Translator: Mehrnoosh Baratpour Reviewer: Hasan Noori
Today I want to talk about crossing the boundaries of science.
First, I'll start with history.
then we'll go to medicine, and give some tangible examples -
to find out how these boundaries are begin crossed.
At last we'll see where is our position,
and the position of our country in this stage.
Before getting started, let's check out one point together.
We, human beings, assume we are unlimited!
And we think we are capable of thinking about anything!
But when we look at it from the above, and from a historical perspective,
then we understand our thoughts are not as unlimited as we assumed!
All of our thoughts start from one point,
then we get a little bit away -
and then we get back to the point we used to be in the past.
This happens in a very fast pace and is experienced many times in our daily life.
But for experiences such as science,
this could be too long to be experienced by one person in his limited lifetime.
So, our thoughts seem to be in a cycle.
Coming and going.
Let's check this out in science.
So we'll start with the history of science.
Some hundred years ago...
Scientists such as Aristotle, Plato,
like Newton, Galilei,
And further, Avicenna, Omar Khayyam.
And many other scientists known to us by same titles.
Most of them are known for being Philosophers.
Scientists who knew about different sciences.
Such as Biology, Physics, Mathematics, Medicine,etc.
Some ten years ago...
People started to get more and more specialized.
This time, we call them Mathematician,
Physicist, Chemist, Biologist.
Even in more detail--
In Biology we called them Immunologist, Hematologist, Oncologist.
And even in more detail !
In Immunology we call them transplantation or tumor immunology specialist, etc.
I'm not a predictor.
and I'm not going to predict anything here.
But It's worth checking out this report posted by Nature
to find out what is happening in this century.
The number of papers with interdisciplinar in title is increasing by time.
This is happening in both social and natural sciences.
Well,
You might think, all this is theory
and we, Iranians don't like statistics anymore.
Let's check out some more tangible examples to believe this.
To talk about more tangible examples,
I should start with what I know something about - which is medicine.
So as our agreement, I will start with history.
Around some thousand years ago,
people had just learnt to work and live together.
Imagine one is sick and the others are fine.
So the others want to help him, but they don't succeed.
The so-called state of being hands-up.
In medicine, we do weird things whenever we are all hands-up.
The same is apparent in this picture...
They used to cut and open people's head to eliminate the demons!
But soon, they learnt that things like plants, food, and even the snake venom
have the potential to cure our diseases.
But all of it was based on personal experiences and imaginations.
Until people like Avicenna from Iran and many others
changed medicine into a cause and effect science.
In fact, they experimented through testing and reasoned based on the results.
This led to the discovery of microbes, antibiotics, and vaccine -
And of course, treatment of many people.
At the same time, people managed to be more specialized people.
They became digestion specialist, lung specialist, eye specialist.
Even in more detail,
they became retinal specialists, cornea specialists, and etc.
We desired to cure all diseases, just by adding more and more specialties.
Until we reached to the point where we couldn't do anything.
We couldn't heal some of the diseases.
The main problem was we had lost some tissues.
And medicine could not recover it.
We called this phenomenon "degenerative disorders".
In medicine when we cannot cure a disease, we somehow act weird.
Like cancer which is with us for years.
The same thing happened in this case.
We startetd to define new branches of medicine.
Like homeopathy, energy medicine, traditional medicine, herbal medicine...
Even acupuncture which had been forgotten for years.
We soon understood that all this has placebo effects.
And we must think of better ways.
We had lost tissue, and wanted to regain them.
So we introduced a new medicine called regenerative medicine.
This medicine aimed to transplant the lost tissues.
And was different from what we had done using platinum.
Again we started a weird job.
Here we wanted to recover the lost tissues.
The first thing that came to our mind was to transplant a donor heart.
You might think this is a very prestigeous job.
Why do you think this might sound hilarious in 100 years?!
Let's take a closer look at it.
Imagine you have a very old house.
Until it has a blocked pipe.
The leaking pipe leads to a disaster to one of the walls.
The same thing happens in a heart attack.
What do we do in organ transplantation -
which is the start point in originating medicine -
We find another old house and remove its wall!
Then we replace the wall with the wall in our own house.
And fix it with nails and duct tapes and etc!
Then we call this Immunosuppressant and award a Nobel prize for it.
But this doesn't mean medical people are not as intelligent as engineers.
And doesn't mean medical people don't know the wall must be built using the bricks.
The problem is we are dealing with a complex alive being.
For years, we knew organ transplantation could help us, but we had two problems.
First, a huge number of cells will be lost.
For instance, in a heart attack, around one milliard cells are lost.
And the bigger challenge is the various types of cells to be transplanted.
Your body is formed by about 200 types of various cells.
Finally, in 1998, an American scientist named James Thomson solved this for us.
He introduced stem cells.
Stem cell has two aspects: First, it can divide to produce more stem cells.
And second, it can differentiate into specialized cells.
Just like the Sperm which created you by its natural specialty.
So we created a new science named Cell Therapy.
But not so far later, we soon understood that this is not the best solution.
As you can see, replacing the bricks is not a permanent solution.
And you need to use something like cement and mortar and etc.
We were medical people and didn't know about engineering.
So we had to cross the boundaries of science and learn more about engineering.
We created a new science named Tissue engineering.
Which, as Times magazine explains, will be in the top ten jobs in 2050.
We then had so much developments
and even built machines to print a 3D version of your heart.
But again, our problem was not completely solved yet.
Because of the big number of cells, too varied cells, blood problems, etc.
Apparently we had to go further in crossing the boundaries of science.
So instead of engineering, we experienced its origin, which is mathematics.
This was done by Mr. Sasai from Japan,
who worked on Turing theory.
Based on Turing theory, if you put the same molecules together--
and give them power, they will create nice 3D shapes like water and snow.
Why don't we try it with cells?
So Sasai put these cells together and named the forced power as "Cytokine".
He succeeded to create eye and optic-cup in lab containers.
Sasai committed suicide because of the plagiarism of one his students.
But today his efforts along with jobs done by another researcher named Yamanaka
let us remove a biopsy from your body,
separate Fibroblast tissues from it,
then turn them into fetal Fibroblast cells
and then create hepatic organ or even create gut.
And then name this achievement as "Organs from the Lab".
Today, this achievement is the cutting edge of our science.
The results of efforts of people like Sasai
who was a biologist and mathematician.
You may name it inter-discipline, or philosophy, or anything else.
Well, let's see what is the position of our country in this limitless map.
But before starting,I'd recommend checking Nature's report I mentioned before.
Looking at this diagram,
you'll find Indians, Chinese and Taiwanese people
to have the most interdisciplinary papers.
On the other side, Germans have the least interdisciplinary papers.
Apparently people with high discipline have less interdiscipline.
This means one can't say disciplined countries are successful too.
Sometimes, less disciplined countries or eastern counties get more chance.
Our country, Iran, is one of these eastern countries, not having much discipline.
But Iranian's problem is not lack of facilities.
We bring lots of excuses for working.
The first excuse is: Who? Is there anyone in our country working on such thing?
We always need a leader.
In stem cells, this leader is Dr. Ghavamzadeh -
the leader for bone marrow transplantation.
Dr. Kazemi Ashtiani who established Royan Research Institute.
Dr. Hossein Baharvand -
who is the winner of the UNESCO prize
for his stem cell research in life sciences
Or Dr. Hamidi, director of the Council for Stem Cell Sciences -
who is strictly working on bone marrow transplantation.
- I don't mean they don't exist!
Actually when Iranians praise a person, you could guess that person is dead,
or a hundred years has passed, and the praise doesn't affect that person!
So it's too early to notice these people!
Let's check out some more practical examples.
This is a cardiac muscle cell
regenerated from an embryonic stem cell in the labs of Royan Institute.
And it is beating, as you can see.
Bringing excuses, one might think this is just a video!
What do foreigners say about you?! Are you authorized anywhere?!
This is a nerve cell regenerated from an embryonic stem cell at Royan Institute.
And it is printed on the cover of an American magazine.
The other photo is again a nerve cell regenerated with aid of Nanotechnology.
And again, it is printed on the cover of Tissue Engineering magazine.
- OK! I understand what you're saying!
- We're good at labs, but we have major problems at industry!
- We don't have people who apply science in industry! It's a pipe dream!
It needs money and facilities, and most importantly, we need management!
Make an example for such facilities...
Celltech Pharmed company is one of the joint ventures
between Royan Institute, acting as producer of science,
and Barkat Pharmacy, being one of the main role players in pharmaceutical marketplace
and is willing to perform industrial regeneration of stem cells.
Today I've decided to bring all excuses!
I don't want to work in Iran! I want to go to the US!
All accepted! What is there for clinics? Is there any cure for clinical patients?
Mobina is a girl with cerebral palsy.
Bringing a lot of troubles to her parents -
and also lots of embarrassment for medical science society.
(Video) Mobina, raise your head... Well done!
Mobina, can you bend your knees? Bend your knees!
Raise your hands! Let me see if you can get up, Mobina!
At Royan Institute with the help of specialists at Shohada Tajrish hospital,
trying to help this young girl, we removed stem cells from her body,
separated them in the lab,
and then injected them to her nervous system.
(Video)
Bring your hand forward, Mobina!
Open your hand! Open it! Well done!
Keep your head straight! Well done!
Now come! Walk and come here!
(Applause)
Thanks!
In fact she isn't completely healed, but at least her parents have less trouble
But we might be able to help her more -
enabling her come here and listen to TED talks just like all of us.
So we...
(Applause)
So we're living a life with everything going on as we please.
We have the knowledge, we have the people, we also have the money.
Nothing is worse than bringing excuses for not serving our country.
Specifically now, that even an astronomer can help medicine.
Remember, "History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes".
And people who don't pay attention to history...
(On the screen)
"Have they not traveled through the land to observe the end of those before them?"
Thank you!
(Applause)