YouSaid · the spoken record

Robert Langer

lines on the record: 74
first: 2020-06-30
most recent: 2020-06-30
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It really varies, I think. Sometimes people do know them because they've figured out pathways and ways to interfere them with them. Other times it is shooting in the dark. It really has varied. Sometimes people make serendipitous discoveries and they don't even realize what they did.”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well there was I mean for me actually it wasn't just the idea it was that I didn't know a lot of biology or biochemistry so I certainly felt I was in the dark but I kept trying and I kept trying to learn and I kept plugging but I mean a lot of it was being in the dark”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, in retrospect, it's an obvious idea, but when Dr. Folkman, my boss, first proposed it, a lot of people thought he was pretty crazy”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So if you cut off the blood supply, you cut off the It's kind of like a war almost, right? If the nutrition is going to the tumor and you can cut it off, I mean, you starve the tumor and it becomes very small. It may disappear or it's going to be much more amenable to other therapies because it is tiny, you know, like chemotherapy or immunotherapy is going to have a much easier time against a small tumor than a big one.”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's become one of the top biotech selling drugs in history. And it's been approved for all kinds of cancers and actually for many eye diseases too, where you have abnormal blood vessel growth.”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We did that in 1976. We published that. What would happen over the next 28 years is other people would follow in our footsteps. I mean, we tried to do some stuff too, but ultimately to make a new drug takes billions of dollars. So what happened was there were different growth factors that people would isolate, sometimes using the techniques that we developed. And then they would figure out using some of those techniques ways to stop those growth factors and ways to stop the blood vessels from growing. Like I say, it took 28 years. It took billions of dollars and worked by many companies like Genitech. But in 2004, 28 years after we started, the first one of those Avaston got approved by the FDA.”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, well, now there is, but then when I started, there wasn't. And that gets to your original question. So you go through various steps. We did the first steps. We showed that such molecules existed and then we developed techniques for studying them. And we even isolated fractions, groups of substances that would do it. But what would happen over the next”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's correct. I think what you said is good, so that it would deliver the molecule or the chemical that would stop the blood vessels from growing over a long enough time so that it really could happen. So that was sort of what we call the bioassay is the way that we would study that.”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, in this case, it would be something that could be useful for delivering a molecule for a long time, so it could slowly diffuse out of that at a controlled rate to where you want it to go.”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Blood vessels grow into the tumor, and that's part of what enables the tumor to get bigger, and that's also part of what enables the tumor to metastasize, which means spread throughout the body and ultimately kill somebody. So that was part of what we were trying to do. We wanted to see if we could find substances that could stop that from happening. So first, I mean, there are many steps. First, we had to develop a bio-assay study blood vessel growth. Again, there wasn't one. That's where we needed the polymer systems because the blood vessels grew slowly. Took months. So after we had the polymer system and we had the bioassay, then I isolated many different molecules, initially from cartilage. And almost all of them didn't work. But we were fortunate, we found one, it wasn't purified, but we found one that did work. And that paper, that was this paper I mentioned in Science in 1970.”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, a blood vessel could be an artery or vein or a capillary. And it provides oxygen. It provides nutrients, gets rid of waste. So, you know, to different parts of your body. So the blood vessels end up being very, very important. And if you have cancer.”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'll give an example which goes back to what I said before. So when I was doing my postdoctoral work with Judith Folkman, we wanted to come up with drugs that would stop blood vessels from growing or alternatively make them grow. And actually people didn't even believe that those things could happen”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's hard to do, but on the other hand, whenever we make a new drug or medical device, to a certain extent we're doing that in a small way, what you just said. But I don't know that there are great knobs. I mean, and we're learning about those knobs all the time. But if there's a biological pathway or something that you can affect or understand, I mean, then that might be such a knob.”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I agree with you. I think it's super complicated. I mean, we're still just scratching the surface in many ways. But I feel like we have made progress in different ways, and some of it's by really understanding things like we were just talking about. Other times, you know, you might, or somebody might we or others might invent technologies that might be helpful on exploring that. And I think over many years, we've understood things better and better, but we still have such a long ways to go.”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's right. I think it depends. I mean, there are many different examples. The example I gave about delivering large molecules, which we used to study these blood vessel inhibitors, I mean, there we had to invent something that would do that. But other times it's different sometimes it's really understanding what goes on in terms of understanding the mechanisms. And so it's not a single thing. And there are many different parts to it over the years. invented or discovered different principles for aerosols for delivering genetic therapy agents, you know, all kinds of things.”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's sort of hard to say because there's multiple levels of ideas. One type of thing is like a new creation that you could engineer tissues for the first time or make tissues from scratch for the first time. But another thing is really just deeply understanding something. And that's important too. And that may lead to other things. So sometimes you could think of a new technology or I thought of a new technology, but other times things came from just the process of trying to discover things. So it's never, and you don't necessarily know about aha moments, but I don't know if I've, I mean, I certainly feel like I've had some ideas that I really like, but it's taken me a long time to go from the thought process of starting it to all of a sudden. Knowing that it might work.”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More spontaneous. I mean, part of its exposure to things, part of it's seeing other people, like I mentioned, Dr. Folkman. He was my postdoctoral advisor. He was very good at that. You could sort of see that he had big ideas. And I certainly met a lot of people who didn't. And I think you could spot an idea that might have potential when you see it because it could have a very broad implications. Whereas a lot of people might just keep doing derivative stuff. But it's not something that I've ever done systematically, I don't think.”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you feel depressed, and I felt the same way. When I got grants rejected, which I did a lot in the beginning. I guess part of me, you know, you have multiple emotions. One is being sad and being upset and also being maybe a little bit angry because you feel the reviewers didn't get it. But then as I thought about it more, I thought, well, maybe I just didn't explain it well enough. And you go through stages. And so you say, well, okay, I'll explain it better next time. And certainly you get reviews. And when you get the reviews, you see what they either didn't like or didn't understand. And then you try to incorporate that into your next versions.”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then we revised it, sent it to science, and they accepted it. The opposite happened. We sent it to science and they rejected it, and then we sent it to nature and they accepted it. But I have to tell you, when we got the rejections, it was really upsetting. I thought, you know, I'd done some really good work. And Dr. Fokman thought we'd done some really good work. But it was very depressing to get rejected like that.”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's interesting. I mean, I've had plenty of rejection too. But I suppose one way I think about this is that when I first started, and this certainly had an impact both ways, you know, I first started, we made two big discoveries and they were kind of interrelated. I mean, one was I was trying to isolate with my postdoctoral advisor, Judith Folkman, substances that could stop blood vessels from growing, and nobody done that before. So that was part A, let's say, and part B is we had to develop a way to study that. And what was critical to study that was to have a way to slowly release those substances for more than a day, you know, maybe months. And that had never been done before either. So we published the first one we sent to Nature the journal, and they rejected it.”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And let's say it's the three of hearts. I said, well, put it back in the deck. But what I'd like you to do is turn it upside down from every other card in the deck. So they do that imaginary. And I said, do you want to shuffle it again? And they shuffle it. And I said, well, so there's still one card upside down from every other card in the deck. I said, what is that? And I said, well, three hearts. I said, well, it just so happens in my back pocket, I have this deck. It's a real deck. I show it to you and I just open it up and there's just one card upside down. And it's the three of hearts.”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there's one I like was just called the invisible pack, and the way it works is you have this pack and you halt it up. But first you say to somebody this is invisible. And this deck and you say, well, shuffle it, and they shuffle it, but they sort of make believe. And then you say, okay, I'd like you to pick a card, any card, and show it to me. And you show it to me, and I look at it”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think the duality that I see is fascination. You know, I think of it when I watch magic myself, I'm always fascinated by it. Sometimes it's a puzzle to think how it's done, but just the sheer fact that something that you never thought could happen does happen. And I think about that in science too. You know, sometimes you, it's something that you might dream about and hoping to discover maybe you do or in some way or form.”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think magic can surprise you, and I think science can surprise you. And there's something magical about science. I mean, making discoveries and things like that, yeah.”
2020-06-30 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #105 – Robert Langer: Edison of Medicine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source