Category Archives: Human Genetic Engineering

A U.N. report released in May 2019 by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) warned that, as Common Dreams reported at the time, "human exploitation of the natural world has pushed a million plant and animal species to the brink of extinctionwith potentially devastating implications for the future of civilization."

That report and a growing body of scientific research on rapidly declining biodiversity has led scientists and policymakers alike to raise the alarm about the consequences of not acting ambitiously enough to address what experts have called the "sixth mass extinction." U.N. biodiversity chief Elizabeth Maruma Mrema told the Guardian last month that humanity risks being left to contend with an "empty world."

The new statement from diplomats came before the Feb. 2429 meeting of the Working Group on the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, which was recently moved from Kunming, China to Rome, Italy due to the ongoing coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak. The event will build on an August 2019 meeting in Nairobi, Kenya. A third meeting in Cali, Colombia is planned for July.

Those three events will culminate in the adoption of a "Paris-style U.N. agreement" to protect nature at the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which is still set to be held in Kunming in October. A 20-point draft plan to stop and reverse biodiversity loss worldwide, which will be a focus of the Rome talks, was unveiled last month.

The foreign ministers' statement specifically expresses support for "setting a global target of strongly protecting at least 30 percent of the land and 30 percent of the ocean by 2030." The 30 percent conservation target, as the statement notes, is backed by "a broad coalitionincluding youth, the business community, and representatives from the developing world."

"We also support the finalization of a new international legally binding treaty in 2020 for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in the high seas currently being negotiated under the U.N . Convention on Law of the Sea," the statement says, noting that nearly two-thirds of the ocean is beyond the legal jurisdiction of any one nation.

The statement was released through the international nonprofit think tank the Aspen Institute by members of the Aspen Ministers Forum, which was founded in 2003 by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Along with Albright, the statement was signed by Lloyd Axworthy (Canada), Mohamed Benaissa (Morocco), Maria Eugenia Brizuela de Avila (El Salvador), Erik Derycke (Belgium), Lamberto Dini (Italy), Alexander Downer (Australia), Jan Eliasson (Sweden), Joschka Fischer (Germany), Jaime Gama (Portugal), Ibrahim Gambari (Nigeria), Marina Kaljurand (Estonia), Tzipi Livni (Israel), Susana Malcorra (Argentina), Donald McKinnon (New Zealand), Daniel Mitov (Bulgaria), Amre Moussa (Egypt), Marwan Muasher (Jordan), George Papandreou (Greece), Malcolm Rifkind (United Kingdom), Claudia Ruiz Massieu (Mexico), Javier Solana (Spain), and Knut Vollebk (Norway).

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SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 18, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Aridis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: ARDS), a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of novel anti-infective therapies to treat life-threatening bacterial infections, announced today that it will host an Investor Day on Thursday, March 12th, 2020 in New York City from 12:00PM-2:00PM EST.

The event will provide development updates on the Company's key clinical programs and feature key opinion leader (KOL) panels moderated by leading healthcare analysts, Louise Chen of Cantor Fitzgerald and Jason McCarthy from Maxim Group. Participating experts include Dr. Steven Opal of Brown University and Dr. Lisa Saiman of Columbia University who will provide insights on the acute pneumonia and cystic fibrosis indications and the current therapeutic landscape. Medical reimbursement will also be discussed.

In addition to the KOL panel discussion, the forum is intended to provide investors and analysts with a comprehensive profile of APEX, the Company's cutting-edge antibody discovery and production platform along with an update on lead programs AR-301 for the treatment of ventilator associated pneumonia (VAP) and AR-501, an inhalable therapy for chronic lung infections in cystic fibrosis patients. Aridis is advancing AR-301 in a global clinical trial which remains on track to report top line data in 1H 2021, and enrolling AR-501's Phase 1/2a clinical trial with top-line data expected in 1H 2020 (healthy subjects), and in 2H 2021 (cystic fibrosis subjects).

To learn more about the event or to register for attendance, please email RSVP@aridispharma.com.

About Aridis Pharmaceuticals, Inc.Aridis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. discovers and develops anti-infectives to be used as add-on treatments to standard-of-care antibiotics. The Company is utilizing its proprietary APEX and MabIgX technology platforms to rapidly identify rare, potent antibody-producing B-cells from patients who have successfully overcome an infection, and to manufacture mAbs for therapeutic treatment of critical infections. These mAbs are already of human origin and functionally optimized for high potency by the donor's immune system; hence, they do not require genetic engineering or further optimization to achieve full functionality.

The Company has generated multiple clinical stage mAbs targeting bacteria that cause life-threatening infections such as VAPand HAP. The use of mAbs as anti-infective treatments represents an innovative therapeutic approach that harnesses the human immune system to fight infections and is designed to overcome the deficiencies associated with the current standard of care which is broad spectrum antibiotics. Such deficiencies include, but are not limited to, increasing drug resistance, short duration of efficacy, disruption of the normal flora of the human microbiome and lack of differentiation among current treatments. The mAb portfolio is complemented by a non-antibiotic novel mechanism small molecule anti-infective candidate being developed to treat lung infections in cystic fibrosis patients. The company's pipeline is highlighted below:

Aridis'Pipeline

AR-301(VAP).AR-301 is a fully human immunoglobulin 1, or IgG1, mAb currently in Phase 3 clinical development targeting gram-positiveS. aureusalpha-toxin in VAPpatients.

AR-101(HAP).AR-101 is a fully human immunoglobulin M, or IgM, mAb targetingP. aeruginosaliposaccharides serotype O11, which accounts for approximately 22% of allP. aeruginosahospital acquired pneumonia cases worldwide.

AR-501(cystic fibrosis).AR-501 is an inhaled formulation of gallium citrate with broad-spectrum anti-infective activity being developed to treat chronic lung infections in cystic fibrosis patients. This program is currently in a Phase 1/2a clinical study in healthy volunteers and CF patients.

AR-401(blood stream infections).AR-401 is a fully human mAb preclinical program aimed at treating infections caused by gram-negativeAcinetobacter baumannii.

AR-201(RSV infection). AR-201 is a fully human IgG1 mAb preclinical program aimed at neutralizing diverse clinical isolates of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

Story continues

For additional information on Aridis Pharmaceuticals, please visithttps://aridispharma.com/.

Forward-Looking StatementsCertain statements in this press release are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. These statements may be identified by the use of words such as "anticipate," "believe," "forecast," "estimated" and "intend" or other similar terms or expressions that concern Aridis' expectations, strategy, plans or intentions. These forward-looking statements are based on Aridis' current expectations and actual results could differ materially. There are a number of factors that could cause actual events to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements. These factors include, but are not limited to, the timing of regulatory submissions, Aridis' ability to obtain and maintain regulatory approval of its existing product candidates and any other product candidates it may develop, approvals for clinical trials may be delayed or withheld by regulatory agencies, risks relating to the timing and costs of clinical trials, risks associated with obtaining funding from third parties, management and employee operations and execution risks, loss of key personnel, competition, risks related to market acceptance of products, intellectual property risks, risks associated with the uncertainty of future financial results, Aridis' ability to attract collaborators and partners and risks associated with Aridis' reliance on third party organizations. While the list of factors presented here is considered representative, no such list should be considered to be a complete statement of all potential risks and uncertainties. Unlisted factors may present significant additional obstacles to the realization of forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those described or implied by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including, without limitation, market conditions and the factors described under the caption "Risk Factors" in Aridis' 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018and Aridis' other filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission.Forward-looking statements included herein are made as of the date hereof, and Aridis does not undertake any obligation to update publicly such statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

Contact:

Investor RelationsJason WongBlueprint Life Science Groupjwong@bplifescience.com(415) 375-3340 Ext. 4

Aridis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Logo (PRNewsfoto/Aridis Pharmaceuticals, Inc.)

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Aridis Pharmaceuticals to Host Investor Day Showcasing APEX Technology Platform and Key Opinion Leader Panels on Cystic Fibrosis and Pneumonia - Yahoo...

In both pre-Christianity Rome and China, the countryside was a place of retreat where those seeking respite from the bustle and grime of the city would go for rest, relaxation, and creative inspiration. The Chinese founders of Taoism called this freedom and wondering Xiaoyao, while Roman philosophers referred to time away as Otium: and idealized existencesfrom off-the-grid hippy utopias to the peaceful bliss of Arcadiahave continued to crystallize in the natural landscapes of the rural. Contemporary ideas around wellness, mindfulness, ayahuasca startup retreats, and glamping at Burning Man fill the same role in our society as a full-circle return to pre-industrial, pre-capitalist, nature-centric lifestyles that are paradoxically a product of our neoliberal consumerist culture and sold as an antidote to it.

This lineage, from the beginning of western civilization and ancient eastern philosophy to 21st-century marketing culture, is just part of Rem Koolhaass ten-year transcultural, transhistorical research and analysis of non-urban territories, or what he calls the ignored realm. On view at New Yorks Guggenheim Museum through August 14, Countryside: The Future is a project of Koolhaas, AMO director Samir Bantal, and Troy Conrad Therrien of the Guggenheim. The show fills the museums entire main rotunda. It is meant to upend traditional notions of the countryside by investigating the places where the influence, as well as the oddities, normally associated with the urban can be found outside the city. If, at one time in the not-so-distant past, the countryside was an idyllic place where each human had a role, Koolhaas posits that the romantic landscape of creek beds, hillsides, and family farms is now unrecognizable as a stable, human-centered place, but rather a hyper-efficient, inorganic, non-place where Cartesian technological systems define life.

The show reverses course on much of what we have come to accept as the baseline for thinking about development. Take that famous statistic: by 2050, 70- to-80 percent of humanity would live in cities. Are we really heading for this absurd outcome, where the vast majority of humanity lives on only 2% of the earths surface, and the remaining 98%, inhabited by only one-fifth of humanity, exists to serve cities? Of course, Rem is not the first person to do research on the rural. But he has the resources (5 partner schools and AMO), the storytelling ability, and the platform (an entire museum in NYC) to reorient the conversation, as he has on other topics such as cities, Dubai, and toilets.

New nature; Highly artificial and sterile environments are employed to create the ideal organic specimen. Todays glass houses can contain all the essential ingredients of life but none of the redundancies: sun, soil, and water are emulated, optimized, and finally, automated. (Pieternel van Velden)

The exhibition starts outside the museum, with a tractor next to a small, high-tech indoor tomato farm under pink lights that illuminate passing pedestrians. In the lobby, a requisite hanging sculpture in the rotunda is made from a bale of hay, an imaging satellite akin those used by Google Maps, and an underwater robot that kills fish threatening coral reefs. Land, sea, and even space are all implicated in this broad survey of the rural, as this sculpture sets the tone for the rest of the show, which launches into an outpouring of information. It is reminiscent of OMA/AMO publications Content, Volume, or the Elements exhibition and books, as visitors are greeted by a wall text of 1,000 questions posed by Koolhaas. Nearby is a table showcasing publications that provided context: The Red Book and the Great Wall, The Future of the Great Plains, Golf Courses of the World, and a German publication about Muammar al-Gaddafi.

At the core of the show, the Guggenheims iconic ramp houses a set of themed vignettes. Political Redesign is a catalog of heroic 20th-century geopolitical operations, ranging from the founding of several United States federal agencies during the Dust Bowl, to German Architect Herman Srgels plan to unite Europe and Africa by lowering the level of the Mediterranean Sea and building a bridge over the resulting span. Stalins Plan for the Transformation of Nature and the evolution of the Jeffersonian grid from squares to circles are also highlights.

Countryside then moves away from these governmental models into more polyvalent experiments with nature, technology, politics, planning, and preservation. Many of these we might normally associate with the urban, such as the anarchist community in Tarnac, France that was raided by police in 2008 but is now home to an informal university hidden in the forest. There are also glimpses of rural China, most beautifully Taobao Live, Alibabas live streaming channel that allows sellers in the countryside to broadcast their produce and foodstuffs to audiences in the cities. Arcosanti, afro-futurism, and Chinas Belt and Road Initiative are among the other kaleidoscopic ways that the narrative extends beyond industrial farming into a host of other social and political spheres.

Working through contemporary preservation methods, proposals, and scenarios, including a curious example from Siberia where valuable mammoth tusks are becoming exposed in the ground by climate change and creating new economies for local, amateur archaeologists, the exhibitions closes on cartesian euphoria, a kind of paranoiac-critical reading of the technologies and systems that are rearranging nature and politics in the countryside, complete with a full-scale installation of a PhenoMate, a cutting-edge farming tool that uses machine learning to identify which plants in a nursery bed photosynthesizing the most, and selectively breeds stronger strains without genetic modification.

The show operates politically in a context where the countryside, and those who live in it are a marginalized group, at least culturally. Urban elites deride rural areas as many things, most out-of-touchedly as fly-over states. After a decade or more or the architectural world focusing on cities and urban areas as the main spaces of inquiry, Rems turn to the countryside most likely born from a desire to look where most others are not and his ability to show the public that the so-called hinterlands are a place where not only are some of the most important agricultural, industrial, and social mechanisms of society operating, but it is also where many of the interesting intersections of experimental politics, economics, engineering, and social relationships are taking place.

To ignore the rural because we dont agree with the politics of those who live there, or think that their culture is not sophisticated is not only missing out on experiencing a countryside beyond a luxury faux-rustic retreat, but it is also disregarding the fact that the countryside and the city are and always will be inextricably linked, as elucidated by a brilliant provocation that cities have become stuck in frivolity, while supported by complex, managed landscapes in the countryside. For example, urbanites underneath Londons ArcelorMittal Orbit leisurely eat ice cream brought in from factory farms in the outskirts.

The frivolity of urban life has necessitated the organization, abstraction, and automation of the countryside at a vast and unprecedented scale. Left: Mishka Henner, Feedlots, 2013. Right: Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London, 2018. (Luca Locatelli)

It is also a show with a decidedly top-down lens on the countryside. Some will not like the relative lack of representation of small-scale communities in the show, but the acknowledgment of systems and technology is an important way of seeing these territories. Had the curators included more grassroots narratives, it likely would have watered down the larger, geopolitical stories being told, and the show is better off for staying focused on larger-scale issues rather than getting into the folk aspects of the countryside, which would be more predictable and less compelling.

Countryside is definitely a magazine- or book-on-the-wall type of exhibition, but not in a bad way. The texts are snappily written in typical Koolhaasian style, and there are not too many complex maps or charts, making the exhibition feel more like a journalistic analysis of what is interesting about the countryside, not necessarily a theoretical treatise or prescriptive path forward. It could be read as a transformation of the museum into a publication, a curatorial strategy that upturns not only our ideas about the Guggenheim but about how to leverage a hyper-didactic exhibition into an aesthetic experience. The show is literally distorted by the Guggenheims double-curved surfaces, spiraling ramp, and constantly shifting vantage points, with a string of text spiraling around the underside of the ramps like a dizzying thesis statement, always to be revisited.

If there is a sticking point, it is that the aesthetic of the exhibition will be familiar to many, as it harkens back to previous OMA/AMO publications. Koolhaas has long collaborated with Dutch graphic designer Irma Boom, who created a custom Countryside typeface for the show, which resembles both handwriting and her Neutral typeface used throughout. In an exhibition that is really a publication, typefaces matter, and the familiar layouts and fonts make the exhibition seem more like the work of a signature architect or firm, not a global coalition. No, but seriously, folks, go see the show!

Taschen has published an accompanying publication, available for 24.95 online or at the gift shop.

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Rem Koolhaas sets a global non-urban agenda with Countryside at the Guggenheim - The Architect's Newspaper

SEATTLE Tracing the family tree of COVID-19 through its evolving DNA sequence makes it possible to disprove many false claims circulating on social media about the novel coronavirus, and, in particular, that it was generated in a covert biological weapons program.

From everything Ive looked at, there is zero evidence for genetic engineering; it looks like normal evolution, said Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, who has been using genomes sequences taken from patient samples to track the spread of the virus since Jan. 11.

Thousands of mutations are distributed across the genome. If youre engineering something, you wouldnt do that. There are no signals for biological engineering. It looks like natural evolution, Bedford told attendees of the AAAS meeting on Feb. 14.

Bedford also decried a paper published on the Biorxiv preprint server by scientists at the Indian Institutes of Technology, pointing to an uncanny similarity between COVID-19 and HIV. They claimed to have identified four insertions in the spike glycoprotein of COVID-19, through which the virus binds to the host cell, that are not present in other coronaviruses, but which looked the same as key structural proteins of HIV-1, a finding that they said is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature.

The research was very shoddily done, Bedford said. The sequence differences are not unique to COVID-19. Closely related [bat] coronaviruses have these chunks as well. They are small motifs used by nature over and over again.

The paper was swiftly withdrawn from Biorxiv, but the allegations continue to have a life of their own on social media, with stories headlined Scientists confirm COVID-19 is man-made.

Biorxiv has proved an important conduit for rapid publication of legitimate research about the virus, but the controversy around the Indian paper led the website to add a yellow band across all its postings about COVID-19 to stress that these are preliminary reports that have not been peer-reviewed and should not be reported in news media as established information.

The volume of misinformation about COVID-19 led World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to label it an infodemic. WHO has set up a team to monitor and respond to myths and rumors around the clock.

Along with debunking bioweapon conspiracy theories, the genomes of 100 samples of COVID-19 taken from patients that have been sequenced to date also are providing insights into the epidemiology of the virus. In combination with live case records and mathematical modeling, that gives lie to claims there has been a cover-up, and that far more people have contracted the virus than officially reported.

Comparing virus from different patients and knowing how fast it mutates, makes it possible to say how many cases have occurred. We get upwards of 200,000 total infections, Bedford said. That fits with estimates based on mathematical models published by researchers at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Modelling, Imperial College London, he noted.

The family history exposed by the genome sequences debunks another rumor, that COVID-19 crossed to humans from snakes or fish. Based on the genetic analysis, the likelihood is that the virus was transmitted by a bat to another mammal between 20 and 70 years ago. That as-yet-unidentified intermediary passed the virus on to its first human host in the city of Wuhan in late November or early December 2019.

Global cooperation

Virus genomes are being released three to six days after sample collection and shared around the world via GISAID (global initiative on sharing all influenza data). The number of genome sequences and the speed with which they have been published underlines the unprecedented level of global cooperation in tackling the epidemic, Bedford said. In the 2013 2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, it was a year before the first sequence was available; in the case of Zika virus, it took several months. Even with seasonal flu and all the resources thrown at that, updates are monthly, albeit the norm is to sequence and publish multiple genomes at once.

Each of the different COVID-19 sequences varies by a handful of single amino acid point mutations. That forms the basis of the family tree showing how virus samples collected at different times and in different locations, are related.

The technique was used in the West Africa Ebola epidemic, and in tracking the geographical spread of the Zika virus. It is a super-useful tool, Bedford said.

The first five sequences of COVID-19 that were made available on Jan. 11 had little genetic variety, with three being identical and two having slight differences between them.

We know that these sort of coronaviruses mutate at about one mutation per genome, per month. And so just seeing this, we know that all of the five viruses shared a very recent origin, Bedford said.

That was consistent with the supposition that the original source was repeated animal-to-human transmission at the seafood market in Wuhan, where live animals were on sale.

However, by Jan. 19, COVID-19 genomes from Wuhan and Thailand indicated there was human-to-human spread. The genome sequences actually provided an early view of this, before other data streams. I think that was hugely valuable, said Bedford.

Bedfords real-time tracking of the evolution of COVID-19 is posted on the open source website Nextstrain.org. All the genomes analyzed to date are highly related, with at most seven mutations relative to the common ancestor. There is no sign of the virus becoming more virulent or infectious.

As of Feb. 14, there was a total of 47,505 laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in China, and 16,427 cases that have been clinically confirmed in Hubei province. There have been 1,381 deaths in China, including 121 reported on Friday, while outside China there have been 505 cases in 24 countries, and two deaths.

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Researchers trace COVID-19's family tree to battle outbreak and 'infodemic' - BioWorld Online

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CRISPR And CRISPR-Associated (Cas) Genes Market Expected to Witness a Sustainable Growth by 2026 - New Day Live

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates makes a point during a Q&A with Margaret Hamburg, board chair for the American Association for the Advancement of Science. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has been working to improve the state of global health through his nonprofit foundation for 20 years, and today he told the nations premier scientific gathering that advances in artificial intelligence and gene editing could accelerate those improvements exponentially in the years ahead.

We have an opportunity with the advance of tools like artificial intelligence and gene-based editing technologies to build this new generation of health solutions so that they are available to everyone on the planet. And Im very excited about this, Gates said in Seattle during a keynote address at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Such tools promise to have a dramatic impact on several of the biggest challenges on the agenda for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, created by the tech guru and his wife in 2000.

When it comes to fighting malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases, for example, CRISPR-Cas9 and other gene-editing tools are being used to change the insects genome to ensure that they cant pass along the parasites that cause those diseases. The Gates Foundation is investing tens of millions of dollars in technologies to spread those genomic changes rapidly through mosquito populations.

Millions more are being spent to find new ways fighting sickle-cell disease and HIV in humans. Gates said techniques now in development could leapfrog beyond the current state of the art for immunological treatments, which require the costly extraction of cells for genetic engineering, followed by the re-infusion of those modified cells in hopes that theyll take hold.

For sickle-cell disease, the vision is to have in-vivo gene editing techniques, that you just do a single injection using vectors that target and edit these blood-forming cells which are down in the bone marrow, with very high efficiency and very few off-target edits, Gates said. A similar in-vivo therapy could provide a functional cure for HIV patients, he said..

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence gives Gates further cause for hope. He noted that that the computational power available for AI applications has been doubling every three and a half months on average, dramatically improving on the two-year doubling rate for chip density thats described by Moores Law.

One project is using AI to look for links between maternal nutrition and infant birth weight. Other projects focus on measuring the balance of different types of microbes in the human gut, using high-throughput gene sequencing. The gut microbiome is thought to play a role in health issues ranging from digestive problems to autoimmune diseases to neurological conditions.

This is an area that needed these sequencing tools and the high-scale data processing, including AI, to be able to find the patterns, Gates said. Theres just too much going on there if you had to do it, say, with paper and pencil to understand the 100 trillion organisms and the large amount of genetic material there. This is a fantastic application for the latest AI technology.

Similarly, organs on a chip could accelerate the pace of biomedical research without putting human experimental subjects at risk.

In simple terms, the technology allows in-vitro modeling of human organs in a way that mimics how they work in the human body, Gates said. Theres some degree of simplification. Most of these systems are single-organ systems. They dont reproduce everything, but some of the key elements we do see there, including some of the disease states for example, with the intestine, the liver, the kidney. It lets us understand drug kinetics and drug activity.

The Gates Foundation has backed a number of organ-on-a-chip projects over the years, including one experiment thats using lymph-node organoids to evaluate the safety and efficacy of vaccines. At least one organ-on-a-chip venture based in the Seattle area, Nortis, has gone commercial thanks in part to Gates support.

High-tech health research tends to come at a high cost, but Gates argues that these technologies will eventually drive down the cost of biomedical innovation.

He also argues that funding from governments and nonprofits will have to play a role in the worlds poorer countries, where those who need advanced medical technologies essentially have no voice in the marketplace.

If the solution of the rich country doesnt scale down then theres this awful thing where it might never happen, Gates said during a Q&A with Margaret Hamburg, who chairs the AAAS board of directors.

But if the acceleration of medical technologies does manage to happen around the world, Gates insists that could have repercussions on the worlds other great challenges, including the growing inequality between rich and poor.

Disease is not only a symptom of inequality, he said, but its a huge cause.

Other tidbits from Gates talk:

Read Gates prepared remarks in a posting to his Gates Notes blog, or watch the video on AAAS YouTube channel.

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Why Bill Gates thinks gene editing and artificial intelligence could save the world - GeekWire