The Apple Tech Specs Conference
This is episode 7 of The French Tech Comedy.
(Read episode 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
Chinese giant TenBa’s founder Ken Ba, a zillionaire from Shanghai, was sitting at Libro, Tenjin Fukuoka, in a private lounge, for the second time. He was waiting for his oncologist, Takafumi Nagato, head of the lab of Bioinformatics for personalised CAR-T-therapies, at the Tokyo Oncology Center, a private health establishment working with the NTT Medical Center Tokyo on a government-funded project in fundamental and applied research in gene therapy — genetically altered immune cells to fight cancer in a semi-personalised therapy. Immune cells tailored to your own needs. The hybrid bioengineered stuff is made with a CRISPR-cas9 gene editing tool, or more exactly, one of its grand-kids. A sixth-generation DNA and RNA base editor. Ba had also put money in this project, initially funded entirely by the Japanese government. After his third relapse, he had come to see Taka for some kind of cutting-edge treatment. He was now waiting for the oncologist’s feedback…
Just before checking in at Libro bookstore, he sat for a couple of hours in another lounge, for a few business meetings. At the 6th floor of posh Tenjin IMS Store, located in Chuo-Ku, was a dance studio: K-Ballet school. Yuki was currently teaching yoga and ballet classes there. Meanwhile, Ba was sitting in the same building, one floor up. On that day, Nono was meeting with a couple of startups located in Fukuoka. The city administration had provided its startups with a rather large conference room at level two of Fukuoka Tenjin IMS Store. His intention was to surprise Yuki and pop in and say hi.
Ba was done with his business meetings, ready to see Taka. He couldn’t wait. But there was still some time to kill, so he decided he would move one floor up and visit the food court and restaurants. A bit of raw fish certainly wouldn’t hurt. But at the mere thought of food, he was feeling nauseous. Never give food to an upset stomach. He couldn’t wait to see Taka, but also, he was anxious. He decided to settle for a little while in a Chinese tea parlour. At this hour of the day, the place was almost empty. Ba was coming from Boston, MA, and he was still feeling jet lagged. And the subtropical climate of Fukuoka had nothing to do with the dry weather, either cold or hot, of Boston. He was not quite sure which one was best for him right now. One thing he knew for sure: staying away from the pollution in Northern China was a great idea. His plan was to bring Chinese tech giants to work with US pharmaceutical conglomerates and some Boston-based biotech companies and rare disease patient associations. He was trying to put the right people from his team in Boston. A couple of tables further, a young couple was sitting, chatting lively. Or rather, arguing. A few moments later, it sounded like the girl was sobbing. He was sitting with his back to them, so there was no way he could be sure.
The sobbing had stopped, maybe the girl was gone. A few moments later, the conversation started again, this time in English. Ba was not interested, but then he heard someone mention Takafumi Nagato:
“ — You work with Takafumi Nagato, right?”
A small group of three men in their twenties. One of them called Nono. They chatted for a while, then it sounded like the girl was back. She did her best to speak in English, though obviously she was more fluent in French, Nono’s native language.
“ — This is Takafumi Nagato’s sister, Yuki.”
“ — Nice to meet you…”
“ — My pleasure.”
“ — Yuki is teaching ballet here, in this building.”
“ — Oooh… At the K-Ballet school? Congratulations!”
“ — Thank you very much.”
“ — My two friends, Kevin and Stuart, are bioengineers working with the iGem group Tokyo. Stuart has been selected to take part in the upcoming Apple Tech Specs Conference. We are here to support him, and hope he will be strong enough to overcome the ordeal.” The three of them laughed.
“Omedetou gozaimasu, Stuart! It sounds very impressive!”
“ — Nice to meet you. K-Ballet school sounds impressive too!”
Ba was startled to hear this. So this was Taka’s sister?! Should he turn to see her, how she looked like? Say hello? He already knew how she looked like, actually… Now he could put a name to her face. Yuki. Snow, in Japanese. Ba just sat and waited. He had time to kill anyway…How ironic, knowing that right now, time was his worst enemy. A few moments after that, Nono and Yuki were alone, the rest of the group leaving the Chinese tea parlour. It sounded like there was some kind of romance between Nono and Yuki, but with complications, and severe ones, at that. Not exactly the best time for Ba to come, say hello and thank you. Yuki was his T-cells donor. Taka’s team had converted his own blood and skin cells, reprogrammed them into embryonic stem cells (induced pluripotent stem cells was the technical expression) having the ability to turn into any type of specialised cell in the body, including, of course, immune cells, or even CAR-T cells that are engineered to fight cancer. Healthy T cells had been grown from one line of stem cells, coming both from him, Ba, and the geisha, Yuki.
« How do they figure out the right dose for the combination? How do they merge both lines of stem cells, hers and mine, into one? » Ba was anxious to understand this, and he would ask Taka. He also knew that this single line of stem cells could be cloned and expanded, whenever needed. « Will this be covering risks of relapse? How about those risks? » He was getting ready for discussing the options with Taka.
“ — You have to practise your English. Your video sessions are brilliant, you have to carry on with that project. Both in Japanese and English.”
“ — Nono, how about French?”
“ — I’m sure you can do that, too. Your French is great. But my advice here: start with English.”
“ — I’m back here because you asked for it,” said Yuki in a rather dry tone, in French.
“ — So, what is it that you want from me? I thought you were in China.”
“ — I am, but I am also working with your brother, remember? I bring the money in. Without the money, no lab…”
The chitchat went on for some time. Yuki’s English was far from perfect, and she sounded like she felt betrayed by Nono. And it seemed to hurt.
“ — I heard you are getting married with a wealthy Chinese scientist. Congrats.”
Nono was laughing.
“ — Who told you that? That’s not true.”
Ba wished he had gone to that fish restaurant instead, after all. Yuki was sobbing over something, or rather someone. An unfaithful but seductive French boy called Nono, working for Taka… Right now, the seductive boy was trying to redeem himself.
“ — Look Yuki, that’s not true. Your videos don’t suck. At Tencent they are watching them.”
“ — Leally? I don’t believe you. Stop making fun of me.”
“ — Really. And no, I’m not. Trust me, for once. Just once, ok?”
“ — …”
“ — Yuki, baby, look baby… Can you stop crying and look at me, please? …”
“ — …”
“ — For your next video, I have a suggestion to make. And you might like it.”
“ — …”
“ — Why not try and combine the best of both worlds?”
“ — What both worlds? You mean, yours and mine? It looks like it will never work. I’m not even sure I want to make it work. Taka says I shouldn’t, that it is a dangerous thing to try.”
“ — … people will want to have a choice, but between alternatives that really work. The ability to de-anonymise data (medical, genomic, personal, professional) is becoming stronger, thanks to big data. It is becoming increasingly difficult to really anonymise data. So even if I am willing to donate my data, there is no guarantee that it will not backfire one day. I would not like my generosity to be detrimental to me in any way. So this one alternative, that could be really useful for preventative medicine, does not actually work today. How about the other alternative? I own my own data? Less useful for preventative medicine, or population genomics, I will grant you that. Does this operational and functional private cloud really exist today? Is it scalable? Of course, I’m ready to pay for it. But this option is not available. Not yet… One thing I know for sure: people will want to have a choice between paying and being in control of the data, or not paying, and letting someone else in charge of the data (control, mining, storage). But in the second case, let’s say you find this person has an elevated risk of karoshi (death by overwork). I’m almost certain this person would not want you to tell her or his employer, or insurer about this. Instead, the person might want to know… So it seems to me we are kind of lost between two worlds here…”
Nono was playing a segment from Yuki’s last video, “A geisha lost between two worlds, episode 19”, on his smart phone.
“ — You’ve been watching it?! That’s just clap. I will put an end to the stupid videos anyway.”
“ — crap,” corrected Nono. “ — And no, it’s not. Don’t do that. In your next episode, you can suggest that the market for direct to consumer genetics just needs to combine the best from both worlds. Do you get it?”
“ — I’m not sure I understand.”
“ — Imagine. You store your data in an anonymised way in the cloud, and you’ve got the data to de-anonymise it, but that data is only stored on your smart phone. And of course, you own the data that is stored on your smart phone. You are in control of that data, nobody else is. If we can have both of these ingredients, then we have the secure solution you were asking for. And you get to be the owner of your data.”
“ — …”
Nono was grinning.
“ — Was that idea just happened in your head?”
“ — Did the idea for this just pop into my head, you mean,” corrected Nono.
“ — So? …”
Yuki was waiting for an answer.
“ — You know, this Apple Techs Spec conference we were talking about earlier? With Stuart who will be attending as a speaker…”
“ — Yes?”
“ — Well, this is the idea the three of us have developed. Kevin, Stuart and me. You helped us find it, though, with your video.”
Yuki didn’t understand.
“ — I didn’t help you guys find anything.
“ — Yes you did. The way you presented things, saying we were lost between two worlds. It was only natural that we thought about combining the best of both worlds. It’s called troubleshooting, baby…”
“ — …”
“ — So what do you think?”
“ — …”
“ — I think your talent for troubleshooting is great, and you are so aware of it. But I have nothing to do with it. And I don’t wan’t to have anything to do with it.”
A few moments later, she was gone.
Apple, Tencent, all the tech giants worldwide were trying to make the direct to consumer genetics market become mainstream. Ba felt sorry both for Nono and Yuki, but above all, he wished he had not been overhearing the whole conversation. It was almost time for him to prepare to leave. Meeting with Taka. It felt like he had been here for too long and too short at the same time. He didn’t have the time to speak to Nono now. He could feel the chill fingers of fear reaching out and touching him. When he finally left the Chinese tea parlour, there were no clients left. Nono was gone, too.
“A Geisha lost between two worlds.” In the elevator bringing him to the ground floor of Tenjin IMS Store, he wished he could tell the geisha who had given him her healthy T-cells: “I feel you.”
To compound the irony, the little conversation that he had just overheard, about combining the best of both worlds, was not only about romance. Everybody’s looking to boost the numbers of people willing to be sequenced because big numbers will accelerate the pace of genetics-based research. For Ba, “troubleshooting” wasn’t only referring to some ability to find a successful business plan. It was a matter of life or death.
Meanwhile, Yuki was in the Kinokuniya bookstore that was located on the same floor as her ballet studio. A book caught her eye: “Genomic Analysis. How does it change our lives?”
Catherine Coste
MITx 7.00x, 7.QBWx, 7.28x1–2 certified
Member of the Walking Gallery of Health Care, founded by US activist Regina Holliday
