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 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)