The cure in the near future is your digital twin | Frédéric Dayan | TEDxCannes

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

In this talk, Frédéric Dayan shows how inspiring the e-health challenges are, and why he dreams of a fully-digitalized patient, a personal virtual copy in the machine. He describes a new way of personalizing a treatment thanks to big data in healthcare.

Dr. Frédéric Dayan is a scientist, an entrepreneur, and an expert in bio-modeling. He has two PhDs, one in Pharmacy and another one in Cancer Research; he is also an Engineering Physicist. After an academic career, he led R&D teams, both in the world of start-ups and corporate industries. His ambition is that everyone should benefit from a "digital twin".

What do these two everyday objects,

a drug and a smartphone,
have in common?

We will try to solve
this little riddle today,

in the next few minutes.

First, the drug: I have always
been fascinated by this object.

The mere fact of swallowing it
is somehow almost magical,

it's enough to cure diseases,
sometimes, to even brave death.

I have always been fascinated

by the fact that this same drug
helps to cure billions of people,

all of them different:
you, your neighbor, me.

It is the challenge
of personalized medicine:

to understand why, when I have a headache,

if I take an aspirin pill,
that is enough to relieve my pain,

while my neighbor needs
two of the same pills

to relieve the same headache pain.

Therefore, these questions are
the challenges of tomorrow

when it comes to understanding
our personal response to treatment,

and above all, finding
the best treatment for everyone.

So I suggest you keep in mind
these questions,

- they are particularly dear to me,
we shall return to them later -

and I first suggest that you look back
in the rearview mirror a little

and notice the extraordinary progress
that has been made in medicine

in the past century:

we've extended life expectancy,
and decoded our genes.

Louis Pasteur would have believed
science was a fiction novel

had he seen the extent
of our modern biology;

there are decades of technological
revolution behind this drug.

On the other hand,

what an extraordinary progress
has been achieved in computer science

in the past 30 years

thinking back at how computers
used to occupy entire rooms.

Today, we concentrate
a phenomenal computing power

in the palm of our hands.

Do you remember Alan Turing?

Alan Turing who was considered
the father of the modern computer

during the World War II;

I think he would have believed
science is a fiction novel too,

had he seen the extent
of our modern computer science.

My vocation is to bring
these two worlds together

and power, inside a computer,

the stimulation of an organism,
of your personal response to treatment.

Of course, behind these
scientific and technological stakes,

there are several social issues hidden.

Do you know that this drug,
apparently so innocent, so familiar,

is very far from being a mere drug?

There are more deaths each year
due to inadequate medication

than people killed in road accidents
and suicides combined.

I think that this small object,
a smartphone or a computer,

can help tackle these issues.

And before talking technology,

I would like to start by sharing
a little personal anecdote.

I want to talk to you
about my wife, Caroline.

Caroline is an avid
animal rights activist.

On my part, for several years,

I worked on cancer
in an experimental biology laboratory

and among our activities,
we sometimes worked on animals.

You can imagine the disaster
at home sometimes.

That was something.

Of course, she would question me:

do we have the right
to sometimes abuse animals

and is it always really that useful?

We have an extremely complex debate

and of course, I will never deny

all the contributions experimental biology
and animal biology to current knowledge.

Nevertheless, this discussion
made me question myself,

and I would like to share with you
some of that reflection today.

That's true, this drug originally
was designed based on animals,

then only afterwards,
it was tested on man.

But not on you in particular!

Remember, we all respond differently,

You, me, my neighbor.

Why? Because you, madam,
are not the replica of you, sir.

That explains why you respond
differently to this treatment.

And if I may,

you, madam, are even less
the replica of a lab mouse.

When, in fact, cancer
is tackled through the animal,

we want to cure Cancer with a big C.

I do not want to cure cancer.

I do not want to cure cancer.

I want to cure your cancer.

If one day it should happen to you,
and I do not wish it,

but if that were the case,

I would love to find
the best treatment for you

which is not the same
as your neighbor’s

because your cancer would not be
the replica of your neighbor’s cancer

and even less, once again,
the replica of a cancer

artificially induced
in a laboratory animal.

Isn't there another way
of conceiving things?

The idea's here to start from the patient,
from you, from your characteristics,

to project them into the machine,

create what is called a digital twin,

and in this digital twin, test
the response to the treatment,

thus decreasing animal testing

which is costly
and ethically questionable,

and in addition, better targeting
the response to treatment.

So how do we get there?

Of course, our organism
is extremely complex:

a man's is diffrent from a woman's

but I believe women's are sometimes
particularly more complex.

The complete opposite
is also true, I assure you.

On a more serius note, I like
the analogy with electronics

to grasp this magnificent complexity.

I am always amazed when I see
the circuit in a simple radio,

the complexity of its connections,
sub-circuits, and components.

There is very similar
to our complex organism.

Of course in biology, in our organism,

the interactions are not electronic,

they are chemical, physical, biological

and this is precisely
the mission of biology:

to decipher this complexity.

But there is a fundamental
difference with electronics:

no human has conceived
the blueprint of our organism.

When a radio breaks down,

since we know the blueprint,
we know how to repair it.

It's a whole different story
when our organism breaks down,

gets sick.

we do not know the blueprint,
so it's a little bit as if

some natives of Amazon,
however intelligent they may be,

had to understand and repair
a radio overnight.

That, again, is the challenge of biology.

In recent years, we have come
to understand better

and more and more pathologies.

Thousands of research teams
around the world,

are decrypting this complexity,

understanding small pieces of circuitry,
independent pieces of the puzzle.

This is where computer science
and mathematics come into play.

With these tools,

we will be able to reattach
these little bits

and to make live in a virtual world,
in the machine,

these bits, assembled circuits,
puzzle pieces that we simulate,

that we make come alive
inside the computer.

What you see here is a virtual cell,

a cancer cell,

It is in fact the projection
of a cancer cell in a software,

what is commonly called an application.

Again we see the analogy
with electronics,

there are all these circuits,
these connections.

Again, it's biology.

And we see all this complexity
of the cancer cell

which makes it formidably effective.

Each dot, of course these are not
dots of electronic components,

is a biological interaction,
a protein for example.

We saw there Akt, Ras,

which is a protein that is involved
in the virulence of many cancers:

pancreatic cancer, skin cancer...

What is particularly interesting
in this virtual cancer cell

is that it is not simply
a collection of information.

In fact, behind each dot,
each entity in this network,

hides an equation.

And behind a whole network
is a system of equations

at the confluence between
mathematics and biology.

It is called bio-mathematics,

also called the biology of systems

and it allows us
to set this network to music,

to play, to simulate parts
of this virtual cell,

parts, pieces of this puzzle
in the machine.

So this is an incredible playground,

because this complexity is very difficult
for the human brain to apprehend.

And thanks to the computer tool
and the mathematical tool,

we are able to master, control
and visualize this complexity.

And when we visualize things,

we are making a big step
towards solving problems.

Now, let's put us in the shoes
of a drug designer.

Let us play the role
of the pharmaceutical laboratory.

In this digital twin,

we will be able to test the new drugs

to reduce animal testing

and to promote experimentation
on virtual patients

who will reflect your own diversity.

Tomorrow, why not test your own response
to your medications

on your own avatar,
your own digital twin?

Not to cure cancer, to cure your cancer.

Personally, I am convinced
that this innovation, tomorrow,

will knock on our door,

for medicines of everyday life.

I say that because we talk a lot about
big data, right now in biology.

It is in direct connection
with our subject, these massive data,

are the data that make us all different,

explain our differences,
my weight, my age, my height,

but also my genetic data,

my bio-markers...

therefore explain our difference
in response to treatment

and why I need less aspirin
than my next door neighbour.

These numerical and mathematical
models that I have shown you

feed on these massive data
and biological data.

Thanks to them, we will be able
to build and specify your avatar,

set up your digital twin.

So you understood it,

presently, we talk a lot
about personalized medicine.

Today, I told you about
customized modeling

in a calculation concentrate,
like this one,

to be able tomorrow to simulate
your personal response to the treatment.

This is really the challenge
of personalized medicine,

digital medicine,
the medicine of the future.

You may think I'm exaggerating a little.

In fact, that is my belief,
even if perhaps today, for some,

my words resonate
like a science fiction novel.

Thank you.

(Applause)