Big Technology Podcast - Programming The Code of Life With CRISPR — With Trevor Martin, CEO of Mammoth Biosciences

Episode Date: February 16, 2022

Trevor Martin is the CEO and co-founder of Mammoth Biosciences, a $1 billion company that develops CRISPR technology to edit genes. Martin joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss how CRISPR is working in production today — not in some distant future — and what the ethical ramifications of this technology will be as it gets more advanced. You can find Trevor on Twitter: twitter.com/martintrevor_ And here's Mammoth Biosciences: mammoth.bio

Hello and welcome to the big technology podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation, of the tech world and beyond. Well, one of the most exciting technologies in the world today is CRISPR. It is the technology that is talked about in abstract often, but starting to be used in some real practical cases. when it comes to editing genes, actually getting in there and changing the genetic makeup of people and other things. And I think this is a technology that we're going to start hearing so much more about in the coming years. And this show today, we're going to preview to you exactly what's going to happen. Our guest today is Trevor Martin. He is the CEO and co-founder of Mammoth Bioscience. He founded it with Jennifer Doudna, who's the winner of the 2020

Nobel Prize. In Chemistry and Mammoth today is bringing this technology to market in ways that you're going to find. Incredibly surprising. So we're going to hear about what's going on with CRISPR today. And then we're going to talk about some of the interesting ethical implications. Trevor, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. Great to have you. We've talked about this in the past. I find it to be one of the most fascinating topics in the entire world of technology, totally overlooked, I think, by the popular media. So let's get into it. The first thing I want to ask you is what is gene editing and what is CRISPR it's you know to most people I think it's this futuristic thing that's you know going to happen at some point in the future where you're going

to make you know these babies that are like seven feet tall you know that are perfect and all that stuff and brilliant but it's actually being used today so what is what is gene editing what is crisper yeah so CRISPR itself refers to what we call a protein so your body is full of these proteins, and that's one of the key elements of what makes life possible, but it's a very special protein. And you could actually fit it in your hand. You could put a bunch of it on your hand. You wouldn't be able to see it, of course. But it's a very special protein because it can be what we call programmed, very similar to how we program computers, actually, to do things that we want them to do. And what's really special about how you can program this special CRISPR proteins

is that you can program them to go to the code of life, so DNA and RNA, and to bind really specific what we call sequences of that code of life. And when you do that, that really opens up a lot of doors for many, many things in terms of this messy space of biology that we usually don't think of as like a place you can engineer. It opens up the door to therapies. Like what if you program this protein to go somewhere to cure a disease or to diagnostics? What if you program this protein to go somewhere and say, hey, like this COVID-19 sequence is present and beyond, like agriculture by manufacturing. So that's really the core of what CRISPR is. So these CRISPR proteins exist in our body now. And is it true that what you're doing, what your company is doing and what

the cutting edge of science in this regard is, is sort of manipulating these CRISPR proteins to actually change the way our bodies work? Well, these CRISPR proteins are originally part of often like bacteria, for example. And what's really cool is that the CRISPR systems themselves, themselves originally came out of this actually immune system for bacteria. So you and I have immune systems, right? And when we get sick, our immune system tries to fight off, you know, various diseases. And what's really cool is it turns out organisms like bacteria that we usually, you know, don't think of as necessarily that complex, also have immune systems and they have to fight off like viruses and other things that are trying to invade them and make them sick, right?

And actually, the CRISPR systems originally evolved in these bacteria, for example, to enable them to fight off their own infections. But what's really exciting is that it turns out we can develop these systems into these tools that allow us to actually engineer the code of life itself. But the origins of it are very interesting as well in terms of just like how bacteria fight off their own diseases. Yeah. So I want to seize on something that you said, engineer the code of life.

What does that mean in practical sense? And can you tell us some cool things? that you can do once you're able to actually get in and manipulate these CRISPR proteins to do your bidding? Yeah. So I think one of the clear ones that people have been excited about is genetic disease. Right. So there's many diseases that are caused by changes to our genetic codes. That's the DNA that's in all of our cells from the moment we're born. And these diseases can be incredibly debilitating. So can you name some diseases. Yeah, one example would be something like sickle cell disease, right? This causes the misshapen blood cells in many individuals. And what if we could actually go in and actually modify that DNA so that you can cure that disease or treat that disease? And I think that's a really, really powerful concept.

There's thousands and thousands of these diseases. And until now, you know, there's many of them that have some treatments developed, but not, you know, necessarily cures. And I think that would be really transformative for patients. if you could actually do that type of engineering. Right. So, and with CRISPR, with your, with the work that you do, you could actually get in and reprogram the genes to actually say, we don't actually want to give this person this disease. Is that true?

Yeah. So you could change the DNA in various ways so that the disease actually is not, it doesn't have a phenotype. So it actually removes the kind of pathogenesis of that disease. And that would be really transformative for people that live with these genetic diseases. Right. Yeah. And then what about cancer?

You know, I have a friend who was recently diagnosed with cancer. And one of the things they look for in terms of whether it's, you know, they ask if it's genetic, right? So I imagine that there's also probably genes that are make you more prone to, you know, getting cancer. And can something like CRISPR actually, you know, wipe those genes out? maybe it's too simplistic of yeah no i think you're totally right that there are certain genes that can predispose you to cancer there's certain genes that then uh determine how you might treat a cancer and definitely i think christopher has a role in many different ways and um yeah treating cancers and like really uh enabling people uh beyond what we call simple monogenic diseases um so there's

things where there's a single gene and your whole genome that is kind of dominantly causing a disease um i think that's where often we start in christopher because there's a are the more tractable ones. It's like very clear what you need to engineer in the genome. It's like that one gene or that like one allele. But I think long term, that's what's really exciting is that there's this even larger universe of, you know, hundreds of thousands of diseases that are not monogenetic. And they aren't so obvious exactly like the one thing you have to change.

And I think that's where, you know, it's obviously more difficult, but that could be really transformative if you could like lessen the chance of like cardiovascular disease or other things like that that could help people live longer, healthier. cancer is in play there also yeah and cancers and yeah i mean yeah they're really the sky's the limit right because many diseases have some sort of genetic component right and so what do you do do you just send the crisper proteins to like go in there into the DNA sequence and nick and then nuke the bad gene yeah so there's a bunch of different techniques the kind of original uh flavor of the technique is that you program the CRISPR system to say hey i need you to go to this gene that's causing let's say

this like monogenetic disorder and when it gets there the CRISPR protein one of the things that makes it really cool aside from the programmability is it actually comes with kind of like built-in scissors as well molecular scissors that can cut the no way so DNA RNA like little you know so it can just snip out that bad gene yeah so the simplest way you can imagine would be that you make some sort of cut in that gene and you can just remove you can knock it out entirely right so you can just remove the functionality of it. And that sometimes can be enough to cure or treat a disease. So that would be like a very simple approach.

There's now, you know, many additional approaches on top of it in terms of like, yeah, maybe you insert a different sequence after you've cut so that you can actually add or maybe you're just making a really targeted change at like a single base pair. Or maybe you're not cutting it at all. Maybe you're actually just localizing some sort of machinery that can like kind of turn on the gene more or turn off the gene. entirely. And there's new techniques being developed all the time. But I think that's what's exciting is that it's really this way of programmatically interacting with biology. And the sky's the

limit in terms of how you think about what that can enable. Right. It turns, it can basically turn us into essentially computer programmers, you know, where like you might try to code out a virus on a computer. It's a, is it a similar thing where like, you know, once we are able to unleash these programs and, you know, manipulate the code of the body. which is DNA and RNA, you can start to program humans as well. Yeah, I think in terms of what it enables us to do is really to hopefully get to the core cause of many of these diseases, right, rather than treating the symptoms, like, what is like the really pathogenesis of it in terms of the genetic code?

And the pathogenesis means like where is, what's the origin of? Yeah, like what's really causing the disease and not just the symptoms. It's really so amazing. The other thing that people talk about when it comes to CRISPR is, is editing, like, humans, traits and characteristics. So what about does CRISPR allow us to go in and, like, create, like, taller, smarter, better-looking people? Yeah, that's often, I guess, where the conversation can head. I think in general, there's types of things, I mean, there's obviously a huge ethical component. We're going to talk about that in the second segment, for sure.

I think that's a broader conversation for society, honestly, on that. I think one of the things that people miss those is that CRISPR is also just one part of a larger equation, right? And it's an extremely enabling tool. But I think people often also overestimate our ability currently to kind of even if we wanted to change many of these traits, right? Like I think something like height is a notorious example where there's not just some height gene in the human genome that you update and that, you know, determine someone height, right? there's all these environmental factors, there's all these, you know, multifactorial genetic factors across probably hundreds of thousands of locations in the genome that often determine these traits that people like to talk about. And that really becomes a much more broad and difficult

problem around like what, you know, even would you edit? And is it even really genetic? So I think that's part of the conversation that's often missed is that even if that was something that was possible in terms of engineering, like what are the locations that you're actually changing. And that's true for more complex disease as well, right? And that's one of the barriers to tackling more complex diseases. So a lot of people talk about CRISPR as something that's going to happen in the future. You know, it's a thing of science fiction novels that will be able to edit babies and, you know, make them designer children. But this stuff is actually out in the wild now and actually being used to cure diseases, which I don't think is something that's

really on the mind or front of, you know, that people are paying attention to. So can you talk a little bit about, you know, what sort of diseases this is being used to cure today and maybe some stories about how that actually happens in reality? Yeah. So I think that is one of the things that's exciting is that this is, you know, not just total science fiction. There really is a ton of progress that's been made over the last, you know, 10 years, even in the last few years in terms of bringing this technology closer and closer to patients. I think right now, a lot of the focus has been on what we call ex-Veevo applications. And that's where, rather than doing the editing in the body, we're doing it outside of the body.

So a classic example of that would be any sort of like blood-based disease. So we can actually take the blood out of the body and then put it back in. So that has certain advantages in terms of, like, the technical capabilities and, like, the ease of doing these types of therapies. So that's where a lot of the initial work is in other areas in, like, the eye, for example. And that's because- What can you do with the eye? Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Sorry.

Well, that's because the eye is actually pretty accessible relative to other places in the body. And then finally, some of the initial what we call in-vivo works, that's, like, in the body. is being done in the liver, for example. And what diseases is that attacking? Yeah, so there's a variety of diseases. Often these are rare genetic diseases. So there's like a very particular gene that is causing some sort of disease. And like you know if you target that gene and even specific spots in that gene,

then you can actually help that patient. But the hope is that over time, like in addition to helping those patients, you can go after more and more complex and prevalent diseases as well. And yeah, I mean, a good example is there's a lot of groups working on something like sickle cell where there is a very clear genetic basis and that could really be transformative for the lives and health of people with that disease and it can be done in a blood-based manner. Right. Is your company or is any company actively working, like curing people's diseases like sickle cell diseases, for instance? Yeah. So there are some examples of now, you know, trials that are being run where people, for example, for.

for these blood-based diseases, like, are seeming to have great, you know, performance. And obviously, like, you have to look at these things over time. But, yeah, I think that's what's really exciting is that these are moving closer and closer to patients, and it's not just necessarily in animals. Yeah, I always had the thought, and maybe this is because I'm reading about those designer babies that, like, you know, the way that this stuff works is, you know, you know, you, get to the embryo or whatever it is or a fetus and start to edit their genes and they come out a certain way when they're coming out of the womb. But you could actually, you know, help fully grown

adults essentially. And I think that's what's more exciting. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah. I mean, everyone always likes to think about, you know, babies and stuff, which is a very different. And that's not what people are really working on in the space at all. And I think people don't realize because that's often kind of how it can be talked about is that really what's transformative is, is the idea that for, you know, even an adult that has some sort of disease, you could really help them live a healthier life. And it's not like it's too late or, you know, it's not like it's intractable. And I think that is extremely powerful, right?

Trevor Martin's with us. He's the CEO and co-founder of Mammoth Biosciences. We've talked in this first segment about where the practice of Chris Brist stands today. Obviously, it's a lot further along than a lot of folks imagine. Second segment, we'll be back to talk about what we should do once we can. And do it. Hey, everyone, let me tell you about The Hustle Daily Show, a podcast filled with business, tech news,

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And we're back here on Big Technology podcast with Trevor Martin. He is the CEO and co-founder of Mammoth Bioscience. And we're talking about CRISPR, right? What happens when you can start to edit the code of life as Trevor put? Did you put it, code of life? Yeah, DNA and RNA. What happens when you can actually, and again, not just babies, but fully grown adults. You can get in there and start manipulating their life code.

solve diseases, but you could also do a heck of a lot of other stuff, potentially. Let's talk about that. So to go back to the example that I keep seizing on, because it is the one that the popular culture seems to keep talking about, editing children. Trevor, what's your thought on tailor-made kids? You know, first of all, are they possible? Second, are they advisable? Yeah, so just speaking from a personal standpoint, I guess, like, I think that in general,

there's so much need elsewhere in terms of genetic disease or agriculture, like all these other areas that it's definitely super low on my list of things that I think could be necessarily transformative. I think where the conversation becomes more interesting to me personally is around especially like really debilitating inherited disorders and things like that. But in general, I think that it's interesting to talk about, I guess, from like a philosophical point of view, But from a practical point of view, I definitely think that the impact that we can have from, you know, people that are already adults and people that have these diseases walking around is just so much higher that looking at it from some sort of utilitarian perspective. Yeah, like it's a new brainer to me where we should be focused. On top of that.

That being said, that being said, this is going to be, look, the money is, okay, this is just sort of the way it usually works. Extremely rich people want to use this technology to build super kits. And so they will put money towards this application, even though it's not the most philosophically advisable thing. So just like talk about, if you can, the science, is it feasible to actually help, you know, create smarter, better looking, stronger kids? And then ethically, you know, what do you think about the fact that we could be creating like, you know, super, super people with this technology? Yeah, I'll start on the ethical side. I think there, it's actually an interesting idea, like how you put it into two parts, right? There's the technical feasibility, and then there's the ethical side.

And I think there can also be misconceptions about both. But on the ethical side, I think the interesting thing there is that it's often kind of framed as like, oh, like, you know, is it the decision of like one person or whatever, like, you know, one organization? And I think this is one of those things where it really is on all of us, like whether that's like, doctor. and patients and, like, you know, religious leaders or politicians. And I think one of the things that has to happen as the technology advances, of course, is that there has to be some consensus, you know, wherever that consensus ends up landing, whether it's, like, more on favorable side or unfavorable, that actually includes all those different voices.

And that's super tricky, right? Because it can be hard enough to get, like, a bunch of scientists in there. Yeah, no one's ever going to agree on that. And or hard enough just to get politicians, right? So I think that's one of the interesting things. whenever you have like a really powerful new technology, there has to be this like coalescing of consensus. And it can also be different around the world, right? Like maybe there's one consensus in the United States. There's another consensus in Canada or whatever it is, right? And then how do we think

about that, especially in terms of, it doesn't just have to be, you know, the classic example of human edited babies or something like that. I think we even see it in places like agriculture, right? Like, are we okay with GMO plants? I think it actually kind of shows. shows that you can end up with these differences around the world, whether that's in the U.S. or Europe or Asia. Well, is there already a scientist in China who claims he's used CRISPR to edit children? Yeah, so there was a famous kind of controversy where, yeah, there were some claims that were made unclear, kind of where that actually watches out.

But it's, I think, inevitable, right, that as this technology becomes more accessible around the world, people are going to try different things, right? And it's very hard to control what everyone does. So I think that's where having that kind of, I mean, hopefully it's international, right? But at least having some consensus around what's the Overton window of accessibility can help guide, you know, what people are actually working on. I hear you on this, Trevor, but I'm not going to let you talk your way out of it because I want to hear your opinion. Because you are, what do you think? Should we be able to make tailor-made children?

Yeah. I think in terms of what we should be doing, in terms of, like, you know, what we, the way we usually divide it is somatic and germline editing. So, somatic is these edits we do, for example, in adults, and these are not passed down to children, like if they were to have kids, whereas germline edits are explicitly passed down. So once you edit that person's G&O, the kids will have that. they're on to their children. So really, the distinction is more somatic versus germline editing.

And my personal opinion is that, yeah, we honestly should really be focused on somatic editing because I think that's where the benefit is. I think from my personal ethical standpoint, I think there probably are types of germline editing that could be really beneficial around disease. I think where I get personally more worried is when we start talking about, yeah, like these like super babies or whatever it is. And I think that is really more driven by accessibility, right? Because even when we're treating diseases, we're often thinking about, like, oh, my God, like,

is ever going to be able to get this treatment, right? Like, how accessible is it to, like, everyone in the population or is it only for people that are wealthier? And I worry a lot when things are passed down, like, heritably, that you're now kind of exacerbating that, right? So I think the key thing for me there, even if it was, you know, treating disease in this, like, charitable manner would be, is there a way we can really make sure it uplifts everyone and it's really accessible to everyone? That's one part. And then the second part is, are we really making

it right? Like that's a much more, I think, kind of core proposition around like, okay, this is something that's going to be around, right? And it's not something that won't be passed down. So I think the bar has to be much, much higher in terms of like the change that's being made and be really, really certain that's something that we want to do. So I think there's two bars there. One in terms of just almost the, yeah, like accessibility ethics side of it. And then the other one on, okay, even if you overcome that bar, like, okay, is this really something that you think is long-term beneficial? Let's do an exercise here. So, and you're going to have to suspend disbelief a little bit to run this one, but just run with me on it. Okay. A hypothetical competitor of yours

Dino Bioscience has successfully edited and created a super child that's going to be, you know, seven feet tall, has a propensity to, you know, add a lot of muscle, we'll have an IQ of 150 and doesn't have any, you know, genetic disabilities or whatever like that. It's not going to be hampered by genes that cause diseases. Your head of communications comes to you and say, okay Trevor we're going to either have to cheer this on or we're going to have to condemn the fact that a child has been edited this way what type of statement do you release oh I mean for me personally it's easy like condemn like there's just okay um yeah there's no and I think the scenario is interesting in the sense that yeah the world is a big place right and people are going to try a lot of things um I think I mean it's from multiple directions right like one on the ethical side like if this is something it's done in some secret like really I'm very much in favor of making sure that we have consensus on like what we think is the appropriate use of tools right so that's like number one but number two you have to wonder what the value to society is right like there's all these like really debilitated

diseases we go after and they help people um eat somatic editing and yeah that that's like what's been focused on you know that just doesn't pass the sniff test to me personally so okay cool It's definitely a pretty easy answer. Maybe this will be a little harder. What's your evaluation right now? So a bit over a billion dollars. A billion. Okay.

So here's another scenario. One of your engineers has been working on a side project at home and comes into your office and says, you know, hey, Trevor, look, I'm familiar with this technology. I've been messing around with it. I think I have a way to create super babies in a way that's accessible and will raise mammoth market cap from a little bit over a billion to a hundred billion overnight if you put this into action. What do you say to this engineer? Yeah, it's the same answer.

Condem? Well, I mean, it's more, okay, like how can we live? leverage, like, it's transparency, right? I mean, I think that's the core thing is, okay, new tool development is going to happen, right? And that's incredible for scientific progress. But then it's like, how do you handle that tool development, right? Do you surreptitiously go out and, like, do something?

Do you immediately go after the things that maybe have less consensus around, like, beneficial use of it? So it's not that the tool development is good or bad. Like, you never condemn tool development, right? That's just scientific progress. It's more, okay, what do we do with it now? So I think that's where the key. What do you do with it?

What do you do the next day? Well, I think you go out to the bar, you wake up the next morning. You're like, all right, we got an issue. Yeah, no, I think you publish. Like, you make sure that people understand how, like, these tools can be used. And then you leverage, like, all the different stakeholders to figure out what the best benefit is. And that, you know, is the key step, is that, like, okay, transparency, like,

this is what's possible like how can it benefits society the most and that's the step that often gets skipped I think yeah how does that change society when some I mean if this is something that becomes feasible we'll obviously have these people walking around that are super humans and people walking around do haven't had the benefit of being crisper edited yeah I mean I think here is where it definitely gets more to sci-fi for sure because of that technical side of it in terms of like do we even know what you'd want to edit like it maybe it's like a ton of edits that can be very difficult to do together. So I think there it is not something that's like now for sure.

Of course, yeah. This is future stuff. But yeah, no, I think that's one of the things where hopefully as a society, like you have to have these conversations around like what we want to do and what we don't want to do, right? And people might reach different conclusions around the world. And hopefully that decision is robust to what others do, to your point, right?

It's not so localized. It might be, you know, one country decides to do something, another country decides to do something else. Right. Is that decision influence, do those decisions influence each other? So I think there, the hope would be that there could be a worldwide consensus, for sure. That can be difficult. I love your idealism, Trevor. You're like, yeah, the U.S. and Russia and China.

Admittedly, that can be very difficult, right? So then I think it comes down to what's a consensus that can be reached, you know, on any scale. that's internally like consistent it's not just reactive right it's not just oh what are other people doing what's technically possible okay that's what we're going to do now right like something that's more foundational in terms of like what do we value as a society what do we think is important how do we want to help people and yeah those are conversations that can be hard to do does it become a national security issue where like for instance let's say okay we already spoke about china let's say china gives the go ahead for look at this scientist you know who said he's edited stuff like maybe it's not him maybe

it's other people. It gives the go ahead to try to make, you know, a super generation of babies in the country. You know, does that then put other countries that are competing or rivals to China at a disadvantage? And does it become a national security issue? And I know I'm way into sci-fi territory, but does it become a national security issue to like not have these psychos for babies? But I think your point broadly is interesting, right? Like, especially as these tools for biotech and biology advance and biology does become more like engineering, it does raise these questions of like, you know, how can they be used in ways that aren't necessarily benefiting. It's not just benefiting people in certain ways, but it's like maybe

it's actually tried to use adversarially, right, directly. So yeah, no, I think these do become really important conversations. And that's where I think similar to how people think about, I don't know, like computer science and like security in that space, I think, transparency, honestly, is a big part of it, right? Like, if, like, I think security theory of obscurity is very difficult, especially as biology becomes more and more democratized. So I think there it comes down to, yeah, really the people that are developing, the tools, making sure people are aware of, like, what's possible and what's not possible as well, and like, you know, when things could become possible. And, yeah, I think it does become a core part of understanding,

yeah, national security and things like that. to how do you, you know, make sure that the tools are being used in the appropriate ways and knowing what could be done and, like, you know, making sure you can maybe monitor against, like, adversarial use of it and things like that. Right. I think it really does, it has to be part of the conversation over time. Yeah, it's interesting. It does get into these black mirror scenarios, right?

Where, like, you know, that thing that you condemned earlier, you know, maybe one country decides to go ahead and, you know, push full force with this stuff. even if it's not fully approved or not fully proven. And then you get into this arms race situation where another country is like, well, we better get on this and even pushes the envelope even further. It's like, does this worry you? Yeah, no, I think long term, these are definitely the things that we have to grapple with. It's definitely sci-fi territory. But I think that as we develop tools further and further and like we are able to engineer

or biology, I think that's like the kind of downside scenario, for sure. Right. And I think they're, I mean, it's the same with any technology that that's where I think the hopeful part of it, right, is that, you know, it's not like this is the first time we've encountered things that could have with positive and negative benefits, right? And we don't always necessarily have like the cleanest path as a society towards like managing these things. But, yeah, I think the encouraging thing is that there are precedents for new technologies that can have both incredibly beneficial and, you know, adversarial uses and being able to sort out a way that the benefits outweigh any risks.

Yeah. Is it crazy that I keep thinking about nuclear energy as sort of parallel? I always end up going to that, right? Because the scientists couldn't help, you know, but develop the power to explode cities with nuclear bombs. And, you know, when it came to it, they said, well, we could have a good and a bad use of it. And the sweetness, the actual quote from Oppenheimer is the sweetness of discovery is something that I couldn't, you know, who worked on the bomb that we couldn't, you know, possibly stay away from. Yeah, I think there's less risks, honestly. But I think it's a good example of a technology that had dual use, right? We talk about Facebook on this podcast all the time too. I mean, there's another one.

Yeah, yeah, that's very interesting. I haven't even thought of that. But, yeah, there's like obviously connecting people. right then there's like misinformation yeah and i think some of these we've navigated better than others of course but um yeah no in general uh tools are agnostic and they're tools and they'll continue to be developed and it's really like society's job broadly to make sure they're used in the best ways it kind of it's so crazy to me that like you know we're talking about this with i mean i'm just kind of still pinching myself that we're talking about this with straight faces you know

you know, we're not two stone guys in a dorm room somewhere talking about, yo, dude, what would happen if you could, like, edit people? This is actually something that's happening. And, you know, you, someone who's working as a practitioner in this field, you know, are seeing these things and not responding, yeah, that's crazy. But you're saying, hey, actually, we do need to think about this stuff. Yeah, no, I think it's better to think about these things, like sooner rather than later, of course, because that's how you can actually build a good foundation.

Yeah, to be clear, some of these things definitely are sci-fi. But there are definitely things that as tools develop, they're, you know, things that we'll have to grapple with, right? I want to talk to you about self-modification because one of the things, you know, we know, okay, so we've talked a little bit about these theories, the ways that companies, the way that countries, you know, might be able to go out and modify people. And of course, we talked a lot about babies. But one thing we know for sure is that humans love to, you know, hack their own body. You know, whether that's going on the keto diet or doing intermittent fasting or taking supplements or doing some other crazy workout regimen. I mean, look at professional sports. The rise of performance enhancing drugs is another key example.

So I'm curious if you think there's, you know, following that pattern, there are going to be people who are going to see what's happening with gene editing and want to modify themselves. And you talked about how this is programming your own body. maybe there's some sort of hacking your own body that people might try to do to, you know, take their own selves up a notch. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, I guess there's this kind of biohacker movement, especially in places like the Bay Area maybe, that really have embraced this ethos. Yeah, I think that is an interesting thing that could happen. There's already some examples of, I mean, even during the pandemic, like people trying to create their own, like, vaccines or people. Yeah, like just really pushing limits of like, you know, small scale biology.

Yeah. We're not allowed to talk about Ivermectin on this show. Otherwise, Spotify will take us down. Yeah, I'm kidding. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I think people will definitely try. I think the barriers are pretty high at the moment in terms of that being effective, to be honest with you entirely. I think it'll be a while until that is something that actually can happen.

But I think it does raise one of those foundational questions around like, okay, like in the future, as these tools develop and become more accessible potentially, like in the long future in this case. Yeah, like how would we want to handle that as a society? And is it something where it's like your choice? Is it something that could have negative externalities? So maybe it needs to be more regulated. Right.

You could end up having that genetic gene that gets passed down. Right, exactly. So you're really making a choice for future generations potentially. So yeah, and these are questions that can't be answered. by like science necessarily, right? It's really more of a call of the society level of, you know, what we think is important. So I think, yeah, it's definitely not something that is necessarily happening now. I think it's, yeah, more on like the keto side and stuff, those are things that are more tractable, of course. But yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if over

time people get more and more interested in these tools in that way. what doesn't it seem like like there's so much wasted potential with humans like we have a brain that has a lot of capacity but we don't use most of it um you know we have this great body but we have so many defects in it um it seems like there's so much more potential for a human being and maybe this stuff unlocks it yeah i think um from my perspective i mean one of the key things is just generally this idea of health span like people like to talk about like lifespan and stuff. But I think the core there is, like, whether you're 20 or you're 50 or you're 100 or you're two, I mean, there's, yeah, like hopefully things that we could do with technologies

like CRISPR that would just make life better and like more disease-free and like, yeah, just make it so that more people can realize their potential, whatever that is, right? Right. It's like science or arts or anything. What about just, yeah, being there for family and, you know, having their. capacity. Yeah, community, right? And I think that's what is really exciting to me. Less like, oh, can we live like 500 years or whatever? There's huge technical limitations to that, of course. But I think that's like incredibly motivating and exciting. Like, what if we could have

the same lifespan as we do now, but we're really healthy and like giving back to others and like really productive and doing the things we love during that period? That is super exciting. So if you believe in evolution, and I do. there's this thing called natural selection right where we have survival of fittest and over time the universal whatever it is selects for the strongest traits and those get passed on does this bring forward a era of unnatural selection in some way does it change the whole process of evolution from a way that it just never has been in the past um i mean i think it's interesting question let's actually start with stuff like plants right so when we're

modifying plants to give them these traits uh they can be things like oh they grow better in an errant environment right um and that means that you can have them actually create crops and like hardy yields even in a global warming environment for example um and is that i don't know like how does that interface with natural selection like clearly they're fit to their environment right um but Maybe they would have taken them too long to evolve to adapt to that, so they would have gone extinct. So I think it's an interesting question on like a philosophical level. I think practically we've been cross-reading like plants for years and years and years. And like that's how we get traits into them, right?

Except for now we can just more directly say insert a gene or modify something. So it's just like a faster way of getting to a very similar result. So is one of those like better than the other? It becomes like almost like a philosophical question. I think more broadly, I think it's honestly less relevant to, like, other areas. I think there's a million things ways of society do that, like, change, you know, natural environments, right? We build cities.

Like, we have a supermarket. Like, there's all these things. So I think it's honestly, in my personal opinion, it's like so de minimis compared to, like, how we shape the environment in other ways, right? Yeah. That it's maybe like more philosophical and less like, oh, is this actually changing something. Yeah. We're here on the big technology podcast with Trevor Martin.

He's the CEO and co-founder of Mammoth Bioscience. So let's see. We did two segments so far. First one, what is this about practically to the ethics? Let's take another break and come back and talk a little bit more about plants and also talk about accessibility. I think the accessibility issue is important. So you're not going to want to miss the third and final segment here on Big Technology

podcast. Stick around. We'll be back right after this. And we're back for one final segment here on big technology podcast with Trevor Martin is the CEO of mammoth bioscience out of the Bay Area. Trevor, I want to ask you about the access question. So we live, we live, I mean, I appreciate the idealism in the, you know, in the second segment. But we live in the world right now. And we know that like wealthy people, wealthy societies tend to have access to much of, you know, the scientific advancements. First, take M.R. RNA vaccines, for instance, you know, that made its way around, you know, the North America and Europe first. So what do you think about when it comes to doing things like curing disease, you know, making super people or whatever it is, and the accessibility issue? You know, it seems to me that it will never be perfectly accessible, but does the prospect of actually in the long-term

changing things make it worth, you know, having an accessibility gap in the beginning? or are there things that you can do to make this more evenly accessible to the population? Yeah, I think I have a couple of thoughts there. The first one is like the intention, right? Like I hope that people start with the intention that they want to make it accessible, right? Like I think that's super important because some people might not start with that intention, right? So I think that's a big part of it. So then once you've aligned that, okay, it's important to us that this is something that can be accessed by the population at large,

then it becomes a question of, okay, what's the path to get there? And there's like some pretty popular concepts like double bottom line and things like that where what's that can you align financial incentives with access incentives and things like that. There's a lot of interesting business models that built around there. I think fundamentally one thing you often see with new technologies is that it does start at a certain part of the market. And then as like it gets adopted, it kind of can become more and more accessible over time where like, you know, one example can be like cars, right? So, like, there's the new Tesla model.

It starts the expensive side. And then as, like, production ramps up and, like, it becomes more clear how to manufacture and the scale of what's being manufactured, then it can drop in price point, right? So I think there's things that can be learned from other industries in terms of, like, how you get that path to accessibility. But I think fundamentally, some of the things that can drive it are things like scale and things like, you know, how is the manufacturing done and how accessible. is the technology just from like a cost of goods perspective and things like that.

Okay. Well, I hope we get there. Another thing that you've told me in the past that I kind of think is so interesting and worth bringing up is that you have this belief, I think, that we're better at engineering biology than understanding biology. You want to elaborate on that? I kind of think that's fascinating. Yeah, I think increasingly as tools like Christopher develop very rapidly in very exciting ways that can help patients, I think it raises the bar of terms of understanding what should be edited. And I think it goes back to one of the things we talked about at the beginning in terms of like monogenic disease versus polygenic disease. And monogenic is that like one? There's a single gene that's dominantly responsible for causing the disease versus polygenic. There could be hundreds, if not thousands of genes of small genes.

effect even maybe involved in it. And I think those are very, very tricky problems and people have been working on them for a long time. And there's been progress to be sure. There's things like what we call genome-wide association studies. And that's where you find a huge population of people and you sequence them, both with a disease, say, and without a disease. When you do that, there's potentially genetic differences between the populations. And that can help you map, like, okay, maybe these 100 locations were the ones that were enriched for changes in the population with the disease versus some control population. 100 gene locations.

Yeah, or 100 locations in the genome, and you kind of hope there's genes there. But many times maybe it's not a gene, right? Maybe it's actually a regulatory region of the genome that's maybe turning a gene on or off somewhere else in the genome, right? And that's really tricky. And previously there was all this talks about like dark DNA or like DNA that's not understood. And I think in general, probably most regions, if not all regions of the genome are functional one way or another is like probably a more popular theory now because otherwise likely they

would be removed or like reduced in some way or another. So even if it's in a region that doesn't have a gene, maybe it's regulating something. And how do you make that change or understand what change to make, right? Like is it up or down regulating or doing something else entirely? So I think it becomes this very multifaceted, very complex problem to map disease itself. And that can definitely be a bottleneck in terms of, okay, let's say we have perfect editing and perfect ability to engineer. And that can also feed in, though, as well in terms of figuring that out. So let's say we don't know what regions of the genome we want to edit, but we have very good editing tools.

Maybe you can build a system that tries to edit different locations and then learn if those were the right ones in a cell or something like that. and so people are trying things on that end as well it is interesting how much of it is sort of like you know you kind of blindfolded you shoot you try again you know you're shooting the name shooting the name yeah I think right now definitely I there's a huge class of diseases where it is very clear and that's like really exciting but I think there's that larger area of disease where just identifying the targets can be quite difficult yeah and you know we're about to you know hit the end but I would be remiss if I didn't speak about plants or if we didn't speak about plants, really if you didn't speak about plants.

Because we're obviously in a situation right now where we are in a fairly unsustainable moment for the planet or climate is changing. We are overpopulating without a doubt. And we're going to need some new ways to source and consume food, maybe even meats, all that stuff. Is there a way that this can have? help tackle the problem, especially like what happens if you start using this on this technology on plants, which you hinted out earlier? Yeah, I think it could be really transformative, honestly,

especially as things like global warming continued to go on, well, hopefully not, but assuming that's the case. I think that, you know, the environment can potentially change, right? And that means crops that normally were going somewhere might not further anymore. And one way that you can help mitigate the effects of that is that you can modify crops so that they are more suited to whatever that new environment is and that they can still thrive. And that could be really, really important. And more generally, I think this idea of, you know, engineering and biology can help mitigate the effects of things like climate change potentially. And obviously, it's not our first choice, which doesn't even be our third choice, but it's good to have the option of doing

these things in these situations. I think also, you know, kind of zooming out a bit to some of the other things you mentioned around, you know, even like synthetic meats and like, how do we reduce the agriculture usage for things like cows or otherwise? And I think they're, yeah, like when you're engineering these cell lines to be like, you know, different flavors of meat or other things like that, I think definitely these engineering biology tools have a huge role to play there as well. Yeah. And it looks like with the global, warming stuff in particular, and we've talked about on this show, we're definitely going to need technology solutions there because after watching what happened with COVID, there's no way we're going to cooperate as a society to fix global warming. We're going to need tech solutions. So this is an interesting one. What is the argument against doing this? Because there's definitely a movement against genetically modified food. Yeah. I think for a long time now there's been a lot of controversy around GMAT foods and things like that. Here personally, I'm obviously, like, maybe this is always, like, very in favor of.

Yeah, you're Mr. Gene modification. I think it can help, you know, not just millions, but billions of people around the world live healthy lives. But I think I can also understand where people are coming from in terms of, like, oh, is this natural? Is this something that, like, it's fully understood? And I think that's where I go back to, like, regulation is actually can be a good thing and, like, showing in transparency, right?

Like, I think more people understand, maybe my optimism. belief is that the more people understand technologies and they know what's going on and there's not any black boxes, I think people can understand, oh, okay, yeah, that is beneficial and, like, that is great. And like, okay, it's not necessarily something that, like, happens naturally, but that still doesn't mean it's not something that can't benefit nature and humans and, like, you know, society at large. So I think I take an optimistic viewpoint that really it's more about being transparent and education. But I think in just, general, it can be difficult once there are these kind of battle lines drawn, of course,

to step across the aisle. But I think that's what has to happen, because I think it is so foundational to like, how do we feed the next billions of people on the planet that we do that? Yeah. Well, it is interesting. Every time we get into these sort of genetic questions that there is this, you're right, battle lines drawn. I mean, the MRI vaccine, like, how did you feel when that came out? Is that similar technology, by the way? I mean, obviously, it's been, you know, a little controversial where in the U.S. But again, I guess on this train of like, you know, advances in biology and like new tools development and people think of these things as overnight successes, but obviously

people have been working on these for decades, right? And it's not something that just came along necessarily. And in general, though, I think, I mean, I'm just blown away by how like science has been able to help, right? in the pandemic, whether that's on the diagnostic side or that's on the vaccine side, I think maybe the deep irony is that because science has been able to really bring forth some amazing solutions that have like mitigated the impacts, like it leaves room for, you know, these debates to happen, whereas if we didn't have these scientific advances, we'd be in a very

bad situation. In the street with the COVID stuff. Yeah. It does seem maybe, I mean, you know, it's funny to ask you this question, but I'm going to ask anyway. It does seem like some of the biggest breakthroughs that we're going to have, you know, in our lifetime to come when it comes to human health, bioscience, treatment is going to be focused on the genes where, and previously it was just kind of a pipe dream. Yeah, I mean, I think the last, like, you know, 30 years has been very software and computers focused. And that'll continue, of course, like, I'm extremely bullish on that. But I think over the next 30, 100 years, what we're going to see is, like, the way that biology can, like, positively impact our lives, right?

whether that's foods or whether that's therapies or diagnostics, I think we're going to have huge advances in biology that will really transform the way we live in a positive way. Yeah. Okay, let's end with like kind of a small little lightning round. Do you think in your lifetime you will use CRISPR technology on yourself? I think, yeah, probably. In terms of like if I have a disease or something like that later in life,

I definitely think that CRISPR could play a huge role. wild and how about your kids do you think you might use it to change traits in your children i personally wouldn't do it but yeah okay over under um is 2050 um the first human clones successfully um do you think that will happen under you know before 2050 or after 2050 because come on it's going to happen uh i'm not as much of an expert in this space but uh let's say after my opinion Okay. All right. Sounds good. Trevor Martin. Thank you so much for joining us. It's really great chatting with you as always. Yeah. Thanks for having me. It's really fun. Where can people check out, you know, your work and your company's work if they want to learn more?

Sure. My Twitter handle is at Martin Trevor underscore. And then the website for Mammoth is mammoth. Okay. Terrific. Well, thanks again. Really appreciate it. And, you know, like we said, this is going to be the big stuff over the next. you know, a couple of decades. So, you know, fingers crossed. But I'm hoping we can get you back on the show as this science continues to improve. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Well, thank you, everybody for listening.

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