SPEAKER_04

And then that gave us the – let's say the raw data to build mathematical models that we could do better predictions of what outcomes would be.

Well, so for instance, there is a kind of leukemia called AML, acute myelogenous leukemia.

It starts in the bone marrow.

And it is a distorted version of a myeloid cell type.

It starts as a stem cell.

And that stem cell goes down a number of different paths.

And depending upon the person, the disease is sufficiently different that it might follow a slightly different path towards what becomes the disease itself.

And so being able to trace the path and to know which steps along the way that it takes to become what becomes then the metastatic leukemia,

could only be accomplished by having enough markers that allowed us to trace everybody along the path.

It's kind of like if I wanted to follow you from who you are as an egg through development through to who you are today and I had snapshots every month,

I need different markers to measure what you are as an egg versus what you are as a baby versus what you are as an adult.

And so each of those different markers in my world would be different proteins that tell me something about an adult leukemia versus a baby leukemia.

And then we use something called pseudo time, which is a mathematical concept that allows us to stitch together those photographs.

I could take a random box of photos of you from an egg to who you are today.

And I could just by hand put together the most likely path and sequence of what you were from the earliest to the latest.

But we needed the data and we needed the means and the instruments to collect that information so that then the math could come to play.

But what you're doing is you still have to pay homage to the fact that those differences exist.

And so while my cancer might be the same class of, let's say, melanoma as another person's, the complexity of what allowed that cancer to become are so different that the drugs that would work for me might not work for another person.

And so that's what basically requires us to personalize the medications in a way that gives the right drug to the right person.

So I've started probably half a dozen companies and sold them.