Fit2Cure: The Future of Health in the Palm of your Hands

Geoffrey H. Siwo, Victoria Lam, Ian Sander & Fit2Cure Players

Fit2Cure Team

Human + Computer Intelligence Democratizing Medical Discovery

DePaul School of Computing and Digital Media, Chicago, IL

FIT2CURE: THE FUTURE OF HEALTH IN THE PALM OF YOUR HANDS

ARE WE HEALTHIER THAN 100 YEARS AGO?

100 YEARS, 100% INCREASE IN HUMAN LIFESPAN

MORE CHILDREN LIVE BEYOND 5TH BIRTHDAY

BUT DESPITE THE PROGRESS …

CURRENT MEDICINE CAN’T COPE UP

• > 10,000 diseases

• Same disease in a different patient is not exactly the same

• 95% of diseases have no cure

• >50% of diseases are rare (affects <1 in 1500 people)

• Rising cost of healthcare, shortage of doctors

LEARNING FROM THE PAST TO MAKE A BETTER FUTURE

OUR PROGRESS IS DUE TO COLLECTIVE & CUMULATIVE INTELLIGENCE

BRAIN SIZE = INTELLIGENCE

BRAIN SIZE HAS STAGNATED IN >30,000 YEARS

A BABY AT BIRTH TODAY IS NO MORE INTELLIGENT THAN HIS/ HER ANCESTOR 100 YEARS AGO

IMAGINE IF PRACTICALLY ANYONE COULD ACTIVELY ENGAGE IN DRUG DISCOVERY

..YES IT’S POSSIBLE

2003: Undergraduate in Africa doing computational modeling of HIV on a pay-to-go computer

… IN AFRICA

2003 to 2005: organized Bioinformatics training for fellow students

2010: Students in 2003 group organize First Virtual Bioinformatics Conference in Africa

…IN USA

• 15 year old Jack Andraka develops pancreatic cancer test: 100 times more sensitive and 28 times cheaper

IT’S GOING TO HAPPEN EVERYWHERE AS 3 BILLION MORE PEOPLE JOIN THE INTERNET

ITS GOING TO GET EVEN BETTER!

LET’S BUILD TOOLS TO SCALE DISCOVERY TO A MILLION PEOPLE

GalaxyZoo (2007): User base 250,000+Significant contribution due to program: 1.25 million galaxies classified CAPTCHAS : Number of people using CAPTCHAs in a day: 100

million, Number of words deciphered by humans using CAPTCHAs in a year: 440 million

Foldit (2008): User base 250,000+ people, best players are non-scientists, shown that people can fold proteins better than the best computer algorithms; able to find structure of M-PMV (HIV retroviral protease) in 3 weeks—which eluded scientist for over a decade

Recently, research groups have been asking interested non-scientists to help with large scale scientific problems

Usually takes the form of a game or computer program where citizens are asked to perform tasks better suited to humans than computer

CITIZEN SCIENCE

FIT2CUREPLAY, LEARN AND DISCOVER

FILE NDA: FDA approval (2-3yrs)

Identify disease

Isolate protein involved in disease (2-5yrs)

Find a drug effective against disease protein (2-5yrs)

Preclinical Testing (1-3yrs)

Formulation & Scale-up

FILE IND: Human clinical trials (2-10yrs)

Fit2Cure

DRUG DISCOVERY AND DEVELOPMENT

Fit2CureTM

GAME INTERFACE

Fit2CureTM

Competition! + Social Impact

Compete with friends!

In the future:For our top scoring players, we will be donating (real) money to an approved research center or rare & neglected disease institute of your choosing, and in your name.

EMERGENT PATTERNS IN PLAY TRACE

• Expectation-maximization (EM) based mining of player data

-user interface design - novel scientific insights

Tim

e (M

ins)

HIV-1 Protease

PLAYERS CAN DO REAL SCIENCE!

DESIGN YOUR MEDICINE IN FUTURE

Connecting Fit2Cure to Your Genetics: Fit2CureMyDisease

• Fit2Cure links personal genome data from the company 23andMe

• Fit2Cure can alert you when you are playing with a protein in which you have mutations or allergic drug reactions

Fit2CureTM

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSUniversity of Notre Dame

• Dean Gregory Crawford

• Prof. Richard Taylor

Funding

College of Science Innovation Entrepreneurship Fund (supported by Charles Edison Fund)

Dynamoid Apps

• Blair Lyons

• Laura Gonzalez