Talk at DePaul University, School of Computing and Digital Media, Chicago, IL

1. 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

2. ARE WE HEALTHIER THAN 100 YEARS AGO?

3. 100 YEARS, 100% INCREASE IN HUMAN LIFESPAN

4. MORE CHILDREN LIVE BEYOND 5TH BIRTHDAY

5. BUT DESPITE THE PROGRESS …

6. 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

7. LEARNING FROM THE PAST TO MAKE A BETTER
FUTURE

8. OUR PROGRESS IS DUE TO COLLECTIVE &
CUMULATIVE INTELLIGENCE

9. BRAIN SIZE = INTELLIGENCE

10. BRAIN SIZE HAS STAGNATED IN >30,000 YEARS

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

12. IMAGINE IF PRACTICALLY ANYONE COULD ACTIVELY
ENGAGE IN DRUG DISCOVERY

13. ..YES IT’S POSSIBLE

14. 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

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

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

17. ITS GOING TO GET EVEN BETTER!

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

19. 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

20. FIT2CURE
PLAY, LEARN AND DISCOVER

21. 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

22. Fit2CureTM
GAME INTERFACE

23. 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.

24. EMERGENT PATTERNS IN PLAY TRACE
• Expectation-maximization
(EM) based mining of
player data
-user interface design
- novel scientific insights

25. Time(Mins)
HIV-1 Protease
PLAYERS CAN DO REAL SCIENCE!

26. DESIGN YOUR MEDICINE IN FUTURE

27. 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

29. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
University 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