Good evening,
It seems that to start a TED conference,
you have to start with a sentence like
“Imagine …” an inspiring thing.
So,
Imagine
a virus
potentially deadly
that would spread super easily,
in the air, objects …
A virus that would mutate so fast
that we would not find an effective treatment
or universal vaccine,
but especially a virus so sneaky
that no one would be wary of it.
It exists.
It’s called the flu.
(Laughter)
A virus like that, you will tell me, it is not very serious.
Know that a virus like that can ravage
half of humanity to the next pandemic.
But I can see what you think.
“But no flu, it gives you fever and then it starts again. “
Beware!
Not at all.
Seasonal flu, for example
the one you catch in autumn,
it kills between 250,000 and 500,000 people each year in Île-de-France,
in the world, sorry!
(Laughter)
Still.
It was not far …
It mostly affects frail people, babies, seniors
or immunocompromised people
whose immune system does not work very well.
There, you will tell me:
“I’m not fragile, I do not care. “
Do not overdo it because there are other viruses:
pandemic flu,
who will be more lethal to young people
whose immune system is doing very well.
I see who says to himself that the wheel turns …
So the pandemic flu,
there is an example: in 2009, the H1N1 virus that killed at the time
“That” 18,000 people in the world.
We were lucky, it could have been much worse.
For example, the Spanish flu in 1918 had killed
between 40 and 100 million people.
It’s another scale.
Here too, you will tell me:
“In 1918 they might have other concerns than the flu. “
Certainly.
That said, we too have other concerns than the flu.
(Laughter)
Just saying.
Today, we also have treatments
we give to infected people but they are not very effective,
at least not efficient enough
so that we can say that we know how to cure the flu.
We also have vaccines, those we offer each year in autumn
but there too, there is a but.
These vaccines protect against 3 viruses that are predicted
that these are the most likely to infect you this fall.
But if we crash,
and that a new virus is coming,
you may be vaccinated, you are sick anyway.
If this new virus that happens is a pandemic flu,
so the very dangerous,
we can develop a vaccine specifically
for this pandemic flu,
as we did in 2009.
Who among you was vaccinated in 2009 against the H1N1 virus?
At least ten.
At the next pandemic, 90% of the amphitheater is infected
and we have no treatment for them.
Here !
You think, “What are the researchers doing?
Why they can not find a cure
or a universal vaccine? “
We try, but for now, we’re like who would say
face our limits!
I am in the theme!
And we are all going to die!
(Laughter)
(Applause)
There, I put a good atmosphere.
Normally, this is where
where you need me to follow a positive thing.
Rest assured, because during my thesis
with the researchers I worked with,
a new innovative treatment has been developed
who works against all influenza viruses
and we hope it will soon be on the market.
It’s not true !
(Laughter)
Not at all !
Well, we’re going to die, that’s true.
But the treatment, we did not find.
That’s what I told the conference organizers
to be able to talk to you tonight.
(Laughter)
I wanted to…
That’s it … so I have 7 minutes left …
You paid your seats, I will not leave like this.
I will tell you my life.
For example, you must ask yourself:
“This young researcher passionate about these viruses,
she must have always wanted to become a researcher. “
Well, not at all !
Imagine me, since I was a little girl, I dreamed of becoming a veterinarian.
I made a prep
and I missed the contest.
After I did an agronomist school,
because in agronomist, there were farm animals.
It would not hurt!
I thought a little about all the stuff that was offered to me, except the search!
Because at the time research, it did not inspire me too much.
In the second year of school, we were told:
“You have to go abroad for 6 months,
do what you want, but abroad. “
My second dream in life, after becoming a veterinarian
– that was fucked up –
it was to go live in Quebec.
So I looked for an internship in Quebec
and I found an internship
of research.
Missed.
Research, Quebec.
Research, Quebec.
Bah Quebec!
So I went to Quebec
and I discovered that in fact the search is too cool.
I do not know if we told you but it’s really nice, research.
I went back to France and decided to do some research.
I looked for an internship then a thesis at INRA,
the National Institute of Agronomic Research
who works on agronomic species and their diseases, such as influenza.
I was able to do a thesis in immunology.
I was happy.
to a detail:
it’s that when you’re doing an agronomist school,
we do not learn immunology.
I did not understand anything.
(Laughter)
I arrived in a lab
with lots of expert researchers in their field
who told me about stuff
and I did not understand anything.
Like when your little niece starts to explain to you
that to evolve a Pokemon Psy, you have to use a Moon stone
and you look at her, saying, “Ah! “
You do not understand anything. I did that for six months.
Well obviously, after a while, I finally understand and especially
by speaking the language of immunologists
and there, strange phenomenon,
that’s when I was talking to other people
that these people did not understand anything anymore.
I had to tell them stuff that was probably interesting
and they must understand:
“You see, to evolve your psyk psyche
it would take a moon stone. “
That was until the day
where I participated in an extension contest,
where I had to explain my thesis in 180 seconds.
It’s been three minutes, do not calculate.
I had to make it understandable to everyone.
It worked: everyone understood
and everyone was interested in what I was doing.
I liked it.
Since then, I’ve been popularizing alongside my work.
I was offered to do a TEDx conference for example.
It went well.
And then we do
popularization with friends on YouTube,
where we explain the immune system
a little sharp but not too much,
but a little bit anyway.
There you go !
Why am I telling you this ?
Not to advertise for my YouTube channel,
but because I’m still
tell you what I did during my thesis.
I have 4 minutes and 30 minutes left.
I will explain to you.
During my thesis,
we worked on a species that you surely know all,
Sus Scrofa, no?
For the uninitiated, we call it the pig.
The pig who, as everyone knows,
is an excellent biomedical model,
both physiologically and genetically
or in other words: everything is good in the pig!
The pig, in particular, gets the flu, like us.
He has the same symptoms as us:
fever, loss of appetite, etc.
In addition, he can catch the same viruses as us, or even transmit them to us.
So understand how the flu works in pigs,
it allows us to better understand
how does the flu work in humans?
And to understand how the flu works,
you also need to understand how the immune system works
who is fighting against the flu.
This was the subject of my thesis:
understand how the pig’s immune system fights the flu.
At the beginning of my thesis, we already knew things
especially in the mouse.
For example, we knew that in the lung,
we have walls of cells that look like this: the epithelium,
which protect the inside of the body from the outside air.
When the flu enters the lungs,
she infects the cells of this wall and she kills them.
It makes holes, it weakens the lungs and if the immune system is in shape,
this is not a problem,
he will repair these holes and fight against the flu.
But if the immune system is weakened
as I said for the seasonal flu,
that’s a problem.
But above all, with a pandemic flu
– remember, the most dangerous flu –
this flu will infect many of these cells
and kill a lot.
These cells will call for help,
this is called inflammation.
There, the lung becomes a battlefield.
The defenses is the immune system.
There are, for example, stretcher bearers:
the macrophages that will evacuate the dead cells and calm the wounded,
so that calm the inflammation.
There are also sentinels: the dendritic cells that they,
spot viruses and darken to prevent lymphocyte army
so that they come to fight.
And above all, in the mouse we found young soldiers: monocytes
who wander in the blood
and when they hear calls for help, they land
to try to help
like those dendritic cells that can save the body.
Yes, but here it is.
These young soldiers never knew the war.
In front of the horror of the battlefield,
all these corpses and all these enemies, they panic.
They also call for help.
It becomes a vicious circle,
more and more soldiers,
who call for help,
then more and more soldiers.
It’s the immune system itself
which starts to do damage to the body.
It is not the virus that is dangerous.
It’s the immune response.
This is what happens in the mouse.
It makes you a beautiful leg, but it’s important.
In the mouse, we realized
that if we reduce the number of these young soldiers,
the flu was no longer dangerous.
It’s an idea of treatment.
To prevent the flu from being dangerous, target cells of the immune system
It’s nice, it works in the mouse.
I remind you that the mouse is big like that,
especially small detail that is important when working on the flu:
the mouse does not catch the flu.
(Laughter)
Here.
It’s stupid but you have to think about it.
It must be infected with specially adapted viruses and even there,
she does not have the same symptoms as us.
This treatment is very nice but would it work at home?
The question to ask:
“Would it work in a species
who gets the flu and reacts like us? “
as
the pig !
So I did that during my thesis.
I tried to identify all these cells in the lung of the pig.
I specifically identified these young soldiers
that also exist in pigs
and who, there too, seem to participate in inflammation.
Obviously, we found a potential therapeutic target
to fight the flu in a species that gets the flu.
And it’s won!
No !
But we have made good progress!
Now that we know these cells, we will be able to better understand the flu
but also other respiratory diseases.
In the pig but by extension also in humans.
Above all, this principle of which I have just spoken to you,
to not necessarily target the villain
but rather try to understand
what’s going on in the immune system and to fix it,
it’s called immunotherapies.
It’s a bit like the treatments of the future.
At the moment, it’s developed against a lot of diseases,
like allergies, but especially against many types of cancers.
Remember this, leaving tonight:
in the future, with the treatments of the future,
we will no longer try to kill the villain who attacks you,
we will try to understand what is wrong with us and correct it.
It’s a superb political metaphor, can not you find?
(Laughter)
There, we come out of my skills as an immunology researcher
and trainer of Pokemons.
I’m finished.
(Applause)
”
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