Faster Cures For All

Geoffrey H. SiwoCo-Founder Fit2CureLurie Medical Research Center

Northwestern University, Chicago, IL

A century of exponential progress in Health

In 100 years, Life expectancy increased 100%

93% reduction in child mortality

Time from bench to bedside much shorter

~200 years since discovery of scurvy-lemon juice association to implementation

Faster time to clinic, last 100 years

But….

7 million children die before age of 5

Bench to bedside still takes too long

$1 Billion 90% Failure

17 years

>10,000 Monogenic diseases

We don’t even have data for most of these diseases

Cystic Fibrosis

>95% of diseases have no cures

Most medicines don’t work in most people

Allen Roses, GSK VP Genetics

Why?

Human Genetic Diversity is Massive

Current system can’t cope

We must empower millions to be part of discovery

Can we really?What if we do?

Are we ready for it?Is our policy ready for it?

Can we?

~3 billion people online by end of this year

What if each computer/ mobile was a lab?

Yes, it’s possible…

2003: Undergraduate in Africa doing computational modeling of HIV on a pay-to-go computer

… in Africa

2003 to 2005: organized Bioinformatics training for fellow students

2010: Students in 2003 group organize First Virtual Bioinformatics Conference in Africa

…in USA

• 15 year old Jack Andraka develops pancreatic cancer test: 100 times more sensitive and 28 times cheaper

Even more complex experiments will be possible

Virtual Physiological Human

Virtual Heart- Cardiod project

• Near-cellular resolution Real-time simulation of the electrophysiology of the human heart

Virtual Brain

These complex experiments will come to your computer

Everywhere

628,000 members2.5 million devices796,000 years of computing

Something from the Nobel prize in Chemistry 2013

>Half a billion people play computer/ video games for

at least 1 hour a day

Why not solve science problems in games?

Fit2CureA lab and a scientist on

every computer

Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination

With Co-Founders Ian Sander and Victoria Lam

FILE NDA: FDA approval (2-3yrs)

Identify disease

Isolate protein involved in disease (2-5yrs) Foldit

Find a drug effective against disease protein (2-5yrs)

Preclinical Testing (1-3yrs)

Formulation & Scale-up

FILE IND: Human clinical trials (2-10yrs)

Fit2Cure

Drug discovery pipeline

Game interface

Competition! + Social Impact

Compete with friends!

In the future:For our top scoring players, we will be donating (real) money to an approved research center or rare & neglected disease institute of your choosing, and in your name.

Emergent patterns in play trace

• Expectation-maximization (EM) based mining of player data

-user interface design - novel scientific insights

Tim

e (M

ins)

HIV-1 Protease

Players can do real science!

Drug discovery

algorithmsDrug

Binding simulation

modelsI.P. of integrating

human cognition

AnalyticsWeb-based

gaming sessions

New InsightsNew Drugs

Design your medicine in future

Connecting Fit2Cure to Your Genetics: Fit2CureMyDisease

• Fit2Cure links personal genome data from the company 23andMe

• Fit2Cure can alert you when you are playing with a protein in which you have mutations or allergic drug reactions

Print your own medicine

Or send to robot scientists online to make it and mail it

to you

Remote controlled chemistry lab

Hypothesis generating and testing robot scientists

Adam- The Robot Scientist

• Adam designed hypotheses, experiments and tested them to discover function of novel yeast genes

Who owns the discoveries?

Who decides which disease should be studied first?

Should players be compensated?

What if players design dangerous chemical from game?

Discoveries are going to happen faster than policy

What are the challenges?

• Fast discovery will outpace our ability to build policy

• Policy must anticipate, there will be no time

• Central regulation will be extremely difficult since tools will be available to many

What are the opportunities?

• Allow millions to engage in experimentation in what affects them

• Democratized and rapid discovery

• Realistic simulations of your own health (Personalized medicine)

• Preparing the world for an unknown pandemic

Charles Edison Fund

DynamoidApps

Fit2Cure Players

Acknowledgements