- [Perry] The greatest advances made in science
I believe have all been based on serendipity.
30 years ago, Governor Perpich wondered
whether or not there was some way to restore Minnesota lakes
to their prior luster as fishing destinations.
My lab was working on cancer viruses
and someone asked me whether or not I could help them
with genetically engineering fish
and in the process we found an element in fish
that was resurrected to become a primary way
of fighting cancer after a 14 million year genetic sleep.
We call it "Sleeping Beauty".
I'm Perry Hackett and this is
the best Minnesota fishing story you've ever heard.
(upbeat classical music)
At the beginning of the 21 century
was the idea that it might be possible
to reprogram a person's immune cells
to be directed to attack and kill specific types of cancer.
CAR T-cell therapies began using viruses
to bring the DNA in.
They were so efficacious that two therapies
were approved by the FDA for the general population.
The problem is that roughly only 10% of patients
that would qualify for this therapy can actually get it.
After we brought the Sleeping Beauty back to life,
my colleague, Scott McIvor, suggested that
it could be used for non-viral gene therapy.
Then Lawrence Cooper spent 10 years
developing the Sleeping Beauty system to reprogram T-cells
and that unlocked efficient human gene therapy
that didn't involve viruses.
No one had thought about that before we did it.
The Sleeping Beauty transposon system
has matched the results of the viral studies.
And there are reasons to believe that Sleeping Beauty
may be preferable, not only for price and availability,
but also for potential effects.
(dramatic piano)
- I think you can think of biotechnology in particular
as sort of two approaches.
You can either take the approach
where you want to hoard the technology and own everything,
or you can take an abundance mentality view
that as you share it, it will have a broader impact.
The University of Minnesota with
the Sleeping Beauty transposon took the view
that the more people that used it,
the greater the chance that it would
have an impact on the world.
And because of that combination of a technology
and a visionary, in this case Perry,
really pushing that this could be something
that could dramatically change a lot of people's lives
that origin led to a whole series of scientists
and they're coming to Minnesota for that.
And that secondary wave is now generating
Minnesota as the destination for genome engineering
because there's a cluster of entrepreneurship expertise.
Globally, Minnesota has the highest density of
genome engineering companies in the world.
What we've been doing, especially the last 20 years,
is building our tool box.
Building the ability to manipulate and alter DNA.
The goal is to master the skills
just like you can with a word processor and change the code.
We're trying to get to the point
where we can do that same thing with DNA
so that we can be able to customize those therapies
based on what your health need is
and as we get better and better
at being able to do this kind of editing,
we're better and better able to
make these kind of custom therapies.
And so it opens up an entirely new concept
in how you're gonna treat health,
all because of Sleeping Beauty
and Perry's vision to share.
It's very important.
- [Perry] Winston Churchill said that people go through life
constantly stumbling over opportunities,
when they do, they pick themselves up,
dust themselves off, and go right along.
But in science, every now and then,
you see something that's a little bit unexpected
or someone asks you a question
and it can redirect your whole scientific career.
So if you stumble over opportunity, don't get up too fast,
look down and see what you stumbled across
because there might be something really important there.
(upbeat marching band music)
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