CBF Dialogues 001: Ruslan Medzhitov

The dialogue (also timestamped for convenience) covers topics including: Why is the level between cells and tissues poorly understood? What are the implications for drug design, funding, and teaching? Is there a meaningful difference between structure and organization? What motivates this new way of thinking? 00:54 Why is the level between cells and tissues poorly understood? 2:24 Technological or conceptual hurdle? 2:41 Technological hurdles 4:04 Conceptual hurdles 5:42 Can existing biology concepts apply to the "in-between" level? 7:34 How this gap blocks progress in immunology and cancer 7:51 This gap creates a bottleneck in cancer treatments 10:29 Implications for drug design, funding and teaching 11:04 Limited understanding of tissue-level disease causes 12:24 Are diseases fundamentally molecular? 13:04 Tissue-level diseases: Type II diabetes and fibrosis 17:02 Many are affected by tissue-level diseases 17:34 Translational research 18:47 Significance of collaboration between labs 20:04 Open-mindedness and collaboration in academia 23:19 Academia and industry partnerships 24:12 Aligning motivations across academia and industry 26:30 Structure vs. organization: meaningful difference? 29:19 Mechanical forces and tissue organization 31:59 Biological organization is often overlooked 33:54 Self-organization vs. feedback loops 37:29 How to change intro biology curriculum 38:54 Motivation for a new way of thinking