Latest / Lab to Lives / Revolutionizing Dentistry: AI and Research Innovation with Dr. Shervin Molayem

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Revolutionizing Dentistry: AI and Research Innovation with Dr. Shervin Molayem · Lab to Lives

• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Transformation in Trials.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, ivana Rosendahl.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: In this podcast, we explore how clinical trials are currently transforming so we can identify trends that can be further accelerated.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: We want to ensure that no patient has to wait for treatment and we get drugs to them as quickly as possible.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Transformation in Trials.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Today, we're going to focus on the topic of discovering how diseases work, and in the studio with me I have Dr Swervum.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Well, I am.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: I'm very excited to talk to you today.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Our pre-call was just awesome and full of a lot of energy, but for our listeners, could you tell a little bit more about yourself?
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Yes, well, thanks for everyone for listening.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: So today is going to be a really cool day where we're going to talk about research, but within dentistry and kind of what's on the landscape of what's going on, we're going to talk about some AI trials.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: You know disease and a little bit about you, bit about the medical and dental connection.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: So I'm a periodontist by trade.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: I've done some research, I've been innovating in the field for the past.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: I've been really gotten into it in the past five years, and it really started with COVID.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, the whole world stopped on.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Really, one or two weeks Dentists were being told to stay home and I really was, you know, out of.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: In a way, for a couple months I was out of a job.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: So what did I do?
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: I was reading all the COVID news.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: I was doing research, I was trying to figure out what this was.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Am I at harm?
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Are my patients, my family, people that are asking me questions?
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: And I didn't know the answers about what is this?
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: It's a virus, it's a respiratory, you know people are, you know, on ventilators and you know.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: So that's kind of where it started.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Now, the doctors that went to medical school.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: They were focusing on, you know the strokes that were happening and the lungs, and the dentists were like, oh no, this is way too far out of my scope.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: So, as a periodontist, you know we're dealing with the gums.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: There's blood vessels in the gums.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: We deal with the overall, you know, structures of the of the bone and and that connection right, cause there's a link between heart attacks and strokes and diabetes and Alzheimer's the bacteria and viruses that come in the mouth are spreading.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: And so I said this is exactly where I can come into play and put it together, link them together.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: So, after doing research, I actually came and I saw this one research article that was showing that every time the interleukin-6 cytokine it's a bad inflammatory protein, whenever that went above a certain threshold, literally the graph was like you're not on a ventilator, past that line, you're on a ventilator.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: I'm like what?
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: How come people aren't talking about that?
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: And there was maybe one outlier here, one outlier here, but that was, and the article was called you know your interleukin-6 levels are a predictor for being on a ventilator.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Okay, well, interleukin-6, I see that all the time in dentistry that's being released into the bloodstream when you have periodontal disease and people that have periodontal disease have a higher IL-6 level.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: So we wrote a paper called the Mouth COVID Connection that was published in the California Dental Organization Journal, which turned out to be the most read dental article of 2020 in the world.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: And what we found?
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: That it was a hypothesis, right, because we didn't have time to do it, you know, an actual trial.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: But that's what we needed.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: And people were like no, that's a hypothesis, that's a theory.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: My, you know, former professors at my residency were like what's this guy trying to do?
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: What is he saying?
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Residency.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: We're like what's this guy trying to do?
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: What is he saying, you know?
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: And the students came and told me that I'm like, I'm like just wait.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: And you know, it's okay, it's okay to have a hypothesis, it's okay to talk about it, it's okay to take a risk, right, because they don't a lot of people don't.
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: You have to.
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: Where does the scientific method start?
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Starts with the hypothesis.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: If you don't do do the hypothesis, you can't go through the whole line.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: Um, so the the, once it was published, got a lot of traction and research was being done, and we found out that later on, it became a thing where it was shown that people that had higher il6 levels and had higher gum disease levels, were getting more severe COVID and like an eight times higher chance of dying and being on a ventilator Something ridiculous.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: So we then got reached out by a radiologist from England and we went through and figured out the pathway of how COVID is coming into the body, and it was through the gums, through the bloodstream, not through the airway.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: That was what everyone thought at the time.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, everyone thought it's going down, you know, stop smoking, it's going here, you know.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: But actually, covid, it turned out it's a blood disease and it's coming into the bloodstream and immediately coming into the blood vessels of the gums and then down the jugular veins and through the pulmonary arteries and then into the lungs through the arteries.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I realized you know how powerful this could be, you know how much of a change one person could make, and I really started to get it more into the holistic side of dentistry how everything connects to the body, focusing on vitamins and supplements, and how that affects the oral health, diet, airway, so many different parts that are outside of the mouth that affect the whole body, and how that airway, for example, is tied to sleep and if you mouth breathe, then you have dry mouth and then you get more disease in the mouth.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Breathe, then you have dry mouth and then you get more disease in the mouth.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: So then I got into, more recently, artificial intelligence.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: That's probably one of the most important things that's happening right now in the world as far as science, medicine and technology, and with artificial intelligence we have more efficiency.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Dentists are smarter speed, we're able to pick up on correlations, so data is really important.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: Data can be analyzed quickly.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: For example, an x-ray can get analyzed by AI to find pathology and it picks up 37% more pathology, because the eye sees only 30 something shades of gray, but an AI will see 250 shades of gray.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: So we can get more accurate diagnosis detection diagnosis and then be able to treatment plan better diagnosis, detection diagnosis and then be able to treatment plan better.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: Um, and also, for example, with mobility.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: Right now it's very subjective a tooth that's moving.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Right now we eyeball it and we say I think it's plus one mobility, plus two mobility or plus three mobility.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: We're gonna, in a hundred years, look at that and say what, how primitive that was.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because now, because of ai, there's a machine.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: You put something you hold right on a tooth.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: It sends some sound waves.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: It'll give you a number from like zero to a hundred, exactly the mobility.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: So what is that going to do?
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: It's going to affect research.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's going to affect research, because now we're going to know if things are stabilized, if that too is stabilizing actually or not, and how much is doing it.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Then we suddenly we can have some clinical endpoints for that.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm curious.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: You have actually discovered something.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: That's a hypothesis that turned out to be true.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: How would you say the state of research is in the dental side of things in general?
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: Is there a lot of curiosity, or are we kind of this is a we have a lot of things that work.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: Definitely a lot of curiosity.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: We are seeing more research, definitely, but the research we're seeing are very specific into one sector and always delayed.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: It's slower than medicine and dentistry.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: So you know there's a study that shows that when a research comes out, there's actually a 17-year delay until it becomes a mainstream thing in clinical practice.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, 17 years, 17 years.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: And there's also something I was reading recently that the amount of research that's coming out is doubling.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: It doubles.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: The doubling rate is exponential.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: Where it used to take maybe 20 years to double, you know from the 1950s, now it's doubling.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: The amount of research is doubling every three years and that is attributed to, you know, the AI and some of the technologies.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Things are moving more quickly more funding, more.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: I think studies have just gotten smarter.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so with all that knowledge, dentists still don't have time to read it, right?
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: So what's the point of having all of this research if people cannot have the time to actually read it?
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they will never make it to practice Until now.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they will never make it to practice, never Until now yeah.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: So last year I wrote a patent on a process where we're taking AI and we're creating a chat.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: It's called Trust AI and the chat.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: You could ask it any question dental related and I'll give you an answer.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: And it's a co-pilot, so, just like ChatGPT, you have a conversation with it back and forth and you could ask it.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Well, give me the citation, email me that article and then you'll have it, or it'll pull up a YouTube video on something that you're trying to do.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: So we're bridging the gap between that 17-year research that it takes to get into clinical practice, that 17 year research that it takes to get into clinical practice.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: It should now be able to get right away to the average dentist in their office, in their hand or on desktop.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: So that's the.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: That's where the future is.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: We're going to bring this closer together.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: And dental school is expensive.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: People are coming out of dental school with anywhere from $500,000 to you know six, with anywhere from $500,000 to you know $600,000, $700,000 in debt.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: It's the most expensive post-grad education, and so people don't have, you know, the money when they come out to further their education because they've already done so much.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: They feel it's four years, I spent all this money, and so we're also democratizing expert and specialty information to have right away.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: So education is going to change.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Research is going to be more integrated and personalized to their actual case.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: So I'll give you an example what do we need to make an educated you know diagnosis and treatment plan in dentistry?
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: Well, the patient comes in, they get x-rays taken, they maybe get a cone beam CT scan which is 3D.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: So now you have a 2D x-ray, a 3D x-ray, some clinical photos, some periodontal charting, which is checking the number of millimeters of depth underneath the gums you know, five or more is not good and maybe a couple of other parameters.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: And right now the dentist is using their eyes, their education to try to put it together and their experience, of course.
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: And now an AI could do that right.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: An AI when it's trained on thousands of cases, maybe hundreds of root canal specialists, hundreds of periodontists.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: You know all of these different, you know researches that are in there, and so it's taking actual cases.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: So it's not just like random, it's your particular case analyzed, diagnosis and treatment plan recommendations, and it's not 100%, because nothing in life is 100%.
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: We have scores which give a level of confidence and it's called a trust score.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: So in general the trust should be about 85% or higher.
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: Think of it like a kind of like a p?
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: P value.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: You know, in a way, it's, it's, it's.
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: You know how much you could trust that, based on this AI's study.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: So we're able to give a score out of a hundred on how confident it is.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: Now a dentist could look at that and be like you know what AI?
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: Thank you, I appreciate your recommendation, but you're only 60% on this.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: I'll do with that.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: Thank you for that.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: I'll maybe do something else, but you know, wow, your confidence level on this one is 95.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Okay, I will lean in and you know, trust that a little bit more and ask questions about it.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: So you can ask you know, why are you recommending this tooth to be extracted?
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: How confident are you why?
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: And then they'll give you the why.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: And I think that's very powerful.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: Could you predict?
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: So it has memory, so between appointments.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: So let's say you've seen this patient five years now and you're following this tooth.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: That's kind of been not so good and it knows this rate of bone loss.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: It knows its rate of mobility.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: It maybe lost a tooth next to it, so this one's now taking more force.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: It maybe lost a tooth next to it, so this one's now taking more force.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: It could tie all this together and say you know what?
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: This tooth may have five more years left at the rate it's going.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: You know, let's make a, you know a decision.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: Let's not maybe spend this $2,000 procedure to try to fix it when you can take it out and put an implant for $3,000 and be done with it for 20 years or so or more.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: So that's the kind of power we're going to have with this technology.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: That is interesting and also it seems like you have this very clear vision of where dentistry is going right now.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: I'm curious what has contributed for you to transition from being um like, a uh like in the clinic yourself to kind of trying to change the whole industry?
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: I think we're.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: We all strive to have a ripple in this world of some sort.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: Uh, I think we are one of the goals of of people I mean myself.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: I think it's a kind of ubiquitous type of feeling that you want to scale your impact right.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: So when you're in an office, you can help your community, but when you can think of something that has a global impact, you can really help the whole world or your country, and I think that's what I kind of strive for.
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: I want to scale my impact at this part of my career.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: But also, like in the initial example we talked about, where you saw wait a minute minute, it seems like there may be a connection between these two seemingly unrelated things, like perhaps other people have also noticed that connection, but they just kind of went huh yeah, so what's?
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: good question I love.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: I need to do something about that I love, I, I wanna.
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: What a great question.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: So I think it's curiosity, I think it's risk-taking.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: You have to be able to be wrong.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: Okay, it's okay to be wrong, it's not.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: It's not a problem, it's okay.
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: In fact, part of research in clinical trials by being wrong, you're ruling out something and you're getting closer to the correct answer.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: So I'm not afraid to fail and that's why I feel it's actually a strength that that that makes a lot of sense and also, I think, where we are with ai right now, which is a very exciting time, but a lot of the things that we're currently trying, some of them are going to fail and we're going to learn that.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Well, this was this needs to be corrected in this way, or perhaps this was a useless completely, and we need to do something very different, and it does require that willingness to see it fail without losing hope in that we can get it right eventually.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you have to think of.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: You know the Elon Musk story, or you know some of these people who've really changed the world.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Their story is all about taking risks and failing or almost failing, and trying their hardest and connecting the dots, not being too overconfident but being confident, rallying up a team and being a leader, um, motivating people around you to help you.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: No one's doing anything alone, um, at least anything big and great.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: So I think you, you definitely need a team, and that team needs to be, uh, smarter than you, hopefully, which is always helpful, uh, and they should also compliment you.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: So if you are a good, if you're an idea person, then you want a good action person and where you know you need someone to execute and be a technology person or the scientist.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: I tend myself to be, uh, more of the idea person, um, and the process and you know the big picture and uh.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: And then I find you know other people who are really good at executing, um, whether you know, they're usually like PhDs.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: One of them, when I did with COVID, her name was Dr Carla Pontes.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: She's a PhD in South Africa.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: The one I'm working with right now is in the AI is Dr Bernard Kass.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: He's a PhD in physics and this is his third AI company, with Oral Biolife, which is a periodontal regeneration company.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: Dr Stella Vinuk, which I'll talk about right now as well, she's a visionary in pharma and something I didn't know, which is interesting for your viewers.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: I asked her.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: So this is Oral BioLife is the name of the company, and I'm their chief dental officer, and what they are doing is basically found a way, a new modality in technology, to grow bone around teeth.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Okay, that is non-surgical.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: Okay, so a hygiene, a hygienist, can do it.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Okay, now you don't even need a dentist, a dental hygienist.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: After a deep cleaning, the gum is a little bit loose around the tooth and you put this gel that have these nano ceramic particles and when you shine that blue light that all dentists have, it hardens and activates and then, throughout that month, it causes this vibration every time they chew and speak, and movement, which causes a piezoelectric effect Piezo meaning pressure, and what happens with this piezoelectric effect, which is similar to this energy that's released when you're starting your barbecue the starter, when you push that button, it has a spark.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: So that's what's happening underneath the gum.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: Now two things happen.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, seriously, that's a good one.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: So two things happen.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: One, that electricity type of energy underneath there is causing the bacteria to die, so it's a bactericidal effect.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: So now throughout this month it's very clean.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: Two, pressure what it does to bone is it causes the stem cells in the area, what we call the mesenchymal stem cells, to differentiate into osteoblasts, which are the bone building cells, and the osteoblasts, throughout that month, start laying down bone.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: Now we've done trials in rats and canine and we're seeing bone growth in areas that you cannot even get done with surgery.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: So when I do surgery around really complex bone loss teeth that are a little bit shaky, what this does is it is able to and you could do two different phases.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: You do have the patient come back after the second time after a month, put it again and get a little bit more.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: So we're seeing, with two applications, some bone filling in.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: Mainly it's powerful in between the roots.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: So when you have a molar and the molar has supposed to have bone all around it and the bone goes down, it opens up what's called the furcation.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: It's where the roots bifurcate and that area.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: The reason that we can't grow bone very well and predictably is because there's no blood supply.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: It's like a cave and the the roots blocking.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: So bacteria love to live there because they're protected.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: Even if you take antibiotics, the blood doesn't even reach there to take the antibiotics.
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Yes, right.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: So, but if you numb it really well and clean it, and now you have the space, you clean it all out, you have a space, and then you lay down that gel, it starts forming bone and we're seeing, you know, again, we're we're starting human trials, uh, this year.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: So we're going to be able to, yeah, so we're going to be able to.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: You know this, this is going to be, I think, a game changer, because it's not only doing something very useful for humanity, it's also simple and cheap.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: That is an amazing combination and, using existing technology that is available to most dentists and dental technicians.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: Exactly yeah.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: Well, very excited about that.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: Do you know any details on the trials that are starting up for this?
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: Are they US only?
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Are they worldwide?
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're doing it in US right now.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: We're working with an incredible team.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: Our chief education officer is Dr Edward Zuckerberg, who's Mark Zuckerberg's father.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: He's a dentist, he's a visionary and a great person that's been helping and guiding, and being able to get this information out is going to be very important because the speed again, just going back to the medical and dental integration, just going back to the medical and dental integration, when we're talking about dentistry now we're also talking about medicine, because when that gap is filled with bone, bacteria doesn't live there and that cause, that bacteria goes into the bloodstream and what and it indirectly, is going in the bone has pores.
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: It's porous, just like wood, and inside those pores are little arterioles which are little blood vessels.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: So bacteria they release toxins that cause inflammation locally and then the cascade of IL-6 and all of these other bad inflammatory proteins.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: This travels throughout the body and they're linked to a two to three times higher chance of heart attack and stroke.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: There are certain bacteria that are traveling and can cross the blood-brain barrier, called P gingivalis.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: It's linked to Alzheimer's and dementia, linked to cancers, and not just regular cancers, the most aggressive cancers.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: So we're, you know, being able to fill in the bone, in between the roots, and grow the bone back, we're going to be able to help people hopefully live longer and healthier lives.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: That is amazing.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: Very excited about this whole development.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: No-transcript.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: I'm not as familiar with that.
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: We have a whole scientific team that's dealing with the trials.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: But I do know that, as we spoke earlier, there is a new company coming out that will have clinical trials on a blockchain.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: So patients let's say you're looking for a particular patient that is a non-smoker, no diabetes, or if you want diabetes, you'll have a database.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: Or if you want diabetes or you'll have a database how they behaved in previous trials and if they're available for your trial.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: So I think that's going to be key to matching up patients through trials.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: I think that's going to be a big innovation and being on a blockchain, it's going to provide it'll be more fraud proof.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: It's going to provide it'll be more fraud proof.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: So everything's verified and the data once it's released by the research, they won't be able to change it to skew the research, because there are some studies I've seen you know Dr John Ioannidis from Stanford studies.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: I've seen you know Dr John Ioannidis from Stanford.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: He's the most published person in really the United States, perhaps the world, john Ioannidis and one of the things he's shown in his research is that there is a huge correlation between company funded research and a positive correlation and a positive result.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: Okay, so interesting and yeah, and I have to look at the exact numbers but it's not even close, you know.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: So there's definitely biases and it makes sense If, if, if you, if you're funding for your company to try to get it on into market, somehow, it's going to be more positive.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: That's going to be affecting, uh, you know, uh, the results, the results.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Someone else now looks at that study and they quote it, and so, all of a sudden, research can go in another direction for many years and it can be the wrong direction, which is what happened with Alzheimer's research.
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: That's a nice cliffhanger.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: What happened with Alzheimer's research?
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: So there was a study a while back that was showing that the amyloid proteins were, like, the main cause, like, if you like, that's the cause of it, but of Alzheimer's.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: But you know, they're saying maybe now it could be a result of it.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: You know so what is the cause of it, right, saying maybe now it could be a result of it.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: You know so what is the cause of it, right?
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: So the cause of it is more of this inflammation, uh, linked to, uh, you know, just inflammation in the body, some people calling diet, alzheimer's, diabetes, type 3, so, um, this, you know, metabolic disorder and imbalance, you know, in sugar and then that causing it.
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: And some people now are talking about certain bacteria that are found in the body, also the mouth that I mentioned, P gingivalis and others that can cross the blood-brain barrier.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: So we still don't know 100%.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: It could be multifactorial, but we know that it's this inflammation that's causing the neurons and this neurodegeneration that's happening.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: Very interesting, yeah, but it got derailed.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: But someone published it.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: Someone you know, or cholesterol you know, has gotten it.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: Someone you know, or you know, or or cholesterol you know has gotten a bad rap.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: You know, um, you know.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: And in the cholesterol studies, the ones that are quoted, they're quoted by the makers of the statins, right, so, um and and uh.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: So in their studies they're talking about absolute versus relative risk reduction and they play statistics games showing look how much better If you take this statin, we could lower your risk of a stroke by 33%.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: That's the advertisement.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: But if you look at the overall study, compared to if you didn't take it, it might be only a 2%.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: So, but what are the risks and side effects of taking it?
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: Muscle degeneration and you become higher chance of getting pre-diabetic and then now entering into diabetes and then going down, you know.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: So, again, some people are calling this, you know, statins being overused, overprescribed, and I see it with my patients almost everyone's on a statin these days.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: And do they really need to?
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: Because cholesterol is actually an important thing for the body.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: You know our cells, our cell walls are made of cholesterol yeah um our brains.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: the myelin sheaths are made of cholesterol.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: You know the precursors, so, and it's also a precursor to vitamin D, which is one of the most important vitamins.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: So for 2%, is it worth it to be taking it chronically for years and then possibly having this other things.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: you know negative aspects happening, so yeah, and that that raises the question If, if we do have this AI based co-pilot who helps us understand medical research, could that help us avoid some of this bias?
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: Can we train them in a way that they can also help with this problem, or would they just propagate what is already known?
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's a good point.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: It could I'm not going to say it will.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: It could help, right, because it depends on who's training that AI and which bias they have.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: So everyone has a bias right Even not to have a bias is a bias in a way.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, it's more about transparency, about the bias.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: And so I think once they figure that out and they can control these studies better, and the closer we get to truth, the better.
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: That's really what we're, what we're looking for as a theme for healthcare, for clinical trials, for life.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: Right, we want to.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: We want the truth and we're starting to see more truth come out.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: You know there is a shift in the world towards more truth.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: I think, after you know, decades of you know, you know.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: You know, for example, you know processed foods, you know seed oils, you know all of these things.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: And then you look at what's, what are the outcomes?
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: What are we seeing in our society?
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: We're seeing, especially in america, we're seeing higher cancer rates.
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: Now, it could come from a lot of you know factors.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: It could be, you know, the air, the environment, the water, some I don't know could be a lot of things.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: But you know we have to study the what works, which countries, which cities, why, what are they doing correctly?
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: And and use that as a model for you know, for our lives.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: And and processed foods, seed oils, the highly inflammatory you know.
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: And and omega-6s, which is the opposite of omega-3.
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: Omega-3 is very anti-inflammatory.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: Omega-6 fatty acid goes down the arachidonic acid pathway, which is very inflammatory and that can cause problems, and then what we call chronic disease, because we have a chronic disease epidemic in this country Every year.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: We have a higher amount.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: Technology keeps getting better.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: Chronic disease keeps getting higher.
• 35:53
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: Why is that?
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: Medicine gets better, so I don't know.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: We have to get to the bottom of that.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's been a very inspiring conversation.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: Um, I do.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: I want to ask you one more question before we start rounding off, and I always ask my guests the same question if I gave you the transformation and trials magic ones that can change one thing in our industry and here you can pick if it's life sciences or if it's like the broader dental industry too, what would you wish to change?
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: one thing I would love to change is to make science fraud proof that's a great.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: If you remove any.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: You know why are we removing outliers?
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: You know, in studies, why are we?
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: Just let it be, let it be.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: Let us make the decision.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: Let us see the exact data that was done, not what you're giving us the decision.
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: Let us see the exact data that was done, not what you're giving us.
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: That's how we will accelerate extremely quickly and get better as a society and healthier as a society.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: I endorse that wish wholeheartedly.
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: That would be awesome Truth.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: Let's find that yes.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Well, Dr Sherwin, if any of my listeners want to get in touch with you or learn more about you, where can they find more information?
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: So they can reach me on social media, so on LinkedIn under Dr Shervin Malayam, Instagram under Dental Surgeon just one word, and my email address is shirvin.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: At trustdentistryai we have a free chat bot so they can go in and basically also via WhatsApp as a contact they could ask any dental question they want and I can give them an answer.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: Any that is truly amazing.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah Well, thank you so much for speaking to me today it's been a pleasure.
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: It's been a pleasure on my end as well.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much, iman, for having me you're listening to transformation in trials.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: If you have a suggestion for a guest for our show, reach out to Sam Parnell or Ivana Rosendahl on LinkedIn.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: You can find more episodes on Apple Podcasts, spotify, google Podcasts or in any other player.
• 38:34
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