- This video is brought to you
in partnership with Novartis.
There's nothing magical about my favorite super heroes.
Through either great detective work or ingenious technology
or radical science experiments they become super human
with traits and technologies that are seemingly
within our grasp, and one of theses radical transformations
is closer than you may think.
Let's get technical.
(electronic music)
Outside of being a genius detective who hides in a cave
or a genius engineer who builds a rocket suit,
also in a cave, there isn't a whole lot of room
for the average person to realistically become super human.
That is unless you have some of this stuff.
This is super serum and you can find it in many different
forms across super media but basically super serum
is some concoction of ingredients that takes the
average person
(grunts)
and makes them super human.
But what could possibly be inside something like this
to take you from zero to hero.
(laughter)
Come on!
Come on, let's go with the stuff.
First we know what's probably not going to be in a
true super hero serum.
It's likely not going to be a single chemical
because the body is just far too complicated for anything
like this to be that easy and even if a single
chemical did produce
(grunts)
some amazing short term effects they would likely
be temporary because unless these changes are something
the body would normally do on it's own
any chemical inside your body will be eventually
depleted and excreted.
No, a serum able to turn you from a skinny guy
willing to jump a grenade,
(pin pulls from grenade)
(explosion)
into a hero that understands that reference
is gonna need to make your super-ness something
that the body would do on it's own
and that means starting with the blueprint of life,
your DNA.
(Trumpets)
Deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, is a twisted
ladder of a molecule that carries
the instructions for the growth, development,
proper functioning, and reproduction of every
organism on the planet.
DNA sits twisted up in the nucleus of all of your cells
in collections that we call chromosomes.
A complete set of human DNA contains around
three billion bases, the rungs of this twisted ladder,
that act like the programming language of our bodies.
The four nitrogen bases that make the rungs
on our ladder and link the two helical strands of DNA
together form sequences called genes.
Our cellular machinery takes these genes
and their information and uses that to code for proteins,
Which are responsible for so much of what our body does.
This genes here might code for eye color
or it could code for something like muscle mass,
so if we wanted to fundamentally change
how the human body functions we should start here
with the code that it's reading.
Pop culture has actually followed the science
of genetics and advances in personalized medicine.
If you've paid attention to how science fiction has turned
normal humans into super villains and super heroes
over the years, you'll notice that the mechanisms
have gotten a lot more plausible.
The days of radiation
(roaring)
turning you into some kind of monster
are just over because since the early 20th century,
when many of our favorite characters were first
thought up, we've simply learned too much about
how the body actually works for these more brute force
explanations to make sense.
Instead most modern super hero stories have, indeed,
pivoted toward genetic and gene based explanations
for their super heroes.
What was once a radioactive bug bite, for example,
is now a genetically augmenting bug bite.
The most realistic way toward super human traits,
like strength and speed is going to be
through our genes.
Ow!
Which bug was that?
Was that the radioactive bug or the genetic bug,
because there's a big difference.
Your genes don't just code for how your kidneys
are shaped or what hair color you may have.
A few tweaks to your blueprint could make you super human.
Yeah, I kinda like it.
It's not that bad.
But, let's just get one thing out of the way first.
When I say making some one super human
I don't mean giving someone the ability to
(wooshing)
shoot flames out of their hands or
(crash)
punch through a brick wall or something.
no, there are just real physical limits
on what a human body can do.
I mean altering someones genetic code in such a way
to give them super human traits that will go beyond
the average person in ways that a super hero would.
Obviously, though, doing this kind of thing
is unethical, especially considering a doctors oath
to do no harm and there are potential harms here.
That being said, hear me out.
Let's begin here on human chromosome two,
at position 32.2 precisely.
Here you will find the MSTN gene which codes for
a protein called myostatin.
Myostatin is a muscle growth inhibitor, meaning
that it keeps muscle cells in check,
therefore organisms with mutations that inactivate
this gene, or that are bred or engineered to not have
this protein, can get
pretty beefy.
For example, the Belgian Blue cow is bred to have
inactivating mutations in its MSTN gene, and therefore
get ridiculously ripped and in the lab there are mice
that have had their myostatin producing genes knocked out
and so they get buff, they're little buff mice.
And these ridiculous results come from
a single genetic change.
Muscle mice.
Now, just imagine a super serum that could break
(shattering glass)
your MSTN gene in a similar way.
Your muscle mass would increase, your body fat
would decrease, and you'd feel stronger than ever before,
and we know this would happen in humans because it
occasionally happens in humans naturally in
children born lacking myostatin, and they can do
pull ups when they are three.
Most people can't do three pull ups.
There are other potential ingredients in more realistic
super serum, too, like human growth hormones,
insulin-like growth factor one,
and vasular endothelial growth factor,
just to name a few.
Tweaked genes could make you faster, stronger, and tougher
and the process wouldn't be as hard as stepping into a
chamber and being bombarded by peck enlarging...
Peck rays?
Sure.
A real super hero serum could work like this.
Say we wanna effect some cells in the body and
the DNA in the nucleus of those cells,
first we need some kind of vector like a virus.
We can use science to hollow out, these viruses
and then insert the DNA that we want to express
into those viruses.
We then put those viruses into a serum-like form
and we inject it into somebody,
then those viruses find their way naturally to the cell
that we want to have the DNA inside, and then as viruses do,
they enter those cells and the cell starts reproducing
this addition DNA all on it's own.
With a little bit of luck and a lot of science
this reproduced DNA will then start making the proteins
that can start creating these super human-like traits
that we want in some person.
Say increased strength or speed.
We could make a super serum like this today
that could be effective.
But should we?
There's just no getting around the science here.
Altering DNA in real life is risky and if you're doing so
just to get super, just to enhance human performance
it's also unethical.
We are using super serums today but we're using them
like a real hero actually would, to save lives.
I am partnering with Novartis for this video
because as previous videos I want to highlight
real scientists doing real research right now
that was once reserved only for science fiction.
Using similar cell and gene technologies that movies
and comic books have used to turn people super human
researchers at Novartis are reprogramming cells
at the genetic level to fight one of the real arch villains
of human life, disease, and some terrible
diseases in particular.
It is estimated that around 10,000 human diseases
are caused by problems with a single gene.
These monogenetic disorders like
Duchenne's muscular dystrophy, and sickle cell anemia
are debilitating and destructive, but because they are
caused by malfunctioning in single genes
we know exactly how to fight back.
Think of how we conventionally treat disease.
Often times there's some intervention like a drug
in pill form that we
(swallowing hard)
take and we have symptoms recede for as long as
we take that invention but we haven't fundamentally
changed how the body functions.
The promise of altering cells through gene therapy
is that if we can fundamentally alter
someones genetic code we might be able to come up
with a treatment that could be a one time
(swallowing)
cure for what ails them.
But you wouldn't eat the DNA.
That's not how that works.
Right now Novartis scientists are working on three
approaches to cell and gene therapy that certainly
evoke super serums.
The first technology is called AAVs, or
adeno-associated viruses, which are viruses, duh,
that have been found in humans and other primates
and most importantly for cell and gene therapy
they aren't known to cause any disease.
We can hollow these viruses out and then insert
genes into them and have them deliver
our genetic treatments for us.
And, notice, this is exactly how we imagined a more
realistic super serum might work.
Right now Novartis is using AAV technology
to come up with potential treatments for
eye disorders, neurological disorders, and
especially, monogenic diseases.
(pin)
Grenade!
(explosion)
Whoo, I could do that all day.
You good?
Another approach to cell and gene therapy that Novartis
is using involves a technology that you've probably
already heard of, CRISPR, or
Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats.
It's a complicated acronym but CRISPR is basically
a sequence of DNA that we found in bacteria
that can act like a molecular
(sheering)
scissors, and we can program it to cut DNA wherever
we want, in any organism.
We use this ability to inactivate certain genes
or we can use it to open up sections in DNA
to insert the genes that we want.
One goal that Novartis has for this technology is to
take malfunctioning cells and DNA out of patients
and then use this technology to repair those cells
and DNA and then return them to the patient
to hopefully treat diseases like Sickle Cell Anemia.
A third approach is CAR-T or
chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy.
For this a patient our T cells, immune system cells,
are taking out of the body and then reprogrammed
to identify certain dangerous antigens like those
identifiable with cancer and then those cells are
returned to a patients body, hopefully giving the
T cells the information they need to identify something
like a cancer cell and then fight back.
The ability for a technology to fight something like cancer
means that all of the cell and gene technologies
aren't just for super rare genetic disorders
and the possibilities for these go far beyond even what
we've talked about here today.
So, I'm just gonna
take this with me for
not reasons.
So how do you make a real super serum?
Well, I think we can be pretty confident that it will
have something to do with reprogramming our cells
and rewriting our own blueprint.
This is a real super human way of giving someone
their life back and we're working on this right now.
These are the real super serums
because science.
(electronic music)
Thanks, again, to Novartis for collaborating
with me on this video.
Novartis uses science based innovation to address some
of societies most challenging healthcare issues.
They discover and develop breakthrough treatments and find
new ways to deliver them to as many people as possible.