To Humanity and Beyond
This is episode 13 of The French Tech Comedy
Episode 1: The Science of Sakura
Episode 2: Lost in Telomere Translation
Episode 3: Feel Flee to Donate
Episode 4: Pasteurising Tech With the French Touch
Episode 5: The Newborn Symphony Project
Episode 6: The Unknown 9% of the Human Genome
Episode 7: The Apple Tech Specs Conference
Episode 8: religA.I.on
Episode 9: Hiroshima is Japan’s World Trade Center
Episode 10: Mao’s Robots
Episode 11: Zazen in the Shinkansen
Episode 12: The Last (French) Samurai
“ — Have you heard the news? At Bernard’s startup at l’Institut Pasteur in Paris, they have just raised 20 million dollars to study the microbiome!”
“ — That’s awesome!” Thomas is delighted to be in Japan. His wheelchair is allowed to tag along almost anywhere here. Wherever the French Tech tribe is going, he is, too. Korakuen garden, right next to Okayama’s castle, had countless restrooms with disabled WC. Yuki was supposed to get in touch with a manga artist, regarding her French Tech project, which was something along the lines of telling the story of Nono, a French engineer working with her brother on cutting-edge stem cell therapy in cancer. Nono was the last Samurai coming from the future, and she would picture the French girls working in tech as kawaii multitasking creatures… But she wasn’t quite sure…
Thomas, a famous French blogger having worked for the government — it wasn’t clear if he was still working for the current tenant of Matignon, Macron — interrupted the Japanese geisha in her daydreaming activity.
“ — I’m not sure this is gonna work. If you want Nono as a Samurai character, can you show me what a real samurai’s attire looked like?”
Before Yuki could even answer, he spotted a poster.
“ — The upside down noodle bowl, excellent, that’s what we need. And it will need to be red. Now, what symbol do we need on it? How do you write Nono in Japanese?”
“ — のの.”
“ — Hmm… we’ll need something else, I’m afraid.”
They were touring around Okayama’s castle, looking at the various symbols that had been written on real samurai’s helmets. One was quite recurrent, and it was looking like this, except that it had three eyes (one on the forehead) instead of two…
“ — How do you write alien, in Japanese?”
“ — Oh, I know,”, said Yuki. “ — Nono always says that alien and foreigner are written just the same in Japanese Kanjis.”
“ — What are kanjis?”
“ — Chinese characters that are used to write in Japanese. We also have hiragana, katakana. It’s a long story.”
“ — I hope IBM Watson will assist us in the process of disrupting foreign languages. Can you imagine that? You speak in Japanese, I answer you in French, but we both understand each other. In 5 years, it shall be accomplished.”
“ — Yes…,” said Yuki. She had just spent 7 years studying French and was still struggling to understand Nono… Could this IBM Watson machine help her with that part too?
“ — How do you write alien in Kanji?”, asked Thomas.
“ — Alien foreigner, criminal. How charming and welcoming!”
“ — We welcome strangers and foreigners, but as tourists. For them to stay in Japan and work there, it’s another story entirely.”
“ — I see… Well now, on-line learning and collaborative work for geographically dispersed teams will disrupt this. So what we need for our red upside down noodle bowl is this symbol…”
“ — I’m sorry, which symbol?”
“ — The alien one, with two eyes.”
Yuki was staring blankly. She couldn’t imagine Nono in a Samurai uniform, wearing a noodle bowl as a hat, with some kind of alien symbol on it.”
“ — So your last French samurai will have two avatars. One will be the one with the alien symbol on it, and the other one will be the cat…
“ — Which cat?”
Thomas showed her that book cover he had stumbled upon the other day. A manga book cover.
“ — So you’re all set for the meeting with your manga artist, I believe,” said Thomas. He looked quite pleased and proud and amused. But Yuki wasn’t quite sure… Who would read a manga story about the French tech in Japan where the main character would be a cat wearing his food on his head, or a Samurai wearing a noodle bowl with an alien symbol on it?
“ — French tech is everywhere. You’ll have plenty to tell. Fintech, the microbiome, direct-to-consumer genetics, air quality sensors (Plume Labs). If I were you, I’d start right away…”
“ — And T-cells therapy for cancer,” added Yuki. Just as they were arriving at Himeji to visit the white castle from the Shogun era, Thomas laughed, pointing at some poster that was on display at the Himeji train station tourist information center and said:
“ — Look, that’s Nono all right!”
For now, though, everybody was fascinated by the financial news. 20 million dollars for the French Tech, via the Pasteur Institute in Paris. The Shogun era and its famous white castle could wait… The heros of the day were the French microbiome startupers; not the manga Shoghun samurais.
“French startup Eligo Bioscience just raised $20 million to develop next-gen biotherapeutics. Khosla Ventures is leading the round. This is also Khosla Ventures’ first investment in a French startup. Existing investor Seventure Partners is also participating, and the startup received a $2 million grant from the Worldwide Innovation Challenge.
Eligo Bioscience has been working on a new way to target bacteria-based diseases since 2014. Many doctors still rely on old-fashioned antibiotics to kill bacteria or prevent further disease development. But most antibiotics are very broad and target all kinds of bacteria.
It means that some antibiotics aren’t necessarily effective when it comes to fighting specific kinds of bacteria. And bacteria also evolve over time, meaning that bacteria become less and less receptive to usual antibiotics. This could be a global health challenge in the coming years.
Eligo Bioscience thinks that there’s a better way to target the microbiome. The company is designing biological nanobots made out of DNA and proteins to identify and infiltrate specific types of bacteria. Those biotherapeutics called eligobiotics can then deliver a payload.
Eligobiotics are a delivery system. There are like trucks looking for specific bacteria in your body. The company says that you can combine eligobiotics with CRISPR-Cas payloads to kill pathogenic bacteria. But there are also more use cases. Eligobiotics could create transient drug production within your body.
Developing and mass-producing something like this is obviously a huge challenge. It’s going to take years before your doctor prescribes you an eligobiotics treatment.
And there are many challenges to overcome. If Eligo Bioscience has enough funding for its biological research, gets FDA approval and mass-produces eligobiotics in house or with a pharmaceutical partner, it could become a massive product. So it’s going to be a wild ride. But there’s one thing for sure. It’s an interesting startup so let’s keep an eye on Eligo Bioscience.”
Source: TechCrunch, article by Romain Dillet
In Japan, startups were 99% of the time about fintech. The only genomics startup in Tokyo her brother Taka knew about was Awakens, but now it was in California… She was not sure how direct-to-consumer genetics and fintech were related, but again, wasn’t fintech everywhere? As they were sitting on the train to Himeji, she had seen a funny cartoon…
Maybe our genome will have to undergo selection, but our jobs depend from computers — fintech. To humanity and beyond… Long is the road.
“ — I just found a book for your brother. Will you give it to him as a thank you present? I enjoyed our dinner last night in Hiroshima.”
“ — Arigatou gozaimasu,” said Yuki. “ — What is it?”
“ — A manga. The Manga History of Medicine. It’s written in Japanese, so I’m not sure. Maybe it’s about your brother? He will make history.”
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
