which is this new platforms for entrepreneurs.
So Harvard recently announced in January that they're partnering
with TopCoder to provide a platform for Harvard MBAs.
This will allow Harvard MBAs to be able to put any kind
of entrepreneurial ideas on the site and compete for funds
and wins these competition.
So it's a really different platform
to more openly rewarding and novice entrepreneurs.
Another really interesting site or phenomenon is crowd funding.
So you see Kickstarter which was started in 2008
and since their inceptions or since they started,
Kickstarter has been able to, I think,
raise about 174 million dollars
and what you see here is the top 10 areas
in which they've been able to generate money.
And what's really interesting about this is some
of these new ideas that we're posted on site, they were able
to generate a million dollars within 24 hours,
which was almost unheard of.
So what would you see across these trends is really this idea
of democratizing innovation.
It's much more accessible to just anyone.
These barriers-- I haven't really dropped,
there's really an unprecedent area--
unprecedented era for the entrepreneur
and those who have ideas.
It's a really great time if you have an idea
and you want to develop it.
And this is because of number of things.
Availability of information and learning,
so it's really no longer the domain of the elite
if you can connect to the internet, you can learn how
to do something with YouTube.
Another is these incentives to invest in these new platforms
that I just spoke about.
A common platform is in mobility so really the iPad
and the iPhone and other platforms like it are starting
to really allow us
to collaborate better and innovate better.
Codings, I mentioned on coding that, you know,
if you have a computer, if you can code
and you can do all kinds
of things provided you can access data.
The ease of accessing new technologies so it's cheaper,
it's easier to get, it's easier to buy,
and these are the examples that I gave around 3D printing,
supercomputing, sensors, so all technology costs are dropping.
The Hive Mind which is a key trend I think that we're seeing
as well, a very interesting tool.
Crowd sourcing, crowd funding, this is how we're evolving
as you know across humanity and evolution biology.
It's really making us much stronger in our ability
to solve problems and really innovate much faster
to really accelerate our innovation, and really this idea
which I call the self-made man or self-made woman.
I've spent a lot of time outside the US
and I very frequently heard people say, "You know what?
Birmingham is going to be the new Silicon Valley of England
or Lyon is going to be the new Silicon Valley of France."
And you bring a lot of money and a lot of materials but really,
what's very different in the US is the people.
Something about growing up in the US and the culture--
being exposed to the culture really changes as innovators.
So what you really want to do is take the people
from Silicon Valley and move them to Birmingham.
So you can take all these tools, the question really is
with all these fantastic tools today, how can we use these
to solve really big problems like cancer?
How could we openly innovate around cancer?
I think the first question is really,
are we in a molecular biology revolution?
I think we are.
We've sequenced the human genome.
We've been able to synthesize DNA.
Over the last 15 years, it's been remarkable steps forward
in the area of molecular biology.
And this will have a really definitive effect on us
over the next really decisive effect on us
over the next 150 years.
In the same way that the Industrial Revolution had us--
had on us over the last 300.
So it's a very, very interesting time and where this is going
to impact us the most is likely to be in cancer.
So we take network biology, it's probably the most advance
in cancer, although as you can see here, cancer is not simple.
You look at the pathways and the networks
and what makes up cancer.
But what we can't see is cancer is really undergoing
a renaissance.
I believe that we will learn more in the next 5 years
in cancer than we've learned over the last 100.
I really believe that we're going
to eclipse our past knowledge in the last century.
So it is a really exciting time for cancer right now.
And this is why we decided to really commit to cancer
and we recognize that it was
at a tipping point, a very exciting time.
And you know, we-- you know, all the work that we do
in mammography, in positron emission tomography, CT, MRI,
we have a very, very big personalized medicine business
that we recently acquired, so looking at cancer
on a molecular level, looking at individual footprint.
We really felt that there was a space here where we could help
to accelerate and bring innovation at scale to cancer.
So what can we do to really accelerate the innovation here
was our question.
What we did we is we post 100--
a hundred million dollar challenge starting with cancer--
starting with the phase 1,
looking at triple-negative cancer and specifically looking
at some cancer pathways
that breast cancer has with other diseases.
The thought in future is that cancer won't so much be defined
by where it occurs in the body.
But what type of mechanism or what kind of--
how it develops which they called cancers pathways.
So cancers-- breast cancers--
some breast cancer cells have things in common
that lung cancer cells might have.
And those actually respond
to very specific types of treatments.
So we're redefining even how we look at cancer currently.
So we put 100 million dollars partnering
with 4 venture capitalists for this challenge.
Also, to ensure that, you know, we're innovating, you know,
these challenges, these great ideas come be.
We've put 1 billion dollar commitment to R&D in cancer
over the next 5 years.
And the idea is to build this really new creative business
ecosystem of all these people,
if we come together really impact cancer with the idea
that we could-- no matter where you were as a man or woman,
whether you were in the developing country or in the US,
you should be able to access care both current care
and future care.
And we did this with the intention of,
potentially by 2020, impacting probably more
for the better 10 million patients or more.
So we launched this--
we launched this 100 million dollar challenge,
the first phase of it on the 15th of September
with Jeff Immelt and this was the platform that we used.
This was platform created by Brightidea.
It was a-- it's a platform-- a very nice platform for voting
for ideas, you could post videos,
you could share your thoughts.
It was a very nice platform for sharing.
So you can see that Steve Eisenberg, he was our--
the people's choice, it was an informational video.
What we did actually in terms of our challenge stats,
we have 500 entries, 500 great ideas
around breast cancer specific
to triple-negative cancer or cancer pathways.
And what was particularly interesting about this graph
that you see here is half of them came from the US
but the rest came from outside the US.
And we got a surprising number from Canada, 44 from Canada,
53 from the-- from Australia.
We had 91 come from Western Europe.
We have 21 come from Asia.
And really even a very surprising number coming
from Sub-Saharan Africa, it's a 3 from Sub-Saharan Africa.
If you think about the submitters, it was more diverse
than I thought it would be.
We have 228 academic institutions that submitted.
We had approximately 180 for-profit companies.
So profit, these companies had ideas
and viable business proposition for us.
Sixty two individuals, it's a lot of individuals have looked
at it, they had an idea and they submitted it,
and then 21 are a bit shy
and a quite a few nonprofit institutions.
The types of submissions that we have so we look at those types
of submissions, a full--
about 300 were either around molecular diagnostics.
So, really these-- these very--
these diagnostics that really help unders--
to understand cancer at the molecular level
or alternatively, specific treatments
so targeted treatments or platforms for these.
So 300 of those were specific to molecular medicine.
On top of these, we had about 88 on imaging,
we had 17 around molecular imaging, and then in terms
of informatics, we had 30.
And we also had some really interesting ideas.
We had someone submit a special bra
that would continually monitoring heat
in the *** and monitor you.
We had someone who submitted an idea around hair samples
and being able to see hair samples as a potential indicator
for early breast cancers.
It's a really interesting creative set of ideas.
We sent some-- so, most of ideas went through Ventures Stream,
so that was at 100 million.
But we did for very early ideas, we offered 500,000 dollars,
so 100,000 each, seed awards was what we called this
and we had 5 winners who went
through an independent judging panel with GE
and also independent judging panel that took the top first
and we look for the 500, we red lighted and green light--
green lit those according
to where we thought they were good ideas or not.
And then the judging panel looked at all of those
and were able to come up with these 5.
If you kind of see some of the ideas,
the first one was really a novel polymer that to--
so most women who have breast cancer will get an implant,
so a reconstructive surgery and the idea was a novel polymer
that could also have a therapeutic benefit
for the patient.
The second one which I'll talk about in a minute was
around triple-negative cancer which looked
at 6 different types of triple-negative cancer.
The third that you see there was downstaging breast cancer.
So basically, catching breast cancer at an earlier stage
and specific to emerging markets where a lot
of these patients are much younger
when they experience breast cancer.
They typically present with big, big lumps.
So, very palpable breast cancer at very late stages.
And the idea was to use ultrasound to see
if we could screen women and find those cancers much earlier.
The fourth one that you see there was specific
to a novel website called MyCancerGenome
which at any given time will allow a doctor or a patient
to understand the absolute latest in technology
and what's happening with their genome without--
with their cancer.
So understanding your cancer has a specific biomarker,
exactly what does it mean today?
That was MyCancerGenome.
And then the fourth one was looking
at markers for metastasis.
That's really whether your cancer is going to spread,
is it likely to spread across your body or not.
What not-- a lot of people know is not the primary cancer
that kills you typically, it's the cancer that spreads
across your body that will kill cancer patient.
And so, this is an idea that if you saw this,
you have a much more aggressive therapy be felt
if they had the biomarkers from the cancer spread.
This is Dr. Pietenpol.
She had a very interesting submission, 6 different types
of triple-negative cancer.
Triple-negative, and she'll tell you in a video we're going
to show in a minute, is not defined
by what it is but what it's not.
This is something that occurs to 30,000 women in the US alone.
It's something that doesn't respond to hormonal therapy
or to things like receptors and their target treatment.
It's something
that disproportionally affects people of color.
And really, if you think
about the entire treatment is chemotherapy based
and treatment has really been lost in the last decade.
So we felt this was an incredible unmet need.
Now, we'll show you the video of Dr. Pietenpol.
[ Noise ]
[Background Music]
>> We knew it was a disease
that really was defined by what it wasn't.
The name, triple-negative, it means it's negative
for 3 markers that we associate with other breast cancers.
But we identified 6 different subtypes of the disease.
They have very different biologies
and this explains potentially why current therapies haven't
been that successful.
You're treating a group of individuals
as if they have 1 disease where they have
at least 6 different diseases.
And-- I think our research over the next few years will show
as many more than 6 subtypes.
This was actually a big breakthrough from the standpoint
of defining the disease,
understanding the biological drivers within some types
of the disease, and now, saying,
"How do we match that with therapy?"
Our knowledge of each of them now enables us
to personalize therapy to the subtype, that's a major advance.
So you can imagine our excitement
when we saw the announcement for this Healthymagination awards
in triple-negative breast cancer.
The next step for us was moving towards a diagnostic test
to subtype really with this disease
so we can give them the right therapy.
Just to warm out lets us move
to that next step even more quickly.
[ Music ]
[ Noise ]
>> I think actually what that captures is an open--
in open innovation in health.
People really feel like they're part
of something that's much bigger.
So, it's not just this passion for ideas, solving problems,
you know, it's that too or making money.
It's really this absolute passion to solve big problems
with patients both now and the future.
And I think Dr. Pietenpol is a very good example of that.
And so, what do we find?
We find it really interesting if we'd look at all of our entries
on a very interesting snapshot of cancer.
So 500 entries, we can see where a lot
of research is ongoing across the world.
And so, these are a couple of examples that kind
of give to you a sense.
There isn't one single lever in terms
of killing cancer or finding its cure.
It's probably going to be beaten by a number
of different mechanisms and here are a few of them.
So, can we get it to kill its cells through apoptosis?
We stop from proliferating, so stopping it
from spreading through angiogenesis.
So it's ability to build blood vessels.
Can it kill field marshalls, the cancer stem cells?
We strengthen our own army, so really looking
at vaccines [inaudible].
So, obviously, you know,
focus right now is screening for breast cancer.
But there are some very interesting--
very early evidence suggesting that immune systems--
it's called [inaudible] immune system changes very,
very subtly on a molecular level when a patient has cancer,
a very interesting way to actually detect it in much,
much earlier, earlier level.
We can find it and we can kill so, we can stop it from moving
to new parts of the body so looking
at circulating tumor cells and markers for metastasis.
And we really can understand and explain this weakness
by understanding cancer pathways could become a basis
of future care.
I guess the question is if I think about all these things
that are happening right now, a portion in my head,
I'm kind of interested in your thoughts as well,
is do you think we're ready to be able
to think take a leaf from
the energy industry or some of the great work
that you're doing really simulate--
I'm thinking what's happening in cancer research
to simulate what our roadmap for finding or turning cancer
into a chronic disease and subsequently curing it?
What does that roadmap look like today?
We're already using this in other areas of health
so this is an example of a micro-simulation so everybody
in India gets simulated for this piece of work in this project
which says that if you were to train people more in cardiology,
what the overall impact of that intervention would be
on mortality and morbidity in cardiac care?
So I guess that question is, are we ready
to have enough information
to be able simulate what our direction really should be
and focus on to really break cancer?
I think what's really interesting or one big kind
of learning from us, you know,
one big challenge is really how do we take these ideas,
how do we compress the time from discovery.
So, we know that cancer is really undergoing this
renaissance but there's really a lot of ideas now.
How do we compress that time from idea discovery to getting
into patient to patient touch effectively.
So, one of the big challenges that we see is there's a lot
of ideas and the question there is could it work
in the [inaudible], so it is an idea.
When their challenge is finding brands to be able
to prove this out, so is there a Kickstarter or some type
of crowd funding, people are really passionate,
just get that starter funding to get these products,
these ideas off the ground including the concept.
The next big challenge after proof of concept, so were trying
to figure out, does it work in vitro or preclinically,
the big question on an angel or a small [inaudible]
for us is will someone pay for it?
And for a lot of the portion right now-- for lot of part of
the treatments and targeted diagnostics,
we find is that the policy probably needs
to change 'cause it's taking anywhere between 6 to 8 years
to get those products uniformly paid for by payers.
So what-- you know, it's a combination of policy
but it's also a combination
of really helping these guys with great ideas.
So researchers, academicians, academians [phonetic] be able
to help them build that-- so take that technology and turn it
into a really great business plan.
So is there a role for an accelerator or an incubator here
to really foster that thinking and make this as attractive
as it can be for angel investors, researchers
and potential venture capitalists and drug companies.
Once it becomes something that goes, you know, into women,
takes us on average about 7 years and there are ways
to compress that time.
A lot of modeling has been done around this but you know still--
it's still taking too long to get these products approved.
In fact, it's taking longer and longer to get products approved.
It should go the other way.
We should be able to develop these products much,
much faster in clinical development.
And then the question is once our product is there--
we know there's no 1 single lever or we hope there is.
But right now, there is no 1 single lever for cancer.
So cancer-- the cornerstone of cancer is combination treatment.
As you saw all these different ways in which you kill a cancer,
I showed that for a reason, so you can see
that really cancer therapy comes
to its own-- it's in combination.
Then you're looking another 6 or 7 years before you prove
out how all these treatments work in combinations.
So, you know, we-- what can we do to accelerate this puzzle
from what could be in 2025 before these ideas [inaudible]
to patients.
I'm interest-- so I don't know
if you guys have any ideas you want to share now or later
but it is a very, very interesting, interesting space.
So, I think what's interesting
where I see cancer is very similar to a lot
of diseases in the past.
I was thinking 'cause it's a very interesting set
of diagrams.
It shows measles, tuberculosis, typhoid, scarlet fever,
the really big killers over the last--
well, until the last century.
And what you can see is that it was really--
when they got information and understand--
understood how these infectious diseases were spread,
that was the key where you saw the incidence
of these diseases dropping.
Well, before either the vaccination
or the treatment came into effect.
We see that right now with cancers
so because we understand it better, because we're able
to detect it much earlier, we're curing a lot of--
a lot more people than we used to.
So it's the sharing information, this crowd sourcing,
this crowd funding, this gaming I think that's going
to solve cancer.
And I just like to remind you something
that we did 30 years ago.
Thirty years ago, we were able to eradicate small pox
and this is amazing to me because this was something
that was an epidemic proportions in the 1960s.
And the WHO just said we're going
to eradicate small kit-- small pox.
That's what we're going to do.
And within 10 years, they had completely eradicated this
disease, a disease that killed more people
than all the wars put together.
And the way they did this and the very last they knew,
the very last group where small pox really sat was in India.
They had a whole-- you know, hundreds of physicians on foot.
I'm going to say, at least a 125,000 physicians
on foot going door to door, you know, with--
they've printed out 2 billion copies of a picture
of someone suffering from small pox and he was knocking the door
and he said, "Excuse me, do you have this, do you see it?"
and that was how they helped eradicate it.
Imagine how-- what you could do
with all the tools we have today,
all the collaborative tools, all the mobility,
all the mobile phones, everything you can do,
everything that's really here.
We should be able to eradicate a new disease every 5 or 10 years
if we really have a will to do, to really focus and I think
that one of these diseases should be cancer.
[ Applause ]
>> Questions, comments.
[ Noise ]
>> Institutions like memorials on [inaudible],
I'm trying to think of [inaudible]
in Philadelphia [inaudible] all these large institutions,
they have gone into years of experience and knowledge
and investigations and protocols and on and on,
are they doing any of this as well?
I mean what are the major institutions?
>> Absolutely.
I think they're just as passionate
about using these tools as really, you know,
a lot of the patient's associations
as the patients who--
the patients group who are suffering from this.
They-- I think they're starting
to touch upon open innovation and crowdsourcing.
You can see that they've brought IBM to really just focus
on the current level data they have and look
at essential responses for specific groups.
But yeah, they're just really starting--
everyone is really starting to experiment in this.
This is the first open challenge that I've ever seen in cancer.
It was different.
It's something that we could see was a tipping point.
It made perfect sense and it seemed
to be the logical next step in how to really find ideas
and really accelerate that at scale.
Yeah, I think that they're thinking about it
and some obviously award winners who submitted at this--
I mean one of their biggest challenge is they have a lot
of ideas.
It's really finding the funding for the research for that.
And that's suffering right now, given all the cuts
that these institutions are seeing.
They can't always get the funding that they need
to push the science forward.
>> Okay.
>> And the next of individuals and organizations and--
all around the world, so how did you push out,
how did you make people aware of the challenge
and how long is it open?
>> Our challenge was open for about 2 and a half months
and we really tried to make sure
that everywhere a researcher would look,
wherever their eyeballs went, this challenge, this invitation,
this hundred million dollar challenge was there
in front of them.
It was a banner at or it was, you know,
in the major periodic publications that they read
or you know if they were at a conference.
It was everywhere that they went so they would know about it.
They would know this was a great opportunity
and we're really inviting them
to participate in this community.
But yeah, it was really just wherever they were looking is
where we were.
>> So you actually print media as well.
>> Yeah.
>> So as you let it by how long--
>> I think in the print, it was very fast prints like, you know,
what we can get in within you know--
so we started in 2 and a half months
and then it was right then that we put it in.
I can't remember which prints,
most of it was digital to your point.
A huge amount was digital.
We did have a couple different media
but [noise] most of it are banner ads.
And you can see that most people are doing research on the net
so it's not bad place and a very cost, you know, efficient way
to get the message out.
I think there's one on the back.
>> You had a lot of responses so--
I mean, so is there a certain way
to judge [inaudible] how many
of these responses were good or valuable?
And you got some clear award winners--
>> Sure.
>> -- but you must have had stepped on the other spectrum
as well that weren't useful at all or you know, not serious.
So you know, is there sort of [inaudible].
>> Yes, sure.
So I-- it took me 2 days.
I read through every single submission.
It took a really long time and you know, I'm an economist.
I'm not a molecular biologist.
And in terms of the quality 'cause we really, you know,
it's kind of question we made,
this was a much more narrower challenge than we did
for our eco-challenge.
So because it was narrow,
the quality of what we got was really quite extraordinary.
So I read quite-- put through quite a lot.
I'd say that probably, somewhere in realm
of 70 percent were incredibly good ideas.
A lot of them though were just ideas.
You know, I think that this is an idea, I think,
that needed to have more research behind it.
So that was kind of where we found 1 of the champs.
We did have 180 companies but you see the majority
of ideas we got were just
from academic institutions, just ideas.
So that was probably 1 of the challenges that we're facing.
[ Inaudible Remarks ]
You know, I have to go back and speak to my eco cha--
eco [inaudible] on 30 million so the quality of that,
it's some indicator that--
yeah, the quality of the challenge entries was very,
very good but I felt we can't tell exactly what percentage.
[Simultaneous Talking] [Inaudible Remark]
>> I was surprised that what happen-- [Simultaneous Talking]
>> Excuse me, for everyone on the line, will you please move--
mute your microphones.
Your telephones please.
[ Noise ]
>> So yeah, it's a-- it's difficult to judge an eco.
I wasn't personally involved in eco.
But we did, so we get some really interesting ideas
and investments out of that.
>> You had entries from all over the world,
where were your winners from?
>> Our winners were on the most part from the US and you know,
it's interesting-- in this kind--
to me, this kind of tells me something interesting.
There is still a lot
of molecular biology innovation occurring in the US.
And you know, it's interesting I think if you were
to run a challenge in a very different area, you know,
say if you were to do it in health,
you'll probably get a substantial amount
of your winners coming from emerging markets like India.
So it just kind of depends that--
the nature of the challenge is also very much, you know,
where you get your entries and who wins is also very much
in where the centers of excellence on that.
And molecular biology has huge centers
of excellence still in the US.
So although we get-- do-- we did get some very,
very good contenders from outside the US.
>> So another question, you had mentioned that Kickstarter
and how it funds small organizations or individuals
to just start up in small things.
I knew lots of people, they donate to cancer research
and I wonder if there's a specific website
where people can go and say, "All right,
I need a hundred thousand dollars
to study this particular thing" and then individuals
from around the world can contribute.
I think, we can see that number rise, rise,
rise just like [inaudible].
>> Yeah, you see we're openly innovating.
It's an idea.
I think that's a great idea in terms
of whether we can have Kickstarter for cancer.
I need to see 'cause it could already exist
but you're absolutely right,
that's exactly something that we need.
Because you know, a lot
of patients are really passionate, you know.
And there is this frustration by some patients that they really--
either they like to see the money go back
into their community or they really
like to see exactly how it's being used.
And that scenario where you know, if you have leukemia,
you can make sure that it goes to very specific component
of leukemia or very specific idea.
So that's a really, a really interesting idea that we know,
we might, you know, think
about to see how we could help facilitate in the future.
So, it's a great one.
>> Kickstartcancer.com.
>> Yeah, exactly, kickstartcancer.com exactly.
[Laughter] [Inaudible Remark]
>> Yeah, you know, that's a good-- [Inaudible Remark]
Yeah, it was interesting.
We tried to make the questions as simple as possible.
What could we do in a subsequent challenge 'cause it was
such a narrow set of questions?
And somehow, as we wondered, you know,
if maybe we should have made it a bit broader?
Now, this is just our first phase.
You know, in innovation, I think if you're constantly learning.
If you don't take risk, if you don't try any things,
you really-- you've never really innovated so we recognize that.
And so, we're very happy, we're really--
you know, really pleased by the number of engagement.
You know, people engaged in the challenge.
I'm really excited by the number of entries
and what we're seeing.
But now, we're kind of-- we kind of wonder where that--
"Gosh, you know, maybe we should have put it in, you know,
a much more broadly across the cancer rather than focusing
on such a very limited component."
Triple-negative certainly is a key one
but I think it still probably would have got
that submission even if we got a bit-- gone a bit broader.
[ Inaudible Remark ]
Yeah, actually.
It's really good.
It's really good idea.
>> So, why or how did you choose triple-negative cancer
as the tipping point for this challenge?
>> First, we decided on breast cancer because we had a lot
of different choices about--
across different types of cancers that we could use.
And you know, one of the biggest questions we get is how come it
wasn't lung cancer?
How come it wasn't prostate cancer?
And those are cancers that we will move into.
For breast cancer, it was an area that we know very,
very well by virtue of a presence with the mammography.
We also process approximately 20 percent
of all outpatient samples go to our lab in Clarence.
So it's a disease we understood well.
There's also at any given time more breast cancer patients
than any other type of cancer patients' prevalences.
So there's a lot of living breast cancer
so we thought it was an area that we can [inaudible].
We looked at that and some areas of breast cancer, I'm not going
to say there's a cure, but there are-- you know, this--
the triple-negative was the one place where, you know,
that really we felt that the treatment had been less--
left in the last century.
And that was where, it was a place the biggest unmet needs,
that's why we chose it.
>> So you could make it a biggest leap forward?
>> Exactly, exactly.
[Inaudible Remark]
It's very aggressive cancer.
It's one that occurs in younger patients.
It's one that typically occurs outside the US a lot more
than inside the US.
Cancer-- breast cancer, you know, I'm not an epidemiologist
but you have triple-negative breast cancer average rises 47
and then you have a kind of hurt-- hormone--
you know, hormonally, this receptive type of cancer
that average age is probably around 60s to 61.
So it's a younger cancer and more aggressive one.
>> So clearly, you did a business case
in mind too, right?
>> Absolutely, absolutely.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, and we were looking for great ideas
to be able to commercialize.
And you know, that's the idea is being able
to really commercialize a product
that really helps patients.
I mean, everybody wins.
>> I showed a slide on the ways to keep the cancer like,
you know, [inaudible] cell, the vaccines.
Out of all the challenges that one
where the gravitating toward--
I know you kind of broke it down in terms of biology or things,
was it gravitating towards one
of those ways [inaudible] than others?
>> We had such a whole host across the 500.
A lot of it was-- yeah, we didn't get that much
on the immune repertoire,
so the immune system-- got a few good ideas.
A lot on angiogenesis and the image of angiogenesis--
let me go back and look at it.
I wouldn't say there was 1 single thing that came out,
that people were universally looking but I go back,
there were 8000 hours that went into analyzing these data.
So, I have to go back to the teams who looked at it and see
if there's any single one
that they noticed was commonly came up.
It's a good question.
[ Inaudible Remark ]
Yeah, it's a good idea.
I didn't see it but I need to go back maybe
to microbiologist 'cause you know,
they understand it except a lot better than I do.
>> So you might have some innovative ideas,
but they aren't convincible and less in terms or companies
or into participate with those.
Did you have any kind of participation
of [inaudible] care providers in the process of selection
or decision criteria or like that?
>> You know, it's a really good question, you know.
At this point, it's hard for them to be able to evaluate.
You know, it's so, so early.
You know, if in, you know, 7,
9 years if that's something they're going to pay for
and their criteria that they're looking
for obviously is tell me that it works.
I don't want to make the risk that I'm going
to give you this test and give you a treatment predicated upon
it when the test was wrong
and I should have given you something else.
That's the question that comes up and then at the--
the amount of evidence--
[inaudible], the amount of evidence that they'd
like before they pay it, you know,
it's hard to actually show what's working and what isn't,
you know, and you do find that these things
that are working very well that they should have paid for
and things that aren't working very well
but maybe they needed to question.
That's not clear until they get more data.
But what it does, it means it slows down the pace
of the innovation and it slows down, you know, what the--
how quickly-- use these treatments get to.
It's a good question.
It's something maybe we should-- a dialogue [inaudible].
[ Pause ]
>> Are there any questions on the line or?
>> Oh yes, are there any questions on the line?
[ Inaudible Discussions ]
[ Laughter ]
>> Any other questions in here?
Okay, I want to thank Lisa for coming today.
I think it was a great talk and--
>> Great, thanks very much.
[Applause]
>> And we have a small token
of our appreciation just a montage from the [inaudible].
So, again, thank you for coming
and sharing a lecture with us today.
Thanks very much.
>> Oh, that's wonderful, thank you so much.
Absolutely.
[Laughter]
>> Thanks.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you.
[ Applause ]