The Hangout with David Sciarretta
Conversations with interesting people.
The Hangout with David Sciarretta
#101: Heartbeats Beyond Boundaries: Muhammad M. Mohiuddin, MBBS
In this episode, Dr. Sciarretta speaks with Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, a surgeon who specializes in cardiac xenotransplantation (replacing failing human hearts with pig hearts). Listen to hear more about Dr. Mohiuddin's journey, the ethical and structural issues his work presents, and the moments in which his decades of revolutionary work have come to fruition.
If you enjoyed this episode please give us a five-star rating and consider donating. Your generosity helps our shoe-string budget and allows us to continue producing high-quality content. Click here to donate.
Welcome to the Hangout Podcast. I'm your host, david Sharetta. Come on in and hang out.
Speaker 1:In this episode, I was privileged to have a conversation with Dr Mohamed Mohi Houdin.
Speaker 1:Dr Mohi Houdin is Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland and is also director of the cardiac xenotransplantation program. As he describes in this episode, xenotransplantation is the use of genetically modified animal organs in humans, and Dr Mohi Houdin gives us an inspiring three-decade description of his career that led up to the seminal moment in which a genetically modified pig heart was used and transplanted into a human who was near the end of his life, and what the remarkable impact of that was. Remarkable impact of that was. Dr Mohi Houdin is a worldwide leader in this field but is exceedingly humble. Gives all the credit to his fellow researchers, as well as to the patients who have participated willingly in this collective advancement of science for the future good of humanity, as we face a chronic shortage of organs to meet the needs for organ transplantations around the world. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Welcome, dr Mohamed. Thank you so much for joining me today and for the generosity of your time and your expertise.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you, thank you for inviting me and pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1:I thought we could get started with you sharing a little bit about your origin story, where you come from and what led you to your current work from and what led you to your current work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I came to this country around in early 90s to be specific in 91, aspiring to be the best cardiac surgeon you can be and you know, and getting all the training here Until that time. You know, I'm originally from Pakistan and people used to go to England and get their training and come back and serve in their country. But then US opened up and most of my classmates started coming to US to get their training. My classmates started coming to US to get their training and that was my case also. However, I landed at the University of Pennsylvania and while starting my fellowship there, you know I was intrigued by the research being done there. At that time there were some by the research being done there. At that time. There were some landmark papers that came out from that institution, in fact that particular group.
Speaker 2:So I was convinced by my mentor at that time that if I go into the field of xenotransplantation I may have the potential of helping, you know, several hundred four more people than I will be as just a cardiac surgeon. So that kind of, you know, didn't sink in at that time. But after working there for a couple of years, and after working there for a couple of years, you know, then I made up my mind that this is exactly what I want to do, because in my mind I believed in it. That, although we were working on a small animal model, putting a hamster heart in a rat, you know, to go from there into human was a long journey and, you know, even my family was not very committed. That you know, is it this what you want to do? I mean, do you think this is the right path? But, you know, for some reason believed in it and and chose to continue, uh, that that path and and that path led to it took me about 33 years to do, uh, the first human transplant.
Speaker 1:So so I mean, you know, there there's lots that happen in, yeah, thank you for that overview and I know there's a lot of work that went into those three decades. Right, as someone who, of my age, I remember the Baby Faye case, which was kind of a pop culture phenomena of, I think, a newborn, an infant who received, I think, a baboon heart and just lived for a very short period of time. What has kept you going for three decades in a field that I think the average person doesn't even fully understand? Right, it almost seems like a sci-fi field.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've been told that I've been working in a, I'm doing some kind of a voodoo work. I won't lie that there were several periods in that journey that when I questioned myself that, am I doing the right thing? Because the field at times, you know, completely died right indulging in this kind of studies. There was a time when there were moratorium on genotransplantation in certain countries like England, just because the initial transplants were done using non-human primate organs and they later found out that there could be some diseases that can be transmitted through non-human primate, like HIV. So that kind of killed that filter, just like baby faith. There were multiple other transplants that were done, transplanting kidneys mostly, and livers, but they all failed because they didn't have any background of research in it also and you know, were done as a desperate measure to save life. So I mean, you know those kind of experiments did happen earlier, earlier than so, and you know I what motivated me was whenever, you know, things got, you know, slow, or you know, when I was started thinking of, you know, just going back to cardiac surgery, you know some hope came in and that kept the fire burning.
Speaker 2:You know the real hope came in when I moved to NIH National Institute of Health in 2005,. In 2005, where, you know, I was given complete liberty to develop this program and you know, before that you were working for someone else, you were following someone else's you know mission. But here, you know, I kind of, you know, developed my own ideas and that definitely helped. I mean there's a lot of people who helped me on the way. I couldn't have been here without their you know mentorship and effort which I tried to, you know, transfer to my mentees. But again, like you said, it was a very, very hard job. I mean, it was like lots of ups and downs during that journey.
Speaker 1:Now, as I understand it as a complete layperson just doing a little bit of research, it's fundamentally driven by the extreme shortage of. Let's just take in this example. We're talking about hearts the extreme shortage of available hearts compared to the number of to the need. Right, that's really what's driving that. Talk to us about what those numbers look like and how that's pushing your work forward.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so approximately, just in the United States there are about 150,000 people who are waiting for an organ for transplant. They have reached at a stage in their organ failure where the conventional treatments cannot prolong their life. So these patients, if they don't get a human organ, you know they are sent to hospice where they spend their last days and you know effort is made to make that phase easy for them and effort is made to make that phase easy for them. So, basically, there was no hope for these patients and, however, there are other competing technologies that are being developed For heart. There are mechanical hearts available, left ventricular assist device and now total artificial heart, but they have their own problems and they have not reached to. You know they have not been able to help every single patient who's on the waiting list.
Speaker 2:The problem with kidney is even more, because you know there are larger population who have, who are going through kidney failure. But at least they have a backup of dialysis for them. But for hearts it's definitely not. There's no other choice if you are not eligible for a mechanical device. So all these, all these patients you know are in a desperate condition, even you know, if the organ donation is increased several folds and you know every single one of us become an organ donor.
Speaker 2:Not every single organ becomes eligible for transplant also, so you know you have to match the organs to the recipient. You know a lot of us carry different diseases, which prevents us from being a good organ donor. So all these factors kind of you know, prevents all the organs that are harvested for the purpose of transplantation to get into a human. So I mean there was an extreme need for finding an alternate organ and besides generating a 3D printed organ, which is being done, a 3D printed organ, which is being done, or somehow making the organ that are not eligible more eligible by, you know, some treatment. You know there was no other option. So I mean, you know we are suggesting, you know, non-human organs as an alternate and with the technique of gene modifications, we now believe that we can alter the genes of a donor organ or the donor animal to an extent that it becomes more acceptable to humans.
Speaker 1:So, as you described to me when we did a previous call previous to today, that oftentimes the drugs that recipients need to take to prevent the rejection of an organ can be the thing that actually is the most that sometimes can kill the recipient, correct? Can you talk to us about that and about the importance of this breakthrough of the genetic modification of the animal heart?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean, you know, with the advancement of these immunosuppressive drugs, you know we are at a stage where, you know, the graft survival has extended beyond you know, years, right, and it is all because of these immunosuppressive drugs. But these immunosuppressive drugs that are currently used in human-to-human transplants, they don't discriminate between a good and a bad cell, so they are kind of like nuking the entire immune system, right? So in most cases and you are dependent on these drugs for your lifetime, once you receive an organ, and most of the time the toxicity of these drugs is the cause of, you know, the graft recipient's death versus the graft itself, sometimes the graft is still functioning very well, but you know the person who's the recipient, you know, kind of dies or become morbid because of the toxicity of these drugs.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned very humbly that about 30, 31 years of work went into, you know, getting to the point of the success the first successful pig to human heart transplant. What was that like when you finally, you know, were in that surgery and you know what led up to that? And then what was the follow-up to it too? My understanding is that the patient lived for some period of several months afterwards. Talk us through that whole process.
Speaker 2:So I mean, you know, honestly, throughout this period, although I believed in it, I thought, I think that this is a very valid option for these patients who are critically ill and have no other options. However, you know, I never believed that this would have happened in my lifetime. This would have happened in my lifetime. So you can imagine when we put the first big heart in a human and it started to beat and that person woke up. I cannot even describe that feeling right. I mean it's like your entire life's work coming to fruition right before your eyes. So I mean, you know that is totally. What happened afterwards is that you know these, the patients who who we were allowed to give these hearts to, we're at a stage that if we had not given them this heart, they would have died the next day. So, in fact, our second patient, his heart arrested twice even before the transplant and we had to resuscitate the heart and keep him alive until we were able to put this transplant in.
Speaker 2:As I mentioned earlier, I mean there is no alternate for those patients. There is a machine called ECMO that you use to hook to a tubing and that machine kind of acts as a pump to circulate the blood, which is the main function of the heart. But you cannot live on that machine forever. It's a heavy machine, you cannot carry it. So our first patient was on that system for almost 40 days. So he wasn't bedridden. He couldn't even go to his bathroom. So after the transplant his major wish was when I'd be able to walk to the bathroom right. So for two months he had not been able to go to the bathroom himself.
Speaker 2:So some of those were the small wins that we counted. I mean, if you think of as a lay person and say that, oh, this, your first patient lived for only 60 days, you know what have you achieved. I mean, you know that 60 days is nothing for us who are healthy, but for a person who you know, who doesn't know that he will be alive tomorrow, those 60 days means a lot, means a lot. And you know they were able to enjoy those 60 days, although they were sick, but they were able to, you know, bond better with their families and did a lot of unfinished business that they could have done from the hospital.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean you, essentially you had a 60x return on investment, so to speak. Right, that's tremendous.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know we never promised that to the patient because we didn't know Right. I mean, you know we have done hundreds, or in my case thousands, of experiments in animal models and we were confident that we would not see rejection on the table. This heart will beat and this patient will get up. But until we do that, you know we don't know right. You know that will happen. But when that happened, you know it made even a stronger believer out of me.
Speaker 1:And I know I'm sure there's definitely privacy concerns too but was the cause of death of that patient rejection of the heart? Eventually and it was just you were able to extend that much farther than you had originally anticipated, but eventually the body rejected it.
Speaker 2:So you know, as I mentioned, these patients were very, very sick. So the experiments we have done before that led to these two transplants were done in like healthy animals, right. So those animals were able to take a stronger immunosuppression and you know other manipulations. However, these patients were already so sick that we cannot. So we had a dilemma whether to save the patient or save the graft. So we had to create that save the patient or save the graft. So we had to create that a very delicate balance between the two.
Speaker 2:For that we had to reduce the immunosuppression, because that was kind of, you know, causing the patient to get even sicker, but that made the heart vulnerable to rejection also, and ultimately that's what happened, right. So we were fighting to maintain the adequate drug levels, which we could not because of the condition of the heart you know, he was getting infected and all that and in the end, you know, the rejection process took over, and in the first one we were not clear, but in the second one, definitely this is what happened. But once we evaluated and we are still evaluating all the specimens that we, these two heroes, with whom I call heroes, who devoted their life for the learning of science, right. I mean they themselves believe that they do not have a chance, but they wanted to go through this so we could learn and help others. So I mean because of their courage. You know we are still learning to date from the specimen that we have achieved from them.
Speaker 1:That's a fascinating perspective that you bring up the courage on the part of the recipient, right? I mean? Oftentimes we think about the groundbreaking efforts of the researchers, and that's certainly the case here, but the ethical considerations and almost the personal sacrifice, sacrifice, familial sacrifice, of someone saying I either have no days one day or x amount of days and I'm going to go through this. I obviously want to be around, to be with my family, but if not, it's this sacrifice for the, for the, the future research corpus moving forward that perhaps can change humanity. That's pretty, that's something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's totally. And you know, even after these patients have passed, their families have been equally supportive and have been, you know, spoke person for our cause, right, and because they don't want their loved one's sacrifice to go in vain, right. So they, whenever we ask them to come to our meeting and have them write and talk to any reporters or you know a group of people where we are kind of convincing them to, you know, consider this option. You know they have been very forthcoming in that help. They both have written their, you know their experience and we have published those experiences from their immediate families also.
Speaker 1:Now you mentioned that you never thought this would happen in your lifetime, and so it's kind of moved faster than you anticipated. Is the vision that eventually, the efficacy of these procedures will get to the point where they can be more routine and used with someone for whom there's a medical necessity, but they're perhaps not at such an end stage that their survival, no matter what happens, is in question?
Speaker 2:That's exactly the future, right? I mean, you know that's in an ideal world we would be able to. We would have enough organs, you know, available and sitting waiting to be transplanted that we don't have to wait for an end. Organ failure Means that you know when the heart comes to the stage where it requires transplantation, by that time, you know, since heart controls the blood flow to all the other organs, your other organs also start getting damaged and you know, in most of the cases there is multi-organ failure. So if we are able to prove that there is a heart which is from a young animal, like pig, that will not go through rejection. So a pig lifetime is about 20 years. So the pig that we use in these experiments were only one year old. So in an ideal world you have 19 years left in that heart, right. In an ideal world, you have 19 years left in that heart, right. So if you transplant and convince someone that, okay, this heart you know will work for 19 years, you have a 19-year warranty on this heart and you may not need a heart right now but in five years or 10 years you will need a heart. So would you do you want to go through the suffering of those 10 years, then get another heart, or do you want to get it now, right? So, so this is, this is way you know I'm talking not in my lifetime, probably, but who knows?
Speaker 2:You know, and then other major, major advantages that what we have not talked about is the genetic modifications of these organs, right? I mean, the technology we have available now was not available like a decade ago, right, decade ago, right. So with this technology, we can take out any, any antigen that is, you know, immunogenic to humans, that to which we react, and we can also add human genes to uh, to the construct and and and make a customized pig right. So so the future it is a possibility that you know, when you're born, your genes are taken out and you know, and a pig is made ready for you when you need it, and my understanding, too, is that the one of the benefits of the pig is that you can grow a heart fairly quickly.
Speaker 1:Right, it's not in what a year or so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so in a year the organ grows to a size of an adult human in terms of heart. You know, in heart it's very critical to match the size. But in other organs, like kidneys and livers, you don't even have to get to the the size. But in other organs, like kidneys and livers, you don't even have to, you know, get to the exact size. You know, in liver you can do a partial liver. Uh, you know. And and if in china there was a transplant done when, when there was a cancer in the liver, so they took the part of the liver that had the cancer, put a pig liver for a month. During that period, you know, liver has the tremendous potential of regeneration. The liver, the original liver, grew to a size that it can support life. Then you can. They took out the porcine liver and that way you know that they bridge the transplant through liver of a pig.
Speaker 1:I want to talk a little bit about both ethics, because I'm sure that those are parts of conversations that always come up for you, as well as what your critics say perhaps not your own personal critics, but critics just in general of the field. Right, what are some of the ethical considerations that you go through in your work? And then, what do critics say, people who would like this either this research to stop or to pause. Talk to us about the obstacles you've faced in those regards.
Speaker 2:So one of the major reasons that we picked pig was that you know it's been consumed for the dietary needs throughout the world, right? Almost about 90,000 pigs are slaughtered each day in United States for that purpose. So we thought that, you know, if we are using maybe 100 pigs a month for this purpose, you know it won't be a problem. But certainly you know there were people who were very critical of, you know, sacrificing a healthy animal for that purpose, although you know the meat is consumed in their meals. But so that was our major issue, that you know why, you know, sacrifice a healthy life to save a human life. I was even asked whether you will do the other way around. Would you give a pig your heart to save his life? Right? So I mean, you know people go to that extent also, and I've also been asked why is it important to save human life? Right, I mean, you know, if it's ending at a certain point, you know why should we even prolong it, right, you know? So I mean you know there are a lot of different opinions outside. My goal and the oath I have taken is to save life, right? So if, even if I save one life, I mean that is. You know it's important for me. So, so I kind of, you know, um, take that criticism, but, uh, but try to convince them. You know my goal is to save someone, you know who needs to be saved at, you know, and this is one of the ways I can save it.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm sure you will ask about, you know the religious restrictions right. So you know, growing up you must have read that. You know my father used to. You know, politely, tell me, you know, could you find something else, could you find another? And still, you know I go to different countries where people ask you know why pig and why cannot you do it? Take a cow's heart? Or you know, a camel's heart or some other species heart, a camel's heart or some other species heart? So I mean, that has always been a you know a question and still is. However, you know you'll be surprised to know that now the awareness is growing.
Speaker 2:So even in UAE, you know, there is a verdict that because in a lot of Muslim countries, you know, the taking organs after brain death is not allowed because they think that you are mutilating the body Right countries there is, they are thinking that you know if you can have an organ from another species and not mutilating the donor, the human donor, then maybe that is a better way to go. And also it's also, you know, in UAE they have always issued a fatwa, that you know, if you have an option that you can use to save a life and you're not using it, you're making a bigger sale, right. So I mean, you know there are different aspects, so the same thing with. So I'm president of International Genotransplant Association. My effort has been to gather all these opinions from different religions. So we have gathered, you know, all the leaders of different religions together in one room and ask their opinion and in the end, the common consensus is that to save a human life take precedence over anything else.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting, you can imagine a Buddhist as well, right, yeah, yeah, so vegetarian and do no harm. And it brings that ethical question of by you not following through on the Hippocratic oath, then essentially you're doing harm.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So that's, I think, the basis of you know why it's getting popular in some of the Middle Eastern countries. I mean, it's not done yet, but they're interested in it.
Speaker 1:So, and as you were speaking and when you made this comment that you might not see it in your lifetime, it, almost just as a side thought it, it reminds me of, you know, one of these great masterpieces of history. Or we look at the Sistine Chapel, or we look at these great constructions that span multiple lifetimes and you think about architects who designed them, or you think about master builders or master painters who worked on them and they knew that they would not live long enough to see the finished product. But you're contributing to something that is greater than yourself and greater than your own lifetime yeah, I mean not only me, I mean these patients also.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, who do you know, I don't make a big case of what I have done. I kind of, you know, appreciate the effort of these patients. If these patients would not have said yes to this procedure, you know, nothing would have happened, right? So so they took the courage, so so. So I mean, you know, they're our two patients. I will never forget them for the rest of my life, right, and I don't think history will forget those patients because of their sacrifice, right. So they may forget what I have done, but those people were the real pioneers in starting this thing.
Speaker 1:Who pays for such procedures? Are these grant funded? Talk to us about that.
Speaker 2:So this is a very difficult and expensive process, right? So, just to give you an example, even when I do an animal research like put a pig heart in a baboon, it costs about $500,000, right? So, when we did this human transplants, they cost about $1.5 million for 60 days. So it's a very expensive process at this time. And there are several companies who are generating these pigs have interest in producing these pigs in masses and and to overcome this shortage of organs. Right so they have invested a lot in these experiments. And also, our first transplant was paid by our university and the hospital. The second one was paid by our sponsor who produces the pigs. Similarly, the people who have done kidneys they got funding from their sponsors who are making these pigs, because these pigs are basically considered a drug by the FDA. We are producing this drug to save a human life.
Speaker 1:And I'd imagine at some point there's also government funding, right, Depending on, I'd imagine and you mentioned an international association that you're the president of. So I'd imagine, like in the case of China, that was probably state funding in that case, and so is there kind of a patchwork of state private funding for all of these efforts.
Speaker 2:So I do. I do have NIH grants that supported, and when I was at NIH for 13 years, it was all government, federal government funding that helped you know the progress of this field. However, you know, as we know, the medical system here is totally dependent on insurance, and you'll be surprised to know that our first patient had a clause in his insurance that knows, you know, transplantation can be done. So these guys think way ahead of us, right?
Speaker 1:As you were talking about the cost, I flashed on my own insurance and my HMO plan and I'm trying to get something approved that's out of network, something small. That's out of network, something small.
Speaker 2:I thought imagine the Herculean effort to try to find the backing for something like this. Yeah, so I mean, but you know the advantage of. You know a lot of insurance companies spend a lot of money in preventive measures, right? So if they can spend some money on preventive measures so they can avoid spending a lot of money in preventive measures, right? So if they can spend some money on preventive measures so they can avoid spending a lot if the disease occurs or you know they want you to control your blood pressure and you know diabetes, so that you don't get to the stage where your organs need to be replaced, or you know other treatments needs to be done. Similarly, if you have a pig where you can take about seven different organs from that pig and save seven different lives, the cost will drastically come down. At least my hope is that it will replace allotransplantation, although initially you know everyone will prefer a human organ versus a non-human organ. But if you are able to convince them that this non-human organ is a better replacement than an organ from someone who has scarring diseases or, you know, is older and we don't know how this organ will function, that things will change and you know the insurance company will see it as a you know.
Speaker 2:So a lot of companies ask me you know, when will you be able to do?
Speaker 2:Like a thousand transplants a year? So I don't usually give them timeline, but that's a real possibility, right? I mean, you know, like I said, that if you can offer a transplant at an earlier time point of the disease, you can definitely, you know, do more transplant than even required, more than the people who are on the waiting list. So you know, that way a lot of these organs will be consumed, and the advantage is that if you have like 20 years of life in this organ, you can, after 20 years, give exactly the same organ again, really. So I mean, you know that can keep going, right. So, and then you know, customizing that organ for yourself will also help you either reduce the immune suppression or and my goal is to completely avoid the immune suppression you, you, you modify the genetics to an extent that you know you don't, your, your, your organ will behave just like your original organ and will, and your immune system will look at it as its own and will not attack it.
Speaker 1:It's fascinating to think about how we create mental constructs around ideas, right? So, for example, my daughter had jaw surgery and they placed some essentially a cadaver bone and then eventually her body absorbed it. And the one you know school of thought would say, oh, I don't want to quote, unquote dead person's bone in my jaw, but biologically that's not even an issue, right, the body absorbs it and it helped my daughter with her surgery. So we passed that, and I'm sure there's been thousands and thousands of those surgeries that happen every day around the country, and it's not a big deal. Maybe 50 years ago people would have thought that was some sort of an abomination, and so do you think in 100 years from now we'll be at a place where this is fairly commonplace?
Speaker 2:I hope so I mean, you know that's what we believe in, that you know that, you know we. You know the technique of gene modification is continuously evolving and you know we should be able to, you know, completely change the genetics of a pig and make it more what you call humanized and in that way avoid the immunosuppression completely or induce some kind of tolerance. There are ways, you know, I have been working on and others have been working on, to teach your immune system to recognize something that you're placing in your body as not foreign and self, so that if we are able to teach the immune system and immune system is, you know, you can teach it. And if you are able to do that, then again you don't need all these gene modifications. Your immune system will learn to recognize that these foreign antigens as their own and will not attack them. So that's also, you know, one way of you know, overcoming and avoiding the drugs. You may need some drugs for initial period of time. Then you can slowly withdraw them and you know, have the patient without drugs A lot of, as you mentioned, as I mentioned to you, that a lot of toxicities of these drugs cause the premature death of the patients.
Speaker 2:However, sometimes, you know, compliance is also an issue. You know if you have to take a fistful of medicine every single day. You know at one time you feel, and if you feel that, oh, everything is working fine, sometimes you tend to ignore and say that, oh, I'm fine. So we have found a lot of cases where people have stopped taking drugs just because they think that they're doing fine, whereas their organs were slowly deteriorating.
Speaker 1:So they'll stop taking the drugs. And then Rejection will happen, rejection will happen. Yeah, wow, you mentioned that you have mentees. Now, you've been doing this for a long time. Now you've been doing this for a long time. When you speak to the next generation of physician scientists perhaps even those from international backgrounds, underrepresented backgrounds what do you tell them about persistence and purpose and determination, because, I mean, it's so humbling to think about. You talked about this moment in which your entire career was distilled down to one heartbeat.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's astounding. What do you tell the next generation? No, I mean I, you know I could have chosen the lifestyle of a cardiac surgeon and would have been, you know, very well off, much better off. You know, must be doing much better than what I'm doing now. My family would have been, you know, my kids would have been loan free and all that.
Speaker 2:But, but again, you know you have to, you have to understand that you know there's a, there has to be a purpose in your life, right? I mean, you know, if you want to do something, that that you are remembered afterwards also, or during your life also, you know you have to find a niche where, where you can make a difference. So this is what I teach my student that don't be a follower, try to find your thing. That's a little different. So when they come to my lab or my program, I said I'm open to your suggestions because I'm not only here to teach you. I'm open to your suggestions because I'm not only here to teach you, I'm here to learn from you. You may come up with an idea that I've never thought of, right? So, and then, when they bring those ideas and if they convince me that those are good ideas. I try to encourage them to pursue those ideas. Some of them get exhausted and give up. Some of them have taken it farther. I mean, these days a lot of people try to do get an idea, invent something, get a patent and then sell it to a bigger company. This is a common trend now, even in medicine now. But for science to progress, your mind needs to continuously keep thinking. And I also teach them to be, you know, receptive to criticism. You know because a lot.
Speaker 2:I give you an example you know, when I first came here in this country we had the CD drive, right. So we and we were using the CD drive and I thought of, and I talked to my fellow resident, I mean it would be great if we can rewrite these CD drives. He said are you going crazy? You don't know what goes on. You know there's a tiny needle who makes grooves on this CD and they cannot be erased.
Speaker 2:And in a few years we had rewritable CD drives. So I mean you know, and in a few years we had rewritable CD drives. So I mean you know nothing is impossible, right? I mean you know, and sometimes our mind cannot comprehend. When I started telling people that. You know I want to put a pig heart in human. They said you're crazy, right, but so you have to be open to these new ideas. So this is my. You know what I can give back. I mean, in particular, the reason I accepted this interview was because you are focusing on our young generation, because they are the ones who are the flag barriers, right? We need to give them motivation to keep thinking.
Speaker 1:It's the power of persistence, plus creativity, creativity, creativity right.
Speaker 2:I mean we have tremendous amount of creativity among young ones, you know, I mean my kid can do things that I could have never imagined, right. So, but somebody have to nurture that creativity, and you know, and push them forward and support them and that's the way to progress.
Speaker 1:Do you use AI in your research at any?
Speaker 2:Not yet, but slowly, we are kind, are kind of, you know, incorporating. There's no, no way out, uh, from that, um, at this moment. Uh, but, uh, but we'll, we'll see. I mean, you know, still it's an evolving field, um, we only are looking at the benefits of it. We don't know, uh, what harm it can do, and you know so. I mean, you know, in our transplant field it has not caused a huge impact. But in patient selection and, you know, identifying disease, population and all that, you know, ai is a huge help.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just even. Yeah, analyzing large data sets, right, Right, Coming up with patterns. Well, you've been exceedingly generous with your time and I really wanted to once again thank you and honor you for that and for your work and your humility. Is there anything that we have not touched on today that you were hoping we were going to talk about?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean all this research. I mean this is a very critical period of time because, as you know, the funding for science is under a big you know it's not there. You know it's not there, it's very difficult to get, you know. So I mean, through this, I want to let other people know that you know, keep investing in science because this is the future and you know, we can still make good progress, still make good progress and we cannot just, you know, stop doing science and support, you know, even if it's a smaller project of science, just support it.
Speaker 1:Well, I really thank you for your time and for your story. It was inspired when I read about you and your work and also very grateful that you took this time and agreed to come on my pleasure, and I will definitely be sharing this with young people and with our science teachers, because a lot of what they teach has to do with ethics. It's not just formulas and analyses, but really what the impact of that is in the real world and in real life. So and your work encapsulates that perfectly Thank you. So. Thank you so much for for your time. Thanks for joining us on the Hangout podcast. You can send us an email at podcastinfo at protonme. Many thanks to my daughter, maya, for editing this episode. I'd also like to underline that this podcast is entirely separate from my day job and, as such, all opinions expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thanks for coming on in and hanging out.
