#105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine

Robert Langer is a professor at MIT and one of the most cited researchers in history, specializing in biotechnology fields of drug delivery systems and tissue engineering. He has bridged theory and practice by being a key member and driving force in launching many successful biotech companies out of MIT. Support this podcast by supporting these sponsors: – MasterClass: https://masterclass.com/lex – Cash App – use code “LexPodcast” and download: – Cash App (App Store): https://apple.co/2sPrUHe – Cash App (Google Play): https://bit.ly/2MlvP5w This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter https://twitter.com/lexfridman, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman/, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman, Medium https://medium.com/@lexfridman, or YouTube https://www.youtube.com/lexfridman where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/artificial-intelligence/id1434243584, follow on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2MAi0BvDc6GTFvKFPXnkCL, or support it on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman. Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. OUTLINE: 00:00 – Introduction 03:07 – Magic and science 05:34 – Memorable rejection 08:35 – How to come up with big ideas in science 13:27 – How to make a new drug 22:38 – Drug delivery 28:22 – Tissue engineering 35:22 – Beautiful idea in bioengineering 38:16 – Patenting process 42:21 – What does it take to build a successful startup? 46:18 – Mentoring students 50:54 – Funding 58:08 – Cookies 59:41 – What are you most proud of?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lex Fridman?

  The following is a conversation with Bob Langer, professor at MIT and one of the most cited researchers in history, specializing in biotechnology fields of drug delivery systems and tissue engineering. He has bridged theory and practice by being a key member and driving force in launching many successful biotech companies out of MIT. This conversation was recorded before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. His research and companies are at the forefront of developing treatment for COVID-19, including a promising vaccine candidate. Quick summary of the ads: two sponsors, Cash App and MasterClass. Please consider supporting the podcast by downloading Cash App and using code

• 0:44Lex Fridman?

  LEXPODCAST and signing up on masterclass.com/lex. Click on the links, buy the stuff. It really is the best way to support this podcast and, in general, the journey I'm on in my research and startup. This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, review it with five stars on Apple Podcasts, support it on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter at @LexFriedman. As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now and never any ads in the middle that can break the flow of the conversation. This show is presented by Cash App, the number one finance app in the App Store. When you get it, use code LEXPODCAST. Cash App lets you send money to friends, buy Bitcoin,

• 1:29Lex Fridman?

  and invest in the stock market with as little as $1. Since Cash App allows you to send and receive money digitally, let me mention a surprising fact related to physical money. Of all the currency in the world, roughly 8% of it is actual physical money. The other 92% of money only exists digitally. So again, if you get Cash App from the App Store, Google Play, and use the code LEXPODCAST, you get $10, and Cash App will also donate $10 to FIRST, an organization that is helping to advance robotics and STEM education for young people around the world. This show is sponsored by MasterClass. Sign up at masterclass.com/lex to get a discount and to support this podcast.

• 2:13Lex Fridman?

  When I first heard about MasterClass, I thought it was too good to be true. For $180 a year, you get an all-access pass to watch courses from, to list some of my favorites. Chris Hadfield on space exploration, Neerthras Tyson on scientific thinking and communication, Will Wright, creator of SimCity and Sims on game design, Carlos Santana on guitar, Europa is probably one of the most beautiful guitar instrumentals ever, Garry Kasparov on chess, Daniel Negrono on poker, and many more. Chris Hadfield explaining how rockets work and the experience of being launched into space alone is worth the money. You can watch it on basically any device.

• 2:54Lex Fridman?

  Once again, sign up at masterclass.com/lex to get a discount and to support this podcast. And now here's my conversation with Bob Langer.

• 3:25Lex Fridman?

  You have a bit of a love for magic. Do you see a connection between magic and science?

• 3:30Speaker 01

  I do. I think magic can surprise you and, you know, and I think science can surprise you. And there's something magical about, about science. I mean, making discoveries and things like that, yeah.

• 3:42Lex Fridman?

  So on the, and then on the magic side, is there some kind of engineering scientific process to the tricks themselves? Do you see, because there's a duality to it. One is you're the, you're, you're sort of the person inside that knows how the whole thing works, how the universe of the magic trick works. And then from the outside observer, which is kind of the role of the scientist. You the people that observe the magic trick don't know at least initially anything that's going on. Do you see that kind of duality?

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Well, I think the duality that I see is fascination. You know, I think of it, you know, when I watch magic myself, I'm always fascinated by it. Sometimes it's a puzzle to think how it's done, but just the sheer fact that something that you never thought could happen does happen. And I think about that in science, too. You know, sometimes you it's something that that you might dream about and hoping to discover, maybe you do in some way or form.

• 4:40Lex Fridman?

  What is the most amazing magic trick you've ever seen?

• 4:44Speaker 01

  Well, there's one I like, which is called the invisible pack. And the way it works is you have this pack and you hold it up. But first you you say to somebody, this is invisible. And this deck and you say, well, shuffle it. They shuffle it. But, you know, they're sort of make believe. And then you say, OK, I'd like you to pick a card, any card, and show it to me. And you show it to me. And I look at it. And let's say it's the three of hearts. I said, Well, put it back in the deck. But what I'd like you to do is turn it upside down from every other card in the deck. So they do that imaginary. And I said, Do you want to shuffle it again? And they shuffle it. And I said, Well, so there's still one card upside down from every other card in the deck. I said, What is

• 5:29Speaker 01

  that? And they said, Well, three hearts. So it just so happens in my back pocket, I have this deck. It's, you know, it's a real deck. I show it to you. And I just open it up. And there's just one card upside down. And it's the three of hearts.

• 5:44Lex Fridman?

  And and you can do this trick?

• 5:48Speaker 01

  I can. If I don't, I would have probably brought it.

• 5:52Lex Fridman?

  All right. Well, beautiful. Let's get into the into the science. As of today, you have over 295,000 citations, and H index of 269. You're one of the most cited people in history, and the most cited engineer in history. And yet, nothing great, I think, is ever achieved without failure. So the interesting part, what rejected papers, ideas, efforts in your life were most painful or had the biggest impact in your life?

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Well, it's interesting. I mean, I've had plenty of rejection too, you know, but I suppose one way I think about this is that when I first started, and this certainly had an impact both ways, you know, I first started, we made two big discoveries and they were kind of interrelated. I mean, one was I was trying to isolate with my postdoctoral advisor, Judith Fulkman, substances that could stop blood vessels from growing and nobody had done that before. And so that was part A, let's say. Part B is we had to develop a way to study that. And what was critical to study that was to have a way to slowly release those substances for, you know, more than a day, you know, maybe months.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  And that had never been done before either. So we published the first one, we sent to Nature, the journal, and they rejected it. And then we sent it, we revised it, we sent it to Science and they accepted it. And the other, the opposite happened. We sent it to Science and they rejected it and then we sent it to Nature and they accepted it. But I have to tell you, when we got the rejections, it was really upsetting. I thought, you know, I did some really good work and Dr. Fulkman thought we'd done some really good work and, but it was very depressing to, you know, get rejected like that.

• 7:43Lex Fridman?

  If you can linger on just the feeling or the thought process when you get the rejection, especially early on in your career, what, I mean, you don't know, now people know you as a brilliant scientist, but at the time, I'm sure you're full of self doubt.

• 8:04Lex Fridman?

  And did you believe that maybe this idea is actually quite terrible? That it could have been done much better? Or is the underlying confidence? What was the feelings?

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Well, you feel depressed. And I felt the same way when I got grants rejected, which I did a lot in the beginning. I guess part of me, you know, you have multiple emotions. One is being sad and being upset. And also being maybe a little bit angry because you didn't feel the reviewers didn't get it. But then as I thought about it more, I thought, well, maybe I just didn't explain it well enough. And, you know, you go through stages. So you say, well, okay, I'll explain it better next time. And certainly you get reviews. And when you get the reviews, you see what they either didn't like or didn't understand. And then you try to incorporate that into your next versions.

• 8:52Lex Fridman?

  You've given advice to students to do something big. Do something that really can change the world rather than something incremental. How did you yourself seek out such ideas? Is there a process? Is there sort of a rigorous process? Or is it more spontaneous?

• 9:09Speaker 01

  It's more spontaneous. I mean, part of it's exposure to things. Part of it's seeing other people. Like I mentioned, Dr. Fulkman, he was my postdoctoral advisor. He was very good at that. You could sort of see that he had big ideas. And I certainly met a lot of people who didn't. And I think you could spot an idea that might have potential when you see it. You know, because it could have very broad implications. Whereas a lot of people might just keep doing derivative stuff. And so, but it's not something that I've ever done systematically, I don't think.

• 9:43Lex Fridman?

  So in the space of ideas, how many are just, when you see them, it's just magic? It's something that you see that could be impactful if you dig deeper?

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's sort of hard to say because there's multiple levels of ideas. One type of thing is like a new. You know, creation like that you could engineer tissues for the first time or make tissues from scratch from the first time. But another thing is really just deeply understanding something. And that's important, too. So, and that may lead to other things. So sometimes you could think of a new technology or I thought of a new technology. But other times, things came from just the process of trying to discover things. So it's never, and you don't necessarily know. Like, people talk about aha moments.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  But I don't know if I've, I mean, I certainly feel like I've had some ideas that I really like. But it's taken me a long time to go from the thought process of starting it to all of a sudden knowing that it might work.

• 10:53Lex Fridman?

  So if you, if you take drug delivery, for example, is the notion, is the initial notion kind of a very general one? That we should be able to do something like this? And then you start to ask the questions of, well, how would you do it? And then, and then digging and digging and digging?

• 11:10Speaker 01

  I think that's right. I think it depends. I mean, there are many different examples. The example I gave about delivering large molecules, which we used to study, these blood vessel inhibitors. I mean, there, we had to invent something that would do that. But other times, it's, it's, it's different. Sometimes it's really understanding what goes on in terms of understanding the mechanisms. And so it's, it's, it's not a single thing. And there are many different parts to it. You know, over the years, we've invented different, or discovered different principles for aerosols, for delivering, you know, genetic therapy agents, you know, all kinds of things.

• 11:49Lex Fridman?

  So let's explore some of the key ideas you've touched on in your life. Let's, let's start with the basics.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 11:56Lex Fridman?

  So first, let me ask, how complicated is the biology and chemistry of the human body? From the perspective of trying to affect some parts of it in a positive way? So that you know, for me, especially coming from the field of computer science and computer engineering and robotics. It seems that the human body is exceptionally complicated and how the heck you can figure out anything is amazing.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Well, I agree with you. I think it's super complicated. I mean, we're still just scratching the surface in many ways, but I feel like we have made progress in different ways and some of it's by really understanding things like we were just talking about. Other times, you know, you might, or somebody might, we or others, might invent technologies that might be helpful on exploring that. And I think over many years, we've understood things better and better, but we still have such a long ways to go.

• 12:47Lex Fridman?

  Are there, I mean, if you just look, are there things that, are there knobs that are reliably controllable about the human body? If you consider, is there, is there, so if you start to think about controlling various aspects of, when we talk about drug delivery a little bit, but controlling various aspects chemically of the human body, is there a solid understanding across the populations of humans that are solid, reliable knobs that can be controlled?

• 13:20Speaker 01

  I think that's hard to do, but on the other hand, whenever we make a new drug or medical device, to a certain extent, we're doing that, you know, in a small way, what you just said, but I don't know that they're, that they're great knobs. I mean, and we're learning about those knobs all the time, but if there's a biological pathway or something that you can affect or understand, I mean, then that might be such a knob.

• 13:44Lex Fridman?

  So what is a pharmaceutical drug? How do you do, how do you discover a specific one? How do you test it? How do you understand it? How do you ship it?

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I'll give you an example, which goes back to what I said before. So when I was doing my postdoctoral work with Judah Fulkman, we wanted to come up with drugs that would stop blood vessels from growing or alternatively make them grow. And actually, people didn't even believe that, that those things could happen.

• 14:13Lex Fridman?

  But could we pause on that for a second?

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 14:15Lex Fridman?

  What is a blood vessel? What does it mean for a blood vessel to grow and shrink and why is that important?

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Sure. So a blood vessel is, could be an artery or a vein or a capillary. And it, you know, provides oxygen, it provides nutrients, gets rid of waste. So, you know, to different parts of your body, if you, so, so the blood vessels end up being very, very important. And, you know, if you have cancer, blood vessels grow into the tumor and that's part of what enables the tumor to get bigger and that's also part of what enables the tumor to metastasize and which means spread throughout the body and ultimately kill somebody. So that was part of what we were trying to do. We tried, what we wanted to see if we could find substances that could stop that from happening.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  So first, I mean, there are many steps. First, we had to develop a bioassay to study blood vessel growth. Again, there wasn't one. That's where we needed the polymer systems because the blood vessels grew slowly, took months. So after we had the polymer system and we had the bioassay, then I had isolated many different molecules initially from cartilage. And almost all of them didn't work, but we were fortunate, we found one, it wasn't purified, but we found one that did work. And that paper, that was this paper I mentioned in Science in 1976, those were really the isolation of some of the very first angiogenesis and blood vessel inhibitors.

• 15:46Lex Fridman?

  So there's a lot of words there.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:49Lex Fridman?

  So let's, first of all, polymer molecules, big, big molecules. So the what are polymers? What's bioassay? What is the process trying to isolate this whole thing, simplify it to where you can control and experiment with it?

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Polymers are like plastics or, like plastics or rubber. What were some of the other questions?

• 16:13Lex Fridman?

  Sorry, so a polymer, some plastics and rubber, and that means something that has structure and that could be useful for what?

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Well, in this case, it would be something that could be useful for delivering a molecule for a long time, so it could slowly diffuse out of that at a controlled rate to where you wanted it to go.

• 16:32Lex Fridman?

  So then you would find, the idea is that there would be a particular blood vessels that you can target, say they're connected somehow to a tumor, that you could target and over A long period of time to be able to place the polymer there and it be delivering a certain kind of chemical.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  That's correct. I think what you said is good. So, so that it would deliver the molecule or the chemical that would stop the blood vessels from growing over a long enough time so that it really could happen. So, that was sort of the, what we call the bioassay is the way that we would study that.

• 17:07Lex Fridman?

  So, sorry, so what is a bioassay? Which part is the bioassay?

• 17:11Speaker 01

  All of it. In other words, the bioassay is, is the way you study, um, blood vessel growth.

• 17:19Lex Fridman?

  The blood vessel growth. And you can control that somehow with, uh, is there an understanding what kind of chemicals can control the growth of a blood vessel?

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Sure. Well, now there is, but then when I started, there wasn't. And that, that gets to your original question. So you go through various steps. We did the first steps. We showed that, A, such molecules existed and then we developed techniques for studying them. And we even isolated fractions, you know, groups of substances that would, would do it. But what would happen over the next, we did that in 1976, we published that. What would happen over the next 28 years is other people would follow in our footsteps. I mean, we tried to do some stuff too, but ultimately to make a new drug takes billions of dollars. So what happened was there were different, uh, growth factors that people would isolate,

• 18:07Speaker 01

  sometimes using the techniques that we developed. Uh, and then they would figure out, using some of those techniques, ways to stop those, the growth factors and ways to stop the blood vessels from growing. That, like I say, took 28 years, it took billions of dollars and worked by many companies like Genetek. But in 2004, 28 years after we started, um, the first one of those, of Aston, got approved by the FDA. And that, that be, that's become, you know, one of the top biotech selling drugs in history. And it's been approved for all kinds of cancers and actually for many eye diseases too, where you have abnormal blood vessel growth, macular.

• 18:48Lex Fridman?

  So in general, one of the key ways you can alleviate

• 18:55Lex Fridman?

  So what's the hope in terms of tumors associated with cancerous tumors? They, what can you help by being able to control the growth of vessels?

• 19:05Speaker 01

  So if you cut off the blood supply, you cut off the, it's kind of like a war almost, right? You, if you have, if the nutrition is going to the tumor and you, and you can cut it off, I mean, you starve the tumor and it becomes very small. It may disappear or it's going to be much more amenable to other therapies because it is tiny, you know, like, you know, chemotherapy or immunotherapy is going to be, have a much easier time against a small tumor than a big one.

• 19:33Lex Fridman?

  Is that an obvious idea? I mean, it seems like a very clever strategy in this war against cancer.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Well, you know, in retrospect, it's an obvious idea, but when Dr. Fulkman, my boss, first proposed it, it wasn't, a lot of people didn't, thought he was pretty crazy.

• 19:51Lex Fridman?

  And so in what sense, if you could sort of linger on it, when you're thinking about these ideas at the time, were you feeling you're out in the dark? So how much mystery is there about the whole thing? How much just blind experimentation? If you can put yourself in that mindset from years ago?

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, there was, I mean, for me, actually, it wasn't just the idea. It was that I didn't know a lot of biology or biochemistry, so I certainly felt I was in the dark. But I, I kept trying and I kept trying to learn and I kept plugging, but, but I mean, a lot of it was being in the dark.

• 20:26Lex Fridman?

  So the human body is complicated, right? We establish this. Quantum mechanics in physics is a theory that works incredibly well, but we don't really necessarily understand the underlying nature of it. So are drugs the same in that you can, you're ultimately trying to show that the thing works to do something that you're trying to do, but you don't necessarily understand the fundamental mechanisms by which it's doing it?

• 20:53Speaker 01

  It really varies. I think sometimes people do know them because they've figured out pathways and ways to interfere them, with them. Other times it is shooting in the dark, it really has varied.

• 21:04Lex Fridman?

  Okay.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  And sometimes people make serendipitous discoveries and they don't even realize what they did.

• 21:10Lex Fridman?

  So what is the discovery process for a drug? You said a bunch of people have tried to work with this. Is it a kind of mix of serendipitous discovery and art? Or is there systematic science to trying different chemical reactions and how they affect whatever you're trying to do, like shrink blood vessels?

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't think there's a single way, you know, a single way to go about something in terms of characterizing the entire drug discovery process. If I look at the blood vessel one, yeah, there, the first step was to have the kinds of theories that Dr. Fulkman had. The second step was to have the techniques where you could study blood vessel growth for the first time and at least quantitate or semi-quantitate it. Third step was to find substances that would stop blood vessels from growing. Fourth step was to maybe purify those substances. There are many other steps, too. I mean, before you have an effective drug, you have to show that it's safe. You have to show that it's effective. And you start with animals. You ultimately go to patients.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  And there are multiple kinds of clinical trials you have to do.

• 22:23Lex Fridman?

  If you step back, is it amazing to you that we descendants of great apes are able to create things that are, you know, that create drugs, chemicals that are able to improve some aspects of our bodies? Or is it quite natural that we're able to discover these kinds of things?

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Well, at a high level, it is amazing. I mean, evolution's amazing. You know, the way I look at your question, the fact that we evolved, have evolved the way we've done, I mean, it's pretty remarkable.

• 22:56Lex Fridman?

  So let's talk about drug delivery. What are the difficult problems in drug delivery? What is drug delivery, you know, from starting from your early seminal work in the field to today?

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Well, drug delivery is... Getting a drug to be, to go where you want it, at the level you want it, in a safe way. Some of the big challenges, I mean, there are a lot. I mean, I'd say one is, could you target the right cell? Like, we talked about cancers, or some way to deliver a drug just to a cancer cell and no other cell. Another challenge is to get drugs across different barriers. Like, could you ever give insulin orally? Could you, or give it, you know, or give it passively, transdermally? Can you get drugs across the blood-brain barrier? I mean, there are lots of big challenges. Can you make smart drug delivery systems that might respond to physiologic signals in the body?

• 23:49Lex Fridman?

  Oh, interesting. So, smart, they have some kind of sense, a chemical sensor? Or is there something more than a chemical sensor that's able to respond to something in the body?

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Could be either one. I mean, you know, I mean, one example might be if you were diabetic, if you had more, got more glucose, could you get more insulin? But I don't, but that, but that's just an example.

• 24:13Lex Fridman?

  Is there some way to control the actual mechanism of delivery in response to what the body's doing?

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Yes, there is. I mean, one of the things that we've done is encapsulate what are called beta cells, those are insulin-producing cells, in a way that they're safe and protected. And then what'll happen is glucose will go in and, you know, cells will make insulin. And so that, that's an example.

• 24:39Lex Fridman?

  So, from an AI robotics perspective, how close are these drug delivery systems to something like a robot? Or is it totally wrong to think about them as intelligent agents? And how much room is there to add that kind of intelligence into these delivery systems, perhaps in the future?

• 24:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it depends on the particular delivery system. You know, of course, one of the things people are concerned about is cost, and if you add a lot of bells and whistles to something, it'll cost more. But, I mean, we, for example, have made what I'll call intelligent microchips that can, you know, where you can send a signal and, you know, release drug in response to that signal. And I think systems like that microchip someday have the potential to do what you and I were just talking about, that there could be a signal like glucose, and it could have some instruction to say, when there's more glucose, deliver more insulin.

• 25:31Lex Fridman?

  So do you think it's possible that there could be robotic-type systems roaming our bodies sort of long-term and be able to deliver certain kinds of drugs in the future? Do you see that kind of future?

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Someday. I don't think we're very close to it yet, but someday. You know, that's nanotechnology, and that would mean even miniaturizing some of the things that I just discussed, and we're certainly not at that point yet. But someday, I expect we will be.

• 25:57Lex Fridman?

  So some of it is just the shrinking of the technology?

• 26:01Speaker 01

  That's a part of it. That's one of the things.

• 26:04Lex Fridman?

  In general, what role do you see AI? Sort of, there's a lot of work now with using data to make intelligent, create systems that make intelligent decisions. Do you see any of that data-driven kind of computing systems having a role in any part of this, into the delivery of drugs, the design of drugs, and any part of the chain?

• 26:32Speaker 01

  I do. I think that AI can be useful in a number of parts of the chain. I mean, one, I think if you get a large amount of information, you know, say you have some chemical data because you've done high-throughput screens. And let's, I'll just make this up, but let's say I have, I'm trying to come up with a drug to treat disease X, whatever that disease is, and I have a test for that, and hopefully a fast test, and let's say I test 10,000 chemical substances. And a couple work, or most of them don't work, some maybe work a little. But if I had, if you, with the right kind of artificial intelligence, maybe you could look at the chemical structures and look at what works

• 27:15Speaker 01

  and see if there's certain commonalities, look at what doesn't work, and see what commonalities there are, and then maybe use that somehow to predict the next generation of things that you would test.

• 27:25Lex Fridman?

  As a tangent, what are your thoughts on our society's relationship with pharmaceutical drugs? Do we, and perhaps, I apologize if this is a philosophical, broader question, but do we over-rely on them? Do we properly prescribe them? In what ways is the system working well? What way can it improve?

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Well, I think pharmaceutical drugs are really important. I mean, the life expectancy and life quality of people over many, many years has increased tremendously, and I think that's a really good thing. I think one thing that would also be good is if we could extend that more and more to people in the developing world, which is something that our lab has been doing with the Gates Foundation or trying to do. So I think ways in which it could improve, I mean, if there was some way to reduce costs, that's certainly an issue people are concerned about. If there was some way to help people in poor countries, that would also be a good thing. And then, of course, we still need to make better drugs for so many diseases.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  I mean, cancer, diabetes, I mean, there's heart disease and rare diseases. There are many, many situations where it'd be great if we could do better and help more people.

• 28:40Lex Fridman?

  Can we talk about another exciting space, which is tissue engineering? What is tissue engineering or regenerative medicine?

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that tissue engineering or regenerative medicine have to do with building an organ or tissue from scratch. So someday, maybe we can build a liver or make new cartilage. It also would enable you to someday create organs on a chip, which we and others are trying to do, which might lead to better drug testing and maybe less testing on animals or people.

• 29:15Lex Fridman?

  Organs and a chip, that sounds fascinating. So what are the various ways to generate tissue? And how do, so one is, of course, from stem cells. Is there other methods? What are the different possible flavors here?

• 29:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think, I mean, there's multiple components. One is having generally some type of scaffold. That's what Jay Vacanti and I started many, many years ago. And then on that scaffold... You might put different cell types, which could be a cartilage cell, a bone cell, it could be a stem cell that might differentiate into different things, could be more than one cell.

• 29:52Lex Fridman?

  And the scaffold, sorry to interrupt, is kind of like a canvas that it's a structure that you can, on which the cells can grow?

• 29:59Speaker 01

  I think that's a good explanation, what you just did, I'll have to use that. The canvas, that's good. Yeah, so I think that that's fair, you know, and the chip could be such a canvas, could be fibers that are made of plastics and that you put in the body someday.

• 30:14Lex Fridman?

  And when you say chip, do you mean electronic chip?

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Not necessarily, it could be though, but it doesn't have to be, it could just be a structure that's not, not in vivo, so to speak, that's, you know, that's outside the body.

• 30:27Lex Fridman?

  So is there-

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Canvas is not a bad word.

• 30:30Lex Fridman?

  So is there a possibility to weave into this canvas a computational component? So if we talk about electronic chips, some, some ability to sense, control, some aspect of this growth process for the tissue?

• 30:48Speaker 01

  I would say the answer to that is yes. I think right now people are working mostly on, on validating these kinds of chips for saying, well, it does work as effectively, or hopefully as just putting something in the body. But I think someday, what you suggested, it certainly would be possible.

• 31:08Lex Fridman?

  So what kind of tissues can we engineer today? What, yeah.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, well, so skin's already been made and approved by the FDA. There are advanced clinical trials, like what are called phase three trials, that are at complete or near completion for making new blood vessels. One of my former students, Laura Nicholson, led a lot of that.

• 31:28Lex Fridman?

  So that's amazing, so human skin can be grown, that's already approved in the entire, the FDA process. So that means what-

• 31:41Lex Fridman?

  So one, that means you can grow that tissue and do various kinds of experiments in terms of drugs and so on. But what is that, does that mean it's some kind of healing and treatment of different conditions for unhuman beings?

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Yes, I mean, they've been approved now for, I mean, different groups have made them, different companies and different professors, but they've been approved for burn victims and for patients with diabetic skin ulcers.

• 32:10Lex Fridman?

  That's amazing. Okay, so skin, what else?

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Well, at different stages, people are like skin, blood vessels. There's clinical trials going now for helping patients hear better, for patients that might be paralyzed, for patients that have different eye problems. I mean, and different groups have worked on just about everything, new liver, new kidneys. I mean, there've been all kinds of work done in this area. Some of it's early, but there's certainly a lot of activity.

• 32:45Lex Fridman?

  What about neural tissue?

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:47Lex Fridman?

  The nervous system and even the brain?

• 32:50Speaker 01

  Well, there have been people out of working on that, too. We've done a little bit with that, but there are people who've done a lot on neural stem cells. And I know Evan Snyder, who's been one of our collaborators on some of our spinal cord works, done work like that, and there've been other people as well.

• 33:04Lex Fridman?

  Is there challenges for the, when it is part of the human body, is there challenges to getting the body to accept this new tissue that's being generated? How do you solve that kind of challenge?

• 33:16Speaker 01

  There can be problems with accepting it. I think maybe in particular, it might mean rejection by the body. So there are multiple ways that people are trying to deal with that. One way is, which was what we've done with Dan Anderson, who was one of my former post docs, and I mentioned this a little bit before, for pancreas, is encapsulating the cells. So immune, immune cells or antibodies can't get in and attack them. So that's a way to protect them. Other strategies could be making the cells non-immunogenic, which might be done by different either techniques which might mask them, or using some gene editing approaches. So there are different ways that people are trying to do that.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  And of course, if you use the patient's own cells or cells from a close relative. That might be another way and

• 34:07Lex Fridman?

  It increases the likelihood that it'll get accepted if you use the patient's own cells.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Yes. And then finally, there's immunosuppressive drugs, which, you know, will suppress the immune response. That's right now what's done safer liver transplant.

• 34:21Lex Fridman?

  The fact that this whole thing works is fascinating, at least from my outside perspective. Will we one day be able to regenerate any organ or part of the the human body? In your view, I mean, it's exciting to think about future possibilities of tissue engineering. Is, uh, do you see some tissues more difficult than others? What are the possibilities here?

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, of course, I'm an optimist and I also feel the timeframe, if we're talking about someday, someday could be hundreds of years, but I think that, yes, someday, I think we will be able to regenerate many things and there are different strategies that one might use. One might use some cells themselves. One might use, you know, some molecules that might help regenerate the cells. And so I think there are different possibilities.

• 35:09Lex Fridman?

  What do you think that means for longevity? If we look maybe not someday, but 10, 20 years out, the possibilities of tissue engineering, the possibilities of the research that you're doing, does it have a significant impact on the longevity? Human life?

• 35:27Speaker 01

  I don't know that we'll see a radical increase in longevity, but I think that in certain areas, we'll see people live better lives and maybe somewhat longer lives.

• 35:40Lex Fridman?

  What's the most beautiful scientific idea in bioengineering that you've come across in your years of research? I apologize for the romantic.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  No, that's an interesting question. I certainly think what's happening right now with CRISPR is a beautiful idea. That certainly wasn't wasn't my idea. I mean, but, uh, you know, I think it's very interesting here, what what people have capitalized on is that there's a mechanism by which bacteria are able to destroy viruses and that understanding that leads to machinery to, uh, to put, you know, to sort of cut and paste genes and, and, you know, fix a cell.

• 36:24Lex Fridman?

  So that kind of, uh, do you see a promise for that kind of?

• 36:29Lex Fridman?

  Ability to copy and paste. I mean, like we said, the human body is complicated. Is that, um, that seems like exceptionally difficult to do.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  I think it is exceptionally difficult to do, but that doesn't mean that it won't be done. There's a lot of companies and people trying to do it. And I think in some areas it will be done. Some of the ways that you might lower the bar are not, you know, are just taking, like not necessarily doing it directly, but you know, you could take a cell that might be useful, but you want to give it some cancer killing capabilities, something like what's called a CAR T cell. And that might be a different way of somehow making a CAR T cell and maybe making it better. So there might be sort of easier things than rather than just fixing the whole body. So the way a lot of things have moved with medicine over time is stepwise.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  So I can see things that might be easier to do than say fix a brain. That would be very hard to do, but maybe someday that'll happen too.

• 37:33Lex Fridman?

  So in terms of stepwise, that's an interesting notion. Do you see that the, if you look at medicine or bioengineering, do you see that there is these big leaps that happen every decade or so, or some distant period, or is it a lot of incremental work? Not, I don't mean to reduce its impact by saying it's incremental, but is there sort of phase shifts in the science, big, big leaps?

• 38:05Speaker 01

  I think there's both, you know, every so often a new technique or a new technology comes out. I mean, genetic engineering was an example. I mentioned CRISPR. You know, I think every so often things happen that, you know, make a big difference. But still, there's to try to really make progress, make a new drug, make a new device. There's a lot of things, I don't know if I'd call them incremental, but there's a lot, a lot of work that needs to be done.

• 38:33Lex Fridman?

  Absolutely. So you have over, numbers could be off, but it's a big amount. You have over 1,100 current or pending patents that have been licensed, sub-licensed to over 300 companies. What's your view? What in your view are the strengths and what are the drawbacks of the patenting process?

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Well, I think for the most part, there's strengths. I think that if you didn't have patents, especially in medicine, you'd never get the funding that it takes to make a new drug or a new device. I mean, which according to Tufts, to make a new drug costs over $2 billion right now. And nobody would even come close to giving you that money, any of that money, if it weren't for the patent system, because then anybody else could do it. That then leads to the negative, though. You know, sometimes somebody does have a very successful drug, and you certainly want to try to make it available to everybody.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  And so the patent system allows it, allowed it to happen in the first place, but maybe it'll impede it after a little bit, or certainly to some people or to some companies, you know, once it's, once it is out there.

• 39:49Lex Fridman?

  What's the, on the point of the cost, what would you say is the most expensive part of the $2 billion of making a drug?

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Human clinical trials. That is by far the most expensive.

• 40:03Lex Fridman?

  In terms of money or pain, or both?

• 40:05Speaker 01

  Well, money, but a pain goes, it's hard to know. I mean, but, but usually doing, proving things that are, that are, proving that something new is safe and effective in people is, is almost always the biggest expense.

• 40:18Lex Fridman?

  Could you linger on that for just a little longer and describe what it takes to prove, for people that don't know, in general, what it takes to prove that something is effective on humans?

• 40:30Speaker 01

  Well, you'd have to take a particular disease, but the process is you start out with, usually you start out with cells, then you'd go to animal models, usually you have to do a couple of animal models. And of course, the animal models aren't perfect for humans. And then you have to do three sets of clinical trials at a minimum. A phase one trial to show that it's safe in small number of patients, a phase two trial to show that it's effective in a small number of patients, and a phase three trial to show that it's safe and effective in a large number of patients. And you know, that could end up being hundreds or thousands of patients. And they have to be really carefully controlled studies. And you know, you'd have to manufacture the drug.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  You'd have to, you know, really watch those patients. You have to be very concerned, you know, that that it is going to be safe. And, and, and then you look at, see, does it, does it treat the disease better than what the, whatever the gold standard was before that, if there was, assuming there was one.

• 41:30Lex Fridman?

  That's a really interesting line. Show that it's safe first and then that it's effective.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  First, do no harm.

• 41:36Lex Fridman?

  First, do no harm. That's right. So how, again, if you can linger on a little bit, how does the patenting process work?

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you, you do a certain amount of research, though that's not necessarily has to be the case, but for us, usually it is. Usually we do a certain amount of research and make some findings. And, you know, we had a hypothesis, let's say we prove it or we make some discovery, we invent some technique. And then we write something up, what's called a disclosure. We give it to MIT's Technology Transfer Office. They then give it to some patent attorneys and they use that and plus talking to us and, you know, work on writing a patent. And then you go back and forth with the USPTO. That's the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  And, you know, they may not allow it the first, second or third time, but they will tell you why they don't. And you may adjust it and maybe you'll eventually get it and maybe you won't.

• 42:39Lex Fridman?

  So you've been part of launching 40 companies together worth, again, numbers could be outdated, but an estimated $23 billion. You've described your thoughts on a formula for startup success. So perhaps you can describe that formula and in general describe what, what does it take to build a successful startup?

• 43:01Speaker 01

  Well, I, I break that down into a couple of categories and I'm, I'm a scientist and certainly from the science standpoint, I'll, I'll go over that. But I actually think that really the most important thing is probably the business people that, that I work with. And, you know, they, when I look back at the companies that have done well, it's been because we've had great business people. And when they haven't done as well, we have it as good business people. But from a science standpoint, I think about that we've made some kind of discovery.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  That is almost what I'd call a platform that you could use it for different things. And certainly, the drug delivery system example that I gave earlier is a good example of that you could use it for drug A, B, C, D, E, and so forth. And that I'd like to think that we've taken it far enough so that we've written at least one really good paper in a top journal, hopefully a number, that we've reduced it to practice in animal models, that we've filed patents, maybe had issued patents that have what I'll call very good and broad claims, that's sort of the key in a patent. And then in our case, a lot of times when we've done it, a lot of times it's somebody

• 44:13Speaker 01

  in the lab, like a postdoc or graduate student, that spent a big part of their life doing it and that they want to work at that company because they have this passion that they want to see something they did make a difference in people's lives.

• 44:27Lex Fridman?

  Maybe you can mention the business component. It's funny to hear a great scientist say that there's value to business, folks.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:35Lex Fridman?

  That's not always said. So what value, what business instinct is valuable to make a startup successful, a company successful?

• 44:46Speaker 01

  I think the business aspects are you have to be a good judge of people so that you hire the right people. You have to be strategic so you figure out if you do have that platform that could be used for all these different things, what one are you, and knowing that medical research is so expensive, what thing are you going to do first, second, third, fourth, and fifth? I think you need to have a good, like what I'll call FDA regulatory clinical trial strategy. I think you have to be able to raise money credibly. So there are a lot of things. You have to be good with people, good manager of people.

• 45:22Lex Fridman?

  So the money and the people part, I get, but the stuff before, in terms of deciding the A, B, C, D, if you have a platform, which drug's the first to take a testing, you see nevertheless scientists as not being too, always too good at that process?

• 45:40Speaker 01

  Well, I think they're a part of the process, but... I'd say there's probably, I'm gonna just make this up, but maybe six or seven criteria that you want to use, and it's not just science. I mean, the kinds of things that I would think about is, is the market big or small? Is the, are there, are there good animal models for it so that you could test it and it wouldn't take, you know, 50 years? Are the clinical trials that could be set up ones that, you know, have clear endpoints where you can make a judgment? And, and another issue would be competition. Are there other ways that some companies out there are doing it? Another issue would be reimbursement. You know, can it get reimbursed?

• 46:24Speaker 01

  So, a lot of things that you have manufacturing issues you'd want to consider. So, I think there are really a lot of things that go into whether you, what you do first, second, third, or fourth.

• 46:34Lex Fridman?

  So, you lead one of the largest academic labs in the world with over $10 million in annual grants and over 100 researchers, probably over 1,000 since the lab's beginning. Researchers can be individualistic and eccentric. How do I put it nicely? There you go, eccentric. So, what insights into research leadership can you give, having to run such a successful lab with so much diverse talent?

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know that I'm any expert. I think that what you do, to me, I mean, I just want, I mean, this is gonna sound very simplistic, but I just want people in the lab to be happy, to be doing things that I hope will make the world a better place, to be working on science that can make the world a better place. And I guess my feeling is if we're able to do that, you know, it kind of runs itself.

• 47:30Lex Fridman?

  So, how do you make a researcher happy in general? What?

• 47:35Speaker 01

  I think when people feel, I mean, this is gonna sound like, again, simplistic or maybe like motherhood and apple pie, but I'm, I think if people feel they're working on something really important that can affect many other people's lives, and they're making some progress, they'll feel good about it. They'll feel good about themselves, and they'll be happy.

• 47:54Lex Fridman?

  But through brainstorming and so on, what's your role? And how difficult it is as a group in this in this collaboration to arrive at these big questions that might have impact?

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Well, the big questions come from many different ways. Sometimes it's trying to things that I might think of, or somebody in the lab might think of, which could be a new technique, or to understand something better. But gee, we've had people like Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation come to us, and Juvenile Diabetes Foundation come to us and say, gee, could you help us on these things? And I mean, that's good, too. It doesn't happen just one way.

• 48:32Lex Fridman?

  And, I mean, you've kind of mentioned it, happiness. But is there something more? How do you inspire a researcher to do the best work of their life? So you mentioned passion, and passion is a kind of fire. Do you see yourself having a role to keep that fire going, to to build it up, to inspire the researchers through the, you know, pretty difficult process of going from idea to to big question to big answer?

• 49:06Speaker 01

  I think so. I think I try to do that by talking to people, going over their ideas and their progress. I try to do it as an individual. You know, certainly when I talk about my own career, I had my setbacks as, you know, at different times, and people know that, that know me. And, you know, you just try to keep pushing and and so forth. But but yeah, I think I try to do that as the one who leads the lab.

• 49:37Lex Fridman?

  So you have this exceptionally successful lab, and one of the great institutions in the world, MIT. And yet, sort of, at least in my neck of the woods, in computer science and artificial intelligence.

• 49:54Lex Fridman?

  A lot of the research is kind of, a lot of the great researchers, not everyone, but some are kind of going to industry. A lot of the research is moving to industry. What do you think about the future of science in general? Is there drawbacks? Is there strength to the academic environment that you hope will persist? How does it need to change? What needs to stay the same? What are your just thoughts on this whole landscape of science and its future?

• 50:24Speaker 01

  Well, first, I think going to industry is good, but I think being in academia is good. You know, I have lots of students who have done both and they've had great careers doing both. I think from an academic standpoint, I mean, the biggest concern probably that people feel today, you know, at a place like MIT or other research-heavy institutions is going to be funding and particular funding that's not super-directed, you know, so that you can do basic research. I think that's probably the number one thing. But, you know, it would be great if we as a society could come up with better ways to teach, you know, so that people all over could learn better.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  You know, so I think there are a number of things that would be good to be able to do better.

• 51:11Lex Fridman?

  So again, you're very successful in terms of funding, but do you still feel the pressure of that, of having to seek funding? Does it affect the science or is it, or can you simply focus on doing the best work of your life and the funding comes along with that?

• 51:30Speaker 01

  I'd say the last 10 or 15 years, we've done pretty well funding, but I always worry about it. You know, it's like you're still operating on more soft money than hard and, and so I always worry about it, but we've been fortunate that.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  Places have come to us like the Gates Foundation and others, Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, some companies, and they're willing to give us funding and we've gotten government money as well. We have a number of NIH grants and I've always had that and that's important to me, too. So I worry about it, but you know, I just view that as a part of the process.

• 52:11Lex Fridman?

  Now, if you put yourself in the shoes of a philanthropist, like say I gave you a hundred billion dollars right now, but you couldn't spend it on your own research. So how hard is it to decide which labs to invest in, which ideas, which problems, which solutions? You know, because funding is so much, such an important part of progression of science in today's society. So if you put yourself in the shoes of a philanthropist, how hard is that problem? How would you go about solving it?

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Sure. Well, I think what I do, the first thing is different philanthropists have different visions. And I think the first thing is to form a concrete vision of what you want. Some people, I mean, I'll just give you two examples of people that I know. David Koch was very interested in cancer research and part of that was that he had cancer and prostate cancer. And a number of people do that along those lines. They've had somebody, they've either had cancer themselves or somebody they loved had cancer and they want to put money into cancer research. Bill Gates, on the other hand, I think when he had got his fortune, I mean, he thought about it and felt, well, how could he have the greatest impact? And he thought about, you know, helping people in the developing

• 53:30Speaker 01

  world and medicines and different things like that, like vaccines that might be really helpful for people in the developing world. And so I think first you start out with that vision. Once you start out with that vision, whatever vision it is, then I think you'd try to

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Ask the question, who in the world does the best work? If that was your goal, I mean, but you really, I think, have to have a defined vision.

• 53:58Lex Fridman?

  Vision first.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, that comes, and I think that's what people do. I mean, I have never seen anybody do it otherwise. I mean, and that, by the way, may not be the best thing overall. I mean, I think, I think it's good that all those things happen, but you know, what you really want to do, and I'll make a contrast in a second. In addition to funding important areas, like what both of those people did, is to help young people. And they may be at odds with each other because a far more, a lab like ours, which is, you know, I'm older, is, you know, might be very good at addressing some of those kinds of problems, but you know, I'm not young. I train a lot of people who are young, but it's not the same as helping somebody who's an assistant professor someplace.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  So I think what's, I think, been good about our thing, our society or things overall, are that there are people who come at it from different ways. And the combination, the confluence of the government funding, the certain foundations that fund things and other foundations that, you know, want to see disease treated, well, then they can go seek out people or they can put a request for proposals and see who does the best. You know, I'd say both David Koch and Bill Gates did exactly that. They sought out people, both of them, you know, or their foundations that they were involved in sought out people like myself. But they also had requests for proposals.

• 55:28Lex Fridman?

  Now, you mentioned young people, and that reminds me of something you said in an interview, I've written somewhere, that said your, some of your initial struggles in terms of finding a faculty position or so on, that you didn't quite for people fit into a particular bucket, a particular.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:52Lex Fridman?

  Can you speak to that? How, do you see limitations to the academic system that it does have such buckets? Does, is there, how can we allow for?

• 56:08Lex Fridman?

  People who are brilliant but outside the disciplines of the previous decade.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think that's a great question. I think that I think the department has have to have a vision. You know, and some of them do every so often. You know, there are institutes or labs that do that. I mean, at MIT, I think that's done sometimes. I know mechanical engineering department just had a search and they hired GeoTraverso, who was one of my, he was a fellow with me and but he's he's actually a molecular biologist and a and a gastroenterologist. And, you know, he's one of the best in the world, but they but he's also done some great mechanical engineering and designing some new pills and things like that. And they

• 56:58Speaker 01

  picked him and, boy, I give them a lot of credit. I mean, that's that's that's vision to pick somebody. And I think, you know, they'll be the richer for. I think the Media Lab has certainly hired, you know, people like Ed Boyden and others who have done you know, very different things. And so I think that, you know, that that's part of the vision of the leadership who do things like that.

• 57:20Lex Fridman?

  Do you think one day you've mentioned David Koch and cancer. Do you think one day we'll cure cancer?

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do. I mean, of course, one day, I don't know how long that day will come.

• 57:31Lex Fridman?

  Soon.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  But yeah, soon, soon, no. But I think.

• 57:34Lex Fridman?

  So you think it is a grand challenge. It is a grand challenge. It's not just solvable within a few years.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  Not I don't think very many things are solvable in a few years. There's some good ideas that people are working on. But I mean, all cancers, that's that's pretty tough.

• 57:49Lex Fridman?

  If we do get the cure, what will the cure look like? Do you think which mechanisms, which disciplines will help us arrive at that cure? From all the amazing work you've done that has touched on cancer?

• 58:01Speaker 01

  No, I think it'll be a combination of biology and engineering. I think it'll be biology to understand the right genetic mechanisms to to solve this problem and maybe the right immunological mechanisms and engineering in the sense of, you know, producing the molecules, developing the right delivery systems, targeting it or whatever else needs to be done.

• 58:23Lex Fridman?

  Well, that's a beautiful vision for engineering. So on a lighter topic, I've read that you love chocolate and mentioned two places, Ben and Bill's Chocolate Emporium and the chocolate cookies, the Soho Globes from Rosie's Bakery in Chestnut Hill. I went to their website and I was trying to finish a paper last night. There's a deadline today and yet I was wasting way too much time at 3 a.m. instead of writing the paper, staring at the Rosie Baker's cookies, which are just look incredible. The Soho Globes is looking credible. But for me, oatmeal white raisin cookies won my heart just from the pictures.

• 59:03Lex Fridman?

  Do you think one day we'll be able to engineer the perfect cookie with the help of chemistry? And maybe a bit of data-driven artificial intelligence? Or is cookies something that's more art than engineering?

• 59:19Speaker 01

  I think there's some of both. I think, I think engineering will probably help someday.

• 59:24Lex Fridman?

  And what about chocolate?

• 59:25Speaker 01

  Same thing, same thing. You have to go to see some of David Edwards' stuff. You know, he, he was one of my post-docs and he's a professor at Harvard, but he also started Cafe Art Sciences and, you know, there's a really cool restaurant around here. But he also has companies that do, you know, ways of looking at fragrances and trying to use engineering in new ways. And so I think, I mean, that's just an example, but I expect someday that AI and, and engineering will, will play a role in almost everything.

• 59:58Lex Fridman?

  Including creating the perfect cookie?

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:00:00Lex Fridman?

  Well, I dream of that day as well. So when you look back at your life, having accomplished an incredible amount of positive impact on the world through science and engineering, what are you most proud of?

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  My students, you know, I mean, I really feel when I look at that, I mean, we've probably had, you know, close to a thousand students go through the lab. And I mean, they've done. Incredibly well. I think 18 are in the National Academy of Engineering, 16 in the National Academy of Medicine. I mean, they're, you know, they've been CEOs of companies, presidents of universities. I mean, and they've, I mean, they've done, I think, eight are faculty at MIT, maybe about 12 at Harvard. I mean, so, you know, it really makes you feel good to think that the people, you know, they're not my children, but they're close to my children in a way. And, you know, it makes you feel really good to see them have such great lives and them do so much good and be happy.

• 1:00:55Lex Fridman?

  Well, I think that's a perfect way to end it, Bob. Thank you so much for talking today.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  My pleasure.

• 1:00:59Lex Fridman?

  It was an honor.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  Good, good questions. Thank you.

• 1:01:02Lex Fridman?

  Thanks for listening to this conversation with Bob Langer, and thank you to our sponsors, Cash App and MasterClass. Please consider supporting the podcast by downloading Cash App and using code LEXPODCAST and signing up at masterclass.com/lex. Click on the links, buy all the stuff. It's the best way to support this podcast and the journey I'm on in my research and startup. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with 5,000 app a podcast, support it on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Fridman, spelled without the E, just F R I D M A N. And now let me leave you with some words from Bill Bryson in his book,

• 1:01:46Lex Fridman?

  A Short History of Nearly Everything. If this book has a lesson, it is that we're awfully lucky to be here. And by we, I mean every living thing. To attain any kind of life in this universe of ours appears to be quite an achievement. As humans, we're doubly lucky, of course. We enjoy not only the privilege of existence, but also the singular ability to appreciate it, and even in a multitude of ways, to make it better. It is talent we have only barely begun to grasp. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.