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Leroy Hood: Reflections on a Legendary Career

Legendary scientist Leroy Hood describes how he has applied systems thinking to realize many interdisciplinary initiatives that are now culminating in the development of 21st century medicine. Lee’s career essentially parallels that of the biotech industr

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Leroy Hood is the perfect scientist to write the lead article in the first issue celebrating the 40th anniversary of GEN. Lee’s career essentially parallels that of the biotech industry, and as you will see from his article, he is hugely responsible for many of the essential tools and technologies that have driven much life sciences research and clinical product development over the past 40 years. We sincerely thank him for his special contribution to our January issue. —John Sterling, Editor in Chief

Leroy Hood receiving the 2011 National Medal of Science
Leroy Hood pictured with President Barack Obama at a White House ceremony. On this occasion, Hood received the 2011 National Medal of Science. [Courtesy of ISB]

When I arrived at Caltech in 1970 as a young assistant professor, I had two areas of experimental interest—molecular immunology and technology development. I was also interested in human biology and disease but challenged by their immense complexity. I planned to develop tools and strategies for deciphering this complexity, and that commitment set me on an exhilarating journey during which I led or participated in seven paradigm changes.

Indeed, these paradigm changes did begin to decipher human complexity in quite different and powerful ways, but they also framed my vision of 21st century medicine—my current focus. I will briefly describe these paradigm changes and then consider some of the impacts they had on my thinking about science and how scientific careers may be formed.

The Innovation Engine is an approach the Institute for Systems Biology uses to solve challenging biological problems. Such problems often require that new technologies be developed to allow the exploration of new dimensions of data space. [Courtesy of ISB ]

Seven paradigm-shifting developments

1. Confluence of engineering and biology
Engineering has been brought to biology over the past 40 years through the development of six instruments that allow the sequencing and synthesis of DNA and proteins.1–6 These tools gave us the ability to generate high-throughput data from human samples and also allowed us to begin accumulating the data needed to realize big data analytics.

2. Success of the Human Genome Project
I was privileged to participate in the conceptualization, initiation, and execution of the Human Genome Project.7–10 I was particularly excited by the way genome technology advanced our ability to analyze human genetic variation in the context of wellness and disease phenotypes.

3. Adoption of cross-disciplinary approaches
In 1992, I founded the first cross-disciplinary biology department, the Department of Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Washington. It brought together astronomers, biologists, chemists, computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and physicians. During the eight years of its existence, it made seminal technological innovations to genomics, the newly emerging field of proteomics, cell biology, and computational analyses.11–15 This paradigm-shifting development facilitated the transition from genotype to phenotype, and from technology to biology.

4. Establishment of systems biology
In 2000, I co-founded the first institution dedicated to systems biology, the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB), which pioneers global and holistic approaches to biology and disease. The ISB drives the application of genomics and computational technologies, including technologies that I helped develop in past decades, to the scientific problem of biocomplexity: moving biology from studying genes and proteins one at a time to analyzing entire systems.16–19 Essentially, the ISB works to understand what makes the whole more than the sum of its parts.

At the ISB, we learned to unite traditional holistic organismal biology with modern molecular biology first on model organisms, but we soon applied lessons learned to the study of human health and disease. The new systems paradigm led to the formulation in the early 2000s of my view of 21st century medicine. (I will refer to the 21st century medicine concept throughout this article).

5. Development of the P4 concept
The systems approach has been adapted to medicine and healthcare, leading to the view that treatments can be predictive, preventive, personalized, and participatory (P4). Furthermore, P4 healthcare now encompasses two domains: wellness (which had received little attention in traditional mainstream medicine) and disease.20–23

6. Systematic quantitation of wellness data
In 2014, Nathan Price, PhD, an ISB colleague and good friend, and I persuaded 108 individuals to undergo complete genome sequence analysis—and longitudinal phenome analyses of proteins, metabolites, clinical chemistries, and the gut microbiome every three months for a year—in addition to analyses of data collected with self-tracking technologies such as Fitbit, that is, analyses of “quantified self” data clouds. When analyzed, these data clouds produce individualized recommendations for optimizing wellness and avoiding disease.

This approach relies on multidimensional measurements of personal health variables and on existing generic medical knowledge. We call this approach scientific (quantitative) wellness.24–27

We started the for-profit company called Arivale in 2015 to bring scientific wellness to 5,000 clients over four years, thus generating informative longitudinal data clouds that confirmed the power of scientific wellness and led to the concept of healthy aging. We also confirmed the use of genetic risk for diseases to determine therapy strategies; developed the ability to detect, at the earliest stages, almost 200 wellness-to-early disease transitions; and developed ways to identify systems-driven therapies to reverse chronic diseases before they manifest as disease phenotypes.28–30

7. Launch of combined genome/longitudinal phenome analyses
Paradigm changes 5 and 6 broadened my outlook. I had been focused on the complexities of human biology and how they could inform the targeting of disease phenotypes. But then I began to appreciate a larger concept, namely, 21st century medicine. Enabled by new technology and biological insights, I advocated that we should follow the multidimensional health trajectories of each individual with genome and longitudinal phenome monitoring.31

In 2016, Rod Hochman, MD, the visionary president and CEO of Providence St. Joseph Health (PSJH), asked me to become the CSO of PSJH, and for the ISB to introduce PSJH to genomics and scientific wellness. I agreed because this was a way to bring 21st century medicine to a major healthcare system.

In this context, I immediately began planning a bold proposal to carry out genome/longitudinal phenome analyses on one million PSJH patients over five years, studying both well and diseased patients—the Million Person Project (MPP). This proposal could bring 21st century medicine with scientific wellness, healthy aging, and the prediction and prevention of diseases to a major healthcare system.31

Bridging academic disciplines

My career has spanned biology (molecular immunology, molecular neurobiology, and systems biology), medicine (P4 healthcare, scientific wellness, healthy aging, Alzheimer’s disease, 21st century medicine), technology development, and education (K-12 students, undergraduates, and graduates, as well as scientists and physicians). In the following, I draw some personal observations from these areas and the seven paradigm changes described above.

Thomas Kuhn wrote a thoughtful book on paradigm changes, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.32 It suggests that paradigm changes are fundamentally new ways of thinking about or practicing science, and that they are extremely difficult to achieve because many scientists have conservative natures and are skeptical about new ideas. My experience echoes his insights. Moreover, my familiarity with the seven paradigm changes described earlier leads me to offer the following observations:

  • Each of the seven paradigm changes was met with enormous skepticism, with doubters saying, “It is not true” or “It is trivial” or “It is a pipe dream.”
  • To overcome such skepticism—to carry an initiative forward against the opinions of a vast majority of one’s colleagues—one needs a quality I call “determined optimism.”
  • New ideas need new organizational structures to move forward. The bureaucracies of an organization are honed by past experience, and they often just barely manage to deal effectively with the challenges of the present. They generally fail completely in dealing with challenges of a more distant future. This is why industry, on occasion, creates an independent entity called a “skunk works” to explore new ideas unconstrained by the parent company. (For example, Xerox founded the Palo Alto Research Company (PARC), which developed innovative computer technology. Although the technology wasn’t exploited to the full by the parent company, it inspired Steve Jobs and the engineers at Apple.)
  • The only way to convince the skeptics of a paradigm change is to be successful—to create transformational ideas or tools that open new avenues of exploration.

In developing new tools or biological opportunities, academia and industry have distinct roles. Academia is good at conceptualizing new concepts and tools and performing proof-of-principle studies. Industry, with its larger resources and broader focus, excels at making new tools simple and robust, and at scaling performance to enable, for example, high-throughput data generation. This is exactly what happened with the development of automated DNA sequencing over the last 35 years.

Sequencing has now gone through three distinct stages: 1) the four-color Sanger chemistry of our first-stage instrument with up to several hundred sequence reads; 2) four-color reads with enormous parallelization to millions of short-read sequences; and 3) single-molecule sequence analyses generally with electronic detection and potentially long reads, allowing de novo assembly of each individual’s genome sequence independent of a relatively inaccurate standard prototype sequence. (I predict that this latter technology will, in time, bring the cost of individual genome sequences below $10.)

Bridging academic and commercial realms

I remember that late in 1979, I visited the president of Caltech, the physicist Marvin “Murph” Goldberger, PhD, and suggested that we should bring the tools we were developing to industry after we had proved their effectiveness. These tools included four automated instruments, one each for protein sequencing, DNA sequencing, peptide synthesis, and DNA synthesis.

Lee Hood pictured at Caltech, where he was an undergraduate student, a graduate student, a faculty member for 22 years, and the chairman of the biology department for 10 years. He also collaborated on the development of several sequencing instruments. [Courtesy of ISB]

Goldberger was skeptical. He argued, “The role of an academic institution is to focus on education and scholarship, not commercialization.” I maintained that scientists had the obligation to bring useful knowledge to society so it could be available to others. Murph rejoined, “You can do this if you wish, but Caltech will not assist you.” I went out on my own and was turned down by the first 19 companies I approached. As you can imagine, this was a deflating experience, but I always believed the next company would “see the light”—in retrospect, this is the essence of determined optimism.

Eventually, Bill Bowes, a San Francisco venture capitalist, offered to help fund the company that became Applied Biosystems and successfully commercialized the four instruments developed at Caltech. I subsequently helped co-found 15 additional companies. Each was generally successful in bringing our concepts or technologies to fruition.

One can create new companies to realize scientific objectives, or one can collaborate with them on science. Both approaches pose significant challenges. For example, in the early 1980s, I went to Edward Jefferson, PhD, then CEO of DuPont, and proposed that we collaborate on the protein-level sequencing of several interferons, which were then available only in vanishingly small quantities. Once this was accomplished, we could use integrative technology strategies to clone the corresponding genes (see the following).

Jefferson was enthusiastic, and he pointed me toward his director of life sciences, who proved to be an absolute roadblock. (The director had his own agenda and budget commitments and did not appreciate the intrusions of an academic.) I learned that although it is essential to get C-suite approval for a novel project, you must also persuade the operational scientists who direct the work that it is to their benefit. This was a lesson I never forgot.

Just as one can take a systems approach to biology and disease, it is also possible to do so with technology. I remember writing a paper on the integration of DNA and protein sequencers and synthesizers in early 1982 for Nature. The idea was that microsequencing vanishingly small quantities of protein would allow one to use the genetic code dictionary to synthesize degenerate oligonucleotide probes that could then be used to clone the corresponding gene.

We could then sequence the gene (and use it as a probe for expression analyses) and reverse-translate this sequence to peptide sequences. Then, these sequences could be used to synthesize peptide fragments, which could be used to generate antibodies to detect the protein. Thus, the microchemical facility gave one to ability to take a small amount of protein and generate the reagents necessary for determining its function—in a manner that had never before been possible.

The integration of these four technologies allowed us to look at biology through a fundamental new lens. This paper took more than two years to publish—because Nature demanded that we demonstrate the validity of each of the various components of these integrated approaches.33 We went on to microsequence more than 25 different proteins and often cloned their corresponding genes, which opened fascinating new areas for biological exploration.34–37

Let me add that several individuals played critical roles in developing these technologies: Michael W. Hunkapiller, PhD (automated protein and DNA sequencing); Lloyd M. Smith, PhD (automated DNA sequencing); Steven B.H. Kent, PhD (automated peptide synthesis); and Marvin H. Caruthers, PhD (pioneered the DNA synthesis chemistry and worked with Applied Biosystems on automated DNA synthesis). Applied Biosystems played a major role in catalyzing the maturation of these technologies.

My adventures in creating cross-disciplinary scientific environments led me to realize that, for future scientists, cross-disciplinary talents are essential. In addition to gaining enormous domain expertise in a particular area of biology, a young biologist should also develop the computational and statistical skills that will be necessary for dealing not only with big data but also with “big knowledge,” which will be central to all fields in biology and medicine.

A student should have some working understanding of not only data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, but also of complex systems theories and knowledge graphs. All are invaluable tools for managing and analyzing complex biological information and comprehending how the parts integrate to a whole.

Healthy aging

On a personal level, I was really excited when we showed that we could use the 5,000 Arivale longitudinal data clouds to determine for each individual their biological age—that is, the age your body says you are, rather than the age specified by your birthday.28 The younger the biological age is relative to your chronological age, the better you are aging. Three hundred Arivale individuals with diabetes, for example, had an average biological age six years older than their chronological ages.

I have a biological age 15 years younger than my chronological age, and I am a fanatic for exercise. Not only can one use biological age as a metric for wellness, one can also use out-of-range blood analyte concentrations to calculate a person’s biological age and optimize at least to some degree each individual’s healthy aging.

Nathan Price and I started a company called Aevum to commercialize this opportunity. (Aevum has recently been integrated into a health intelligence company called Onegevity.) My own belief is that scientific wellness plus healthy aging will go a long way to ensuring one can live mentally alert and physically agile well into your 90s or even 100s. I am living the experiment now.

Envisioning 21st century medicine

I am excited by a fundamental idea called 21st century medicine and what it will do for healthcare. The idea is one that we are already applying by exploting personal data clouds. Every one of us is different—not only with respect to the genome, but also in thousands of dimensions of the phenome.

Therefore, 21st century medicine is an N-of-1 medicine: We will be able to optimize the health trajectory for each individual through assessments of the genome and longitudinal phenome and interrogating the vast knowledge graphs that soon will encompass the entirety of our biomedical knowledge. The output for the individual is customized and concrete, and it offers actionable possibilities to influence the health trajectory in a desired way.38,39

Each individual’s health trajectory has three stages: 1) wellness, which often characterizes the early and middle years of life; 2) an occasional transition from wellness to disease; and 3) disease, which occurs if the second stage is not checked or naturally reversed. 21st century medicine will optimize wellness and extend it as long as possible for each life through scientific wellness and healthy aging.

We have shown that it is possible to detect wellness-to-disease transitions many years before any clinical disease phenotype is manifest for many chronic diseases (diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer’s, etc.).29 So, in the future, we will reverse diseases at this earliest and simplest stage when they are still reversible. Hopefully, we will do this for all chronic diseases that plague mankind and impart a heavy financial burden to society.

Thus, the vision of 21st century medicine is P4—predictive, preventive, personalized, and participatory. “Predictive” and “preventive” refer to the detection and reversal of early chronic diseases, for example, through the use of genetic risk assessments to define treatment approaches that distinguish between patients who are at high or low risk of having a given disease. “Personalized” refers to scientific wellness and healthy aging. “Participatory” refers to the ways in which patients may actively participate in 21st century medicine.40

Finally, we will use systems approaches to treat manifest disease more effectively. Despite the adage that prevention is better than treatment, contemporary medicine still deals with disease generally after it is clinically diagnosed. Scientific research has mostly been devoted to correcting the clinical disease which is generally not reversible by simple single-drug treatments once critical transitions in the underlying disease mechanisms have happened.

Profound applications of 21st century medicine

Optimizing wellness through scientific wellness and healthy aging and the detection and early reversal of chronic disease before the point of no return lies at the heart of optimizing health in 21st century medicine.31

One of the personal tragedies of my life was the diagnosis of my wife, Valerie, with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) almost 15 years ago. I know the heartbreak of seeing a loved one slowly fade away from the world of awareness and the agony of going through these transitions together as a caretaker. At the time of her diagnosis, all drugs were ineffective, and this prompted me to take a serious look at AD.

Over the last 12 years, 400 clinical trials have been ineffective. A totally new start is needed. We need to recognize that it is unlikely that one drug will cure AD.

I decided that AD would be the first chronic disease that we would approach using 21st century medicine for early detection and prevention. It is clear AD starts 4–10 years before it is clinically diagnosed (from metabolic PET scanning). To determine how well we can detect the earliest AD transitions, we are designing a clinical trial with genome/longitudinal phenome analyses to assess individuals at high risk for AD.

Once AD is detected, we believe that a multimodal approach (drugs, supplements, exercise, proper diet, removal of toxins, lifestyle modification, etc.), where each mode is rooted in a scientific rationale, is the key to treating AD.41 We have started three clinical trials using various combinations of multimodal therapies on early AD patients. (I recently presented details about the multimodal approach at an event organized by the Innovation Research Interchange.42)

My hope is that within five years, we will be able to reverse more than 80% of early AD, and that later, we will prevent it completely. Wouldn’t a world without AD be a wonderful tribute to the Valeries of the world and their caretakers?

Upon the outbreak of COVID-19 in Seattle in February of 2020, we started an observational study of 300 patients, taking blood samples at diagnosis, 10 days later, and 40 days later in convalescence. In addition to performing genome/deep phenome analyses, we carried out deep immune phenotyping (single-cell analyses of 5,000 white blood cells at each blood draw for each patient). We analyzed single-cell transcriptomes, relevant cell-surface and secreted molecules, the presentation of HLA alleles, and T-cell and B-cell receptor sequences.

This deep immune phenotyping was revelatory.43 We determined trajectories corresponding to patients who experienced disease with different degrees of severity. Specifically, we identified trajectories indicating the drugs that allowed us to design optimal clinical trials (for example, the optimal time point to give the drug to achieve maximal effect); we identified new states of immune cells and followed their responses to the virus (activation and evolution in maturity); and we made fundamental observations about the nature of viral epitopes that the immune systems employed.

These had profound implications for vaccines. What these studies told us clearly was that from just 100 or so patients, we could derive fundamental insights. We are confident that in the future, we will use deep phenotyping to probe the immune, hormone, metabolic, neurological, and other systems. Moreover, this work will allow us to gain new insights into any disease. We hope to go far beyond what large clinical trials have ever done before. Even trials that encompass large cohorts have confined themselves to addressing questions about a handful of variables. Deep phenotyping will spawn a host of new types of clinical trials that will be insightful and revelatory.

Sources of inspiration

Three people had an enormous impact on my career. Cliff Olsen, my high school chemistry teacher from Shelby, MT, showed me how exciting science could be, and he convinced me that I had the potential to do something significant in science. Perhaps most important, he persuaded me to go to Caltech as an undergraduate, where I received superb training to be a scientist.

Ray D. Owen, PhD, an immunologist at Caltech, was present during my entire 30-year career at Caltech. I was an undergraduate, a graduate student, a faculty member for 22 years, and chairman of the biology department for my last 10 years. He introduced me to the fun and excitement of science, and at several stages of my career, he gave me invaluable advice about how to be a professor or a chairman. He was a wonderful friend up until he died at 94.

My doctoral advisor at Caltech, William J. Dreyer, PhD, introduced me to the power of technology to transform biology and argued compellingly that one should always practice biology at its frontiers—dictums I have taken seriously.

A fascinating question is, what events had the most impact on my career? I would say without question it was the four major moves I made during my academic career. The first three moves took me from one institution to another—from the National Institutes of Health to Caltech; from Caltech to the University of Washington; and from the University of Washington to start the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle. When I made my next move, I became chief science officer for PSJH while retaining my professorship at the ISB. With each move, I reset my scientific objectives, met fascinating new people, and organized new scientific entities. I effectively changed careers multiple times.

Leroy Hood with Bill Gate
Leroy Hood with Bill Gates at the Institute for Systems Biology in 2008. [Courtesy of ISB]

A second fascinating question is, how does one remain vital, passionate, and excited about science throughout their career? The average scientist has a bell-shaped career of success over time. However, if you change careers as you are on the ascending limb of your success, you can generate another upward slope of success because you become insecure, you necessarily learn a lot, you interact with new colleagues, you think about exciting new possibilities, and you bring strikingly new aspects to your work.

Indeed, if you challenge yourself in this way every 10–15 years, you can maintain a career with a continuously ascending positive success slope. I am testing the possibility that I will never want to retire if I employ this strategy. One must be certain to always explore new avenues.

The final point I would like to make is that systems thinking can be applied to virtually every problem in contemporary science—life sciences, medicine, agriculture, energy, healthcare, education, global warming, climate change, etc. It can also be applied to virtually every academic discipline, and it can be applied to our personal lives. We are surrounded in life by systems at every level that cry out for understanding and effective responses through systems approaches. All students should be taught systems thinking for health and life. We have designed (and continue to design) courses for K-12 students in this regard.

With the challenges of realizing 21st century medicine, I think I will have enough to do to keep me out of retirement for the rest of my functional life—through my 90s. Perhaps I will write another commentary in 20 years on our progress in P4 healthcare.

 

References
1. Blanchard AP, Kaiser RJ, Hood L. High-Density Oligonucleotide Arrays. Biosens. Bioelectron. 1996; 11: 687–690.
2. Geiss GK, Bumgarner RE, Birditt B, et al. Direct multiplexed measurement of gene expression with color-coded probe pairs. Nat. Biotechnol. 2008; 26(3): 317–325.
3. Hewick RM, Hunkapiller MW, Hood LE, Dreyer WJ. A gas-liquid solid phase peptide and protein sequenator. J. Biol. Chem. 1981; 256(15): 7990–7997.
4. Horvath SJ, Firca JR, Hunkapiller T, et al. An automated DNA synthesizer employing deoxynucleoside 3′-phosphoramidites. Methods Enzymol. 1987; 154: 314–326.
5. Kent SB, Hood LE, Beilan H, et al. A novel approach to automated peptide synthesis based on new insights into solid phase chemistry. In: Isymiya N, ed. Proceedings of the Japanese Peptide Symposium. Osaka: Protein Research Foundation; 1984: 217–222.
6. Smith LM, Sanders JZ, Kaiser RJ, et al. Fluorescence detection in automated DNA sequence analysis. Nature 1986; 321(6071): 674–679.
7. Kevles DJ, Hood L, eds. The Code of Codes: Scientific and Social Issues in the Human Genome Project. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 1993.
8. Lander ES, Linton LM, Birren B, et al. Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome. Nature 2001; 409(6822): 860–921.
9. Brüls T, Gyapay G, Petit JL, et al. A physical map of human chromosome 14. Nature 2001; 409(6822): 947–948.
10. Heilig R, Eckenberg R, Petit JL, et al. The DNA sequence and analysis of human chromosome 14. Nature 2003; 421(6923): 601–607.
11. Gordon D, Abajian C, Green P. Consed: a graphical tool for sequence finishing. Genome Res. 1998; 8(3): 195–202.
12. Gygi SP, Rist B, Gerber SA, et al. Quantitative analysis of complex protein mixtures using isotope-coded affinity tags. Nat. Biotechnol. 1999. 17(10): 994–999.
13. Hood L. A personal journey of discovery: developing technology and changing biology. Annu. Rev. Anal. Chem. (Palo Alto Calif) 2008; 1: 1–43.
14. Link AJ, Eng J, Schieltz DM, et al. Direct analysis of protein complexes using mass spectrometry. Nat. Biotechnol. 1999. 17(7): 676–682.
15. Ewing B, Hillier L, Wendl MC, Green P. Base-calling of automated sequencer traces using phred. I. Accuracy assessment. Genome Res. 1998. 8(3): 175–185.
16. Bonneau R, Facciotti MT, Reiss DJ, et al. A predictive model for transcriptional control of physiology in a free living cell. Cell 2007; 131(7): 1354–1365.
17. Hood L, Rowen L, Galas DJ, Aitchison JD. Systems biology at the Institute for Systems Biology. Brief. Funct. Genomics Proteomics 2008; 7(4): 239–248.
18. Ideker T, Galitski T, Hood, L. A new approach to decoding life: systems biology. Annu. Rev. Genomics Hum. Genet. 2001. 2: 343–372.
19. Ideker T, Thorsson V, Ranish JA,et al. Integrated genomic and proteomic analyses of a systematically perturbed metabolic network. Science 2001. 292(5518): 929–934.
20. Hood L, Flores M. A personal view on systems medicine and the emergence of proactive P4 medicine: predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory. N. Biotechnol. 2012; 29(6): 613–624.
21. Hood L, Friend SH. Predictive, personalized, preventive, participatory (P4) cancer medicine. Nat. Rev. Clin. Oncol. 2011; 8(3): 184–167.
22. Hood L, Heath JR, Phelps ME, Lin B. Systems biology and new technologies enable predictive and preventative medicine. Science 2004; 306(5696): 640–643.
23. Weston, AD, Hood L. Systems biology, proteomics, and the future of health care: toward predictive, preventative, and personalized medicine. J. Proteome. Res. 2004; 3(2): 179–196.
24. Hood, L, Lovejoy JC, Price ND. Integrating big data and actionable health coaching to optimize wellness. BMC Med. 2015; 13: 4.
25. Hood L, Price ND. Demystifying disease, democratizing health care. Sci. Transl. Med. 2014; 6(225): 225ed5.
26. Price ND, Magis AT, Earls JC, et al. A wellness study of 108 individuals using personal, dense, dynamic data clouds. Nat. Biotechnol. 2017; 35(8): 747–756.
27. Zubair N, Conomos MP, Hood L, et al et al. Genetic Predisposition Impacts Clinical Changes in a Lifestyle Coaching Program. Sci. Rep. 2019; 9(1): 6805.
28. Earls JC, Rappaport N, Heath L, et al. Multi-Omic Biological Age Estimation and Its Correlation With Wellness and Disease Phenotypes: A Longitudinal Study of 3,558 Individuals. J. Gerontol. A Biol. Sci. Med. Sci. 2019; 74(Suppl. 1): S52–S60.
29. Magis AT, Rappaport N, Conomos MP, et al. Untargeted longitudinal analysis of a wellness cohort identifies markers of metastatic cancer years prior to diagnosis. Sci. Rep. 2020; 10(1): 16275.
30. Wainberg M, Magis AT, Earls JC, et al. Multiomic blood correlates of genetic risk identify presymptomatic disease alterations. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2020; 117(35): 21813–21820.
31. Hood, L, Price ND, Evans SJ. What 21st Century Medicine Should Be—History, Vision, Implementation and Opportunities. In: Barilan YM, Brusa BM, Ciechanover A, eds. Can Precision Medicine Be Personal? Can Personalized Medicine Be Precise? Oxford University Press. In press.
32. Kuhn, TS. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press; 1962.
33. Hunkapiller M, Kent S, Caruthers M, et al. A microchemical facility for the analysis and synthesis of genes and proteins. Nature 1984; 310(5973): 105–111.
34. Doolittle RF, Hunkapiller MW, Hood LE, et al. Simian sarcoma virus onc gene, v-sis, is derived from the gene (or genes) encoding a platelet-derived growth factor. Science 1983; 221(4607): 275–257.
35. Oesch B, Westaway D, Wälchli M, et al. A cellular gene encodes scrapie PrP 27-30 protein. Cell 1985; 40(4): 735–746.
36. Prusiner SB, Groth DF, Bolton DC, et al. Purification and structural studies of a major scrapie prion protein. Cell 1984; 38(1): 127–134.
37. Raftery MA, Hunkapiller MW, Strader CD, Hood LE. Acetylcholine receptor: complex of homologous subunits. Science 1980; 208(4451): 1454–1456.
38. Huang S, Hood L. Personalized, Precision, and N-of-One Medicine: A Clarification of Terminology and Concepts. Perspect. Biol. Med. 2019; 62(4): 617–639.
39. Schork NJ. Personalized medicine: Time for one-person trials. Nature 2015; 520(7549): 609–611.
40. Hood L, Auffray C. Participatory medicine: a driving force for revolutionizing healthcare. Genome Med. 2013; 5(12): 110.
41. Bredesen DE. The End of Alzheimer’s: The First Pogram to Prevent and Reverse Cognitive Decline. New York, NY: Avery; 2017.
42. Hood L. How Technology, Big Data, and Systems Approaches Are Transforming Medicine. Paper presented at: Annual Conference of the Innovation Research Interchange—Innovation Unleashed; April 29–May 2, 2019.
43. Su Y, Chen D, Yuan D, et al. Multi-Omics Resolves a Sharp Disease-State Shift between Mild and Moderate COVID-19. Cell 2020; October 28. DOI: 0.1016/j.cell.2020.10.037.

 


To help us preview the future, GEN asked opinion leaders, all from outstanding technology companies, to discuss a range of new initiatives. View the rest of the articles below.

Uncharted Territory: Top Challenges Facing Gene Therapy Development
Envisioning Future Trends in Regenerative Medicine
Engineering Biology—Accelerating Transition
Bioprocessing in a Post-COVID-19 World
Sustainability and the Synthetic Biology Revolution
Sowing the Seeds of Agricultural Biotechnology
Neuroscience Widens Its Investigations of Disease Mechanisms

The post Leroy Hood: Reflections on a Legendary Career appeared first on GEN - Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News.

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Buried Project Veritas Recording Shows Top Pfizer Scientists Suppressed Concerns Over COVID-19 Boosters, MRNA Tech

Buried Project Veritas Recording Shows Top Pfizer Scientists Suppressed Concerns Over COVID-19 Boosters, MRNA Tech

Submitted by Liam Cosgrove

Former…

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Buried Project Veritas Recording Shows Top Pfizer Scientists Suppressed Concerns Over COVID-19 Boosters, MRNA Tech

Submitted by Liam Cosgrove

Former Project Veritas & O’Keefe Media Group operative and Pfizer formulation analyst scientist Justin Leslie revealed previously unpublished recordings showing Pfizer’s top vaccine researchers discussing major concerns surrounding COVID-19 vaccines. Leslie delivered these recordings to Veritas in late 2021, but they were never published:

Featured in Leslie’s footage is Kanwal Gill, a principal scientist at Pfizer. Gill was weary of MRNA technology given its long research history yet lack of approved commercial products. She called the vaccines “sneaky,” suggesting latent side effects could emerge in time.

Gill goes on to illustrate how the vaccine formulation process was dramatically rushed under the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization and adds that profit incentives likely played a role:

"It’s going to affect my heart, and I’m going to die. And nobody’s talking about that."

Leslie recorded another colleague, Pfizer’s pharmaceutical formulation scientist Ramin Darvari, who raised the since-validated concern that repeat booster intake could damage the cardiovascular system:

None of these claims will be shocking to hear in 2024, but it is telling that high-level Pfizer researchers were discussing these topics in private while the company assured the public of “no serious safety concerns” upon the jab’s release:

Vaccine for Children is a Different Formulation

Leslie sent me a little-known FDA-Pfizer conference — a 7-hour Zoom meeting published in tandem with the approval of the vaccine for 5 – 11 year-olds — during which Pfizer’s vice presidents of vaccine research and development, Nicholas Warne and William Gruber, discussed a last-minute change to the vaccine’s “buffer” — from “PBS” to “Tris” — to improve its shelf life. For about 30 seconds of these 7 hours, Gruber acknowledged that the new formula was NOT the one used in clinical trials (emphasis mine):


“The studies were done using the same volume… but contained the PBS buffer. We obviously had extensive consultations with the FDA and it was determined that the clinical studies were not required because, again, the LNP and the MRNA are the same and the behavior — in terms of reactogenicity and efficacy — are expected to be the same.

According to Leslie, the tweaked “buffer” dramatically changed the temperature needed for storage: “Before they changed this last step of the formulation, the formula was to be kept at -80 degrees Celsius. After they changed the last step, we kept them at 2 to 8 degrees celsius,” Leslie told me.

The claims are backed up in the referenced video presentation:

I’m no vaccinologist but an 80-degree temperature delta — and a 5x shelf-life in a warmer climate — seems like a significant change that might warrant clinical trials before commercial release.

Despite this information technically being public, there has been virtually no media scrutiny or even coverage — and in fact, most were told the vaccine for children was the same formula but just a smaller dose — which is perhaps due to a combination of the information being buried within a 7-hour jargon-filled presentation and our media being totally dysfunctional.

Bohemian Grove?

Leslie’s 2-hour long documentary on his experience at both Pfizer and O’Keefe’s companies concludes on an interesting note: James O’Keefe attended an outing at the Bohemian Grove.

Leslie offers this photo of James’ Bohemian Grove “GATE” slip as evidence, left on his work desk atop a copy of his book, “American Muckraker”:

My thoughts on the Bohemian Grove: my good friend’s dad was its general manager for several decades. From what I have gathered through that connection, the Bohemian Grove is not some version of the Illuminati, at least not in the institutional sense.

Do powerful elites hangout there? Absolutely. Do they discuss their plans for the world while hanging out there? I’m sure it has happened. Do they have a weird ritual with a giant owl? Yep, Alex Jones showed that to the world.

My perspective is based on conversations with my friend and my belief that his father is not lying to him. I could be wrong and am open to evidence — like if boxer Ryan Garcia decides to produce evidence regarding his rape claims — and I do find it a bit strange the club would invite O’Keefe who is notorious for covertly filming, but Occam’s razor would lead me to believe the club is — as it was under my friend’s dad — run by boomer conservatives the extent of whose politics include disliking wokeness, immigration, and Biden (common subjects of O’Keefe’s work).

Therefore, I don’t find O’Keefe’s visit to the club indicative that he is some sort of Operation Mockingbird asset as Leslie tries to depict (however Mockingbird is a 100% legitimate conspiracy). I have also met James several times and even came close to joining OMG. While I disagreed with James on the significance of many of his stories — finding some to be overhyped and showy — I never doubted his conviction in them.

As for why Leslie’s story was squashed… all my sources told me it was to avoid jail time for Veritas executives.

Feel free to watch Leslie’s full documentary here and decide for yourself.

Fun fact — Justin Leslie was also the operative behind this mega-viral Project Veritas story where Pfizer’s director of R&D claimed the company was privately mutating COVID-19 behind closed doors:

Tyler Durden Tue, 03/12/2024 - 13:40

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Association of prenatal vitamins and metals with epigenetic aging at birth and in childhood

“[…] our findings support the hypothesis that the intrauterine environment, particularly essential and non-essential metals, affect epigenetic aging…

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“[…] our findings support the hypothesis that the intrauterine environment, particularly essential and non-essential metals, affect epigenetic aging biomarkers across the life course.”

Credit: 2024 Bozack et al.

“[…] our findings support the hypothesis that the intrauterine environment, particularly essential and non-essential metals, affect epigenetic aging biomarkers across the life course.”

BUFFALO, NY- March 12, 2024 – A new research paper was published in Aging (listed by MEDLINE/PubMed as “Aging (Albany NY)” and “Aging-US” by Web of Science) Volume 16, Issue 4, entitled, “Associations of prenatal one-carbon metabolism nutrients and metals with epigenetic aging biomarkers at birth and in childhood in a US cohort.”

Epigenetic gestational age acceleration (EGAA) at birth and epigenetic age acceleration (EAA) in childhood may be biomarkers of the intrauterine environment. In this new study, researchers Anne K. Bozack, Sheryl L. Rifas-Shiman, Andrea A. Baccarelli, Robert O. Wright, Diane R. Gold, Emily Oken, Marie-France Hivert, and Andres Cardenas from Stanford University School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Columbia University, and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai investigated the extent to which first-trimester folate, B12, 5 essential and 7 non-essential metals in maternal circulation are associated with EGAA and EAA in early life. 

“[…] we hypothesized that OCM [one-carbon metabolism] nutrients and essential metals would be positively associated with EGAA and non-essential metals would be negatively associated with EGAA. We also investigated nonlinear associations and associations with mixtures of micronutrients and metals.”

Bohlin EGAA and Horvath pan-tissue and skin and blood EAA were calculated using DNA methylation measured in cord blood (N=351) and mid-childhood blood (N=326; median age = 7.7 years) in the Project Viva pre-birth cohort. A one standard deviation increase in individual essential metals (copper, manganese, and zinc) was associated with 0.94-1.2 weeks lower Horvath EAA at birth, and patterns of exposures identified by exploratory factor analysis suggested that a common source of essential metals was associated with Horvath EAA. The researchers also observed evidence of nonlinear associations of zinc with Bohlin EGAA, magnesium and lead with Horvath EAA, and cesium with skin and blood EAA at birth. Overall, associations at birth did not persist in mid-childhood; however, arsenic was associated with greater EAA at birth and in childhood. 

“Prenatal metals, including essential metals and arsenic, are associated with epigenetic aging in early life, which might be associated with future health.”

 

Read the full paper: DOI: https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.205602 

Corresponding Author: Andres Cardenas

Corresponding Email: andres.cardenas@stanford.edu 

Keywords: epigenetic age acceleration, metals, folate, B12, prenatal exposures

Click here to sign up for free Altmetric alerts about this article.

 

About Aging:

Launched in 2009, Aging publishes papers of general interest and biological significance in all fields of aging research and age-related diseases, including cancer—and now, with a special focus on COVID-19 vulnerability as an age-dependent syndrome. Topics in Aging go beyond traditional gerontology, including, but not limited to, cellular and molecular biology, human age-related diseases, pathology in model organisms, signal transduction pathways (e.g., p53, sirtuins, and PI-3K/AKT/mTOR, among others), and approaches to modulating these signaling pathways.

Please visit our website at www.Aging-US.com​​ and connect with us:

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Click here to subscribe to Aging publication updates.

For media inquiries, please contact media@impactjournals.com.

 

Aging (Aging-US) Journal Office

6666 E. Quaker Str., Suite 1B

Orchard Park, NY 14127

Phone: 1-800-922-0957, option 1

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A beginner’s guide to the taxes you’ll hear about this election season

Everything you need to know about income tax, national insurance and more.

Cast Of Thousands/Shutterstock

National insurance, income tax, VAT, capital gains tax, inheritance tax… it’s easy to get confused about the many different ways we contribute to the cost of running the country. The budget announcement is the key time each year when the government shares its financial plans with us all, and announces changes that may make a tangible difference to what you pay.

But you’ll likely be hearing a lot more about taxes in the coming months – promises to cut or raise them are an easy win (or lose) for politicians in an election year. We may even get at least one “mini-budget”.

If you’ve recently entered the workforce or the housing market, you may still be wrapping your mind around all of these terms. Here is what you need to know about the different types of taxes and how they affect you.

The UK broadly uses three ways to collect tax:

1. When you earn money

If you are an employee or own a business, taxes are deducted from your salary or profits you make. For most people, this happens in two ways: income tax, and national insurance contributions (or NICs).

If you are self-employed, you will have to pay your taxes via an annual tax return assessment. You might also have to pay taxes this way for interest you earn on savings, dividends (distribution of profits from a company or shares you own) received and most other forms of income not taxed before you get it.

Around two-thirds of taxes collected come from people’s or business’ incomes in the UK.

2. When you spend money

VAT and excise duties are taxes on most goods and services you buy, with some exceptions like books and children’s clothing. About 20% of the total tax collected is VAT.

3. Taxes on wealth and assets

These are mainly taxes on the money you earn if you sell assets (like property or stocks) for more than you bought them for, or when you pass on assets in an inheritance. In the latter case in the UK, the recipient doesn’t pay this, it is the estate paying it out that must cover this if due. These taxes contribute only about 3% to the total tax collected.

You also likely have to pay council tax, which is set by the council you live in based on the value of your house or flat. It is paid by the user of the property, no matter if you own or rent. If you are a full-time student or on some apprenticeship schemes, you may get a deduction or not have to pay council tax at all.


Quarter life, a series by The Conversation

This article is part of Quarter Life, a series about issues affecting those of us in our 20s and 30s. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.

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If you get your financial advice on social media, watch out for misinformation

Future graduates will pay more in student loan repayments – and the poorest will be worst affected

Selling on Vinted, Etsy or eBay? Here’s what you need to know about paying tax


Put together, these totalled almost £790 billion in 2022-23, which the government spends on public services such as the NHS, schools and social care. The government collects taxes from all sources and sets its spending plans accordingly, borrowing to make up any difference between the two.

Income tax

The amount of income tax you pay is determined by where your income sits in a series of “bands” set by the government. Almost everyone is entitled to a “personal allowance”, currently £12,570, which you can earn without needing to pay any income tax.

You then pay 20% in tax on each pound of income you earn (across all sources) from £12,570-£50,270. You pay 40% on each extra pound up to £125,140 and 45% over this. If you earn more than £100,000, the personal allowance (amount of untaxed income) starts to decrease.

If you are self-employed, the same rates apply to you. You just don’t have an employer to take this off your salary each month. Instead, you have to make sure you have enough money at the end of the year to pay this directly to the government.


Read more: Taxes aren't just about money – they shape how we think about each other


The government can increase the threshold limits to adjust for inflation. This tries to ensure any wage rise you get in response to higher prices doesn’t lead to you having to pay a higher tax rate. However, the government announced in 2021 that they would freeze these thresholds until 2026 (extended now to 2028), arguing that it would help repay the costs of the pandemic.

Given wages are now rising for many to help with the cost of living crisis, this means many people will pay more income tax this coming year than they did before. This is sometimes referred to as “fiscal drag” – where lower earners are “dragged” into paying higher tax rates, or being taxed on more of their income.

National insurance

National insurance contributions (NICs) are a second “tax” you pay on your income – or to be precise, on your earned income (your salary). You don’t pay this on some forms of income, including savings or dividends, and you also don’t pay it once you reach state retirement age (currently 66).

While Jeremy Hunt, the current chancellor of the exchequer, didn’t adjust income tax meaningfully in this year’s budget, he did announce a cut to NICs. This was a surprise to many, as we had already seen rates fall from 12% to 10% on incomes higher than £242/week in January. It will now fall again to 8% from April.


Read more: Budget 2024: experts explain what it means for taxpayers, businesses, borrowers and the NHS


While this is charged separately to income tax, in reality it all just goes into one pot with other taxes. Some, including the chancellor, say it is time to merge these two deductions and make this simpler for everyone. In his budget speech this year, Hunt said he’d like to see this tax go entirely. He thinks this isn’t fair on those who have to pay it, as it is only charged on some forms of income and on some workers.

I wouldn’t hold my breath for this to happen however, and even if it did, there are huge sums linked to NICs (nearly £180bn last year) so it would almost certainly have to be collected from elsewhere (such as via an increase in income taxes, or a lot more borrowing) to make sure the government could still balance its books.

A young black man sits at a home office desk with his feet up, looking at a mobile phone
Do you know how much tax you pay? Alex from the Rock/Shutterstock

Other taxes

There are likely to be further tweaks to the UK’s tax system soon, perhaps by the current government before the election – and almost certainly if there is a change of government.

Wealth taxes may be in line for a change. In the budget, the chancellor reduced capital gains taxes on sales of assets such as second properties (from 28% to 24%). These types of taxes provide only a limited amount of money to the government, as quite high thresholds apply for inheritance tax (up to £1 million if you are passing on a family home).

There are calls from many quarters though to look again at these types of taxes. Wealth inequality (the differences between total wealth held by the richest compared to the poorest) in the UK is very high (much higher than income inequality) and rising.

But how to do this effectively is a matter of much debate. A recent study suggested a one-off tax on total wealth held over a certain threshold might work. But wealth taxes are challenging to make work in practice, and both main political parties have already said this isn’t an option they are considering currently.

Andy Lymer and his colleagues at the Centre for Personal Financial Wellbeing at Aston University currently or have recently received funding for their research work from a variety of funding bodies including the UK's Money and Pension Service, the Aviva Foundation, Fair4All Finance, NEST Insight, the Gambling Commission, Vivid Housing and the ESRC, amongst others.

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