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What do you do when
you have a headache?
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You swallow an aspirin.
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But for this pill to get to your head,
where the pain is, it goes through
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your stomach, intestines
and various other organs first.
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Swallowing pills is the most effective
and painless way of delivering
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any medication in the body.
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(It takes 60 minutes for a regular
aspirin to reach your bloodstream.)
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The downside though, is that swallowing
any medication leads to its dilution,
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and this is a big problem,
particularly in HIV patients.
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When they take their anti-HIV drugs,
these drugs are good for loweing the virus
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in the blood and increasing
their CD4 cell counts.
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But their also notorious for their adverse
side effects, but mostly bad because
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they get diluted by the time they get
to the blood and worse --
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by the time they get to the sites where it
matters most within HIV viral reservoirs.
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These areas in the body, such as
the lymphnodes, the nervous system,
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as well as the lungs, where the virus is
sleeping and won't readily get delivered
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in the blood of patients that are under
consistent anti-HIV drugs therapy.
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However, upon discontinuation of therapy,
the virus can awake and affect new cells
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in the blood.
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Now, all this is a big problem in treating
HIV with the current drug treatment,
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which is a life-long treatment that
must be swallowed by patients.
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One day, I said in thought, can we
deliver anti-HIV directly within
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its reservoir sites without
the risk of drug dilution?
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As a laser scientist, the answer
was just beyond my eyes
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Lasers, of course.
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If they can be used for dentistry,
for diabetic wound healing and surgery,
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they can be used for anything imaginable,
including transporting drugs into cells.
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As a matter of fact, we're currently using
laser pulses to poke or drill extremely
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tiny holes which open and close almost
immediately in HIV-infected cells
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in order to deliver drugs within them.
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How is that possible, you may ask?
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Well, we shine a very powerful but super
tiny laser beam onto the membrane
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of HIV-infected cells, while these cells
are immersed in liquid containing the drug.
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The laser pierces the cell, while the cell
swallows the drug in a matter
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of microseconds.
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Before you even know it, the induced
becomes immediately repaired.
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Now we are currently testing this
technology in the test tubes
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or petrie dishes, but the goal is to get
this technology in the human body,
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applied in the human body.
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How is that possible, you may ask?
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Well, the answer is through
a three-headed device.
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Using the first head, which is
our laser, we will make an incision
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to the site of infection.
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Using the second head, which is a camera,
we meander to the site of infection.
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Finally, using a third head, which is
a drug spreading sprinkler, we deliver
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the drugs directly at the site infection,
while the laser is again used
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to poke those cells open.
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Well this may not seem like much right now
but one day, if successful this technology
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can lead to complete eradication
of HIV in the body.
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Yes.
A cure for HIV.
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This is every HIV researcher's dream.
In our case, a cure lead by lasers.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)