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You're sitting in the doctor's office waiting for test results.
你坐在医生办公室等待测试结果。
She comes in and says, "You have Parkinson's disease."
她进来说，“你有帕金森氏综合症。”
Your heart sinks, and you think about everything that will go wrong: you'll be unable to walk, unable to feed yourself, your hands trembling, drooling, unable to swallow.
你心里一沉，想到了将要变糟的所有事情：你不能走路，不能自己吃饭，你的手颤颤巍巍，流着口水，无法吞咽。
But before you say anything, she says, "Not to worry, we'll put in an order for your cells today."
但在你开口前，她说，“不要担心，我们今天就订购你的细胞。”
You come back a week later, and a surgeon transplants brand new neurons into your brain.
你一周之后回来，外科医生将全新的神经元移植到你的大脑中。
You just received an on-demand functional cure for Parkinson's, made from your cells.
你刚刚接受了一个帕金森的按需功能治疗，取自你的细胞。
It sounds like science fiction, but in the future, we will all have the option of having our stem cells banked ahead of time so that any time you need new neurons, new muscle cells, new skin cells, they'd be generated from this bank.
这听起来像科幻片，但在将来，我们都可以选择提前将干细胞储藏起来，这样任何时候你需要新的神经元、新的肌肉细胞、新的皮肤细胞时，它们都可以从这个银行中生产出来。
And because they're 100 percent your cells, your immune system is extremely unlikely to reject or attack those cells.
并且由于它们完全就是你自己的细胞，你的免疫系统不会排斥或攻击这些细胞。
In fact, the body has no idea that these cells were actually made in a cell factory.
事实上，身体并不知道这些细胞其实是在细胞工厂制造的。
All of this is possible because of a breakthrough at the intersection of biology, laser physics and machine learning.
这一切成为可能是因为生物学、激光物理学和机器学习交叉领域的突破。
We'll start with biology.
我们从生物学开始。
The human body is an absolute miracle.
人类的身体绝对是个奇迹。
Trillions of cells are working in synchronicity to pump blood, secrete dopamine and let me see and speak to you right now.
数以亿计的细胞同步工作以输送血液，分泌多巴胺让我现在得以看见并为你们演讲。
But as we age, our cells age, too.
但随着年龄渐长，我们的细胞也会变老。
That's why our skin starts to sag, our cartilage wears away, and your five-mile run might turn into a 20-minute walk.
于是我们的皮肤开始松弛，我们的软骨磨损掉，你5英里的跑步可能会变成20分钟的步行。
Yes, we're all getting older.
是的，我们所有人都会变老。
Our bodies are ticking time bombs.
我们的身体就像定时炸弹。
But stem cells could offer a solution, because one stem cell can become almost any cell in your body.
但干细胞可以提供解法，因为一个干细胞能够成为你身体的几乎任何细胞。
My grandma passed away due to diabetes in 2012.
我奶奶2012年因糖尿病去世。
If the technology were available at the time, we could have used her stem cells to generate new pancreatic cells, and it could have cured her.
如果当时技术成熟，我们就可以使用她的干细胞来生成胰腺，就可以治愈她。
Now, unfortunately, stem cells are notoriously difficult to engineer.
现在，不幸的是，干细胞是出了名地难以制造。
One fundamental problem relates to how they're made, which involves taking a patient's blood cells and adding chemicals to those blood cells to turn them into stem cells.
一个根本的问题跟它们如何制造有关，这涉及到取下病人的血液细胞加入化学物质来把它们变成干细胞。
Now, during this chemical process, you never end up with a perfect set of stem cells.
在这个化学过程中，你基本不可能得到一套完美的干细胞。
In fact, you get a very messy plate of cells going in different directions — towards the eye, brain, liver — and every random cell must be removed.
实际是，你会得到一盘非常杂乱的不同方向的细胞——向眼睛、大脑、肝脏发展的细胞——这些随机的细胞必须被移除掉。
Until recently, the main way to remove cells was by hand.
直到最近，移除这些细胞的方法是人工。
I remember the first time I visited the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.
我还记得第一次造访哈佛干细胞研究所时。
I watched a highly skilled scientist sitting at a bench looking at stem cells, evaluating them one at a time and removing the unwanted cells by hand.
我看到一位技术高超的科学家坐在长凳上观察干细胞，一次一个地评估它们并手工移除不需要的细胞。
It's a slow, tedious and artisanal process, which is why generating a personalized stem cell bank today costs about one million dollars.
这是个缓慢、乏味和手工的过程，所以今天制作一个定制化的干细胞库耗费达100万美元。
Now, using a donor's stem cells is much cheaper, but your immune system will likely attack or reject those cells unless you take immunosuppressants, which, unfortunately, is not an option for a lot of people, especially the elderly.
如今，使用捐赠者的干细胞要更便宜，但你的免疫系统可能会攻击和排斥这些细胞，除非你服用免疫抑制剂，不幸的是，这对很多人来说不可选，尤其对于老年人。
To avoid this problem, some scientists are banking stem cells from individuals with the most common genetic backgrounds.
要避免这个问题，一些科学家存储来自具有最通用遗传背景个体的干细胞。
Here in the US, let's say we made a cell bank with 100 of the most common cell lines.
在美国，假设我们用100个最常见的细胞系做了一个细胞库。
It could work for about 75 percent of Caucasians, 50 percent of African Americans.
它对75%的白种人有效，对50%的非裔美国人有效。
But it gets harder.
但这变得愈来愈困难。
My cofounder is Filipina-Mexican, and it's unclear if she would be ever covered by a bank.
我的联合创始人是菲律宾-墨西哥人，她能不能被这个细胞库覆盖仍然不清楚。
And regardless, if you could choose between using a stranger's cells versus your own, wouldn't you choose your own?
不管怎样说，如果在陌生人和自己的细胞上有得选，为什么不选自己的？
Personalized stem cells are our opportunity to make medicines that truly work for me, for you and everyone.
定制化的干细胞是我们制造能够真正对我、对你，对每个人有效的药物的机会。
And in order to make this process of stem cell production affordable and scalable, we have to automate it.
要让干细胞生产过程的费用可承受和规模化，我们需要让这个过程自动化。
Different people are taking different approaches to doing that, and I decided to use physics.
不同的人正在用不同的方法去实现，我决定使用物理方法。
Since childhood, I've been a die-hard physics fan, gazing at the stars, daydreaming about space travel.
从孩提时代开始，我就是个铁杆物理迷。仰望星空，做着太空旅行的白日梦。
Thanks, Mom, for not thinking I was weird!
感谢妈妈，没觉得我是个怪胎。
My family moved around a lot, from Saudi Arabia to Germany to Sri Lanka to Bangladesh, and each time, I had to learn new languages and cultures.
我们家经常搬家，从沙特阿拉伯到德国，从斯里兰卡到孟加拉国，每次，我都要学习新的语言和文化。
Eventually, I fell in love with physics because it was a universal language that I didn't have to relearn every time.
最终，我爱上物理学，因为它是不需要我每次都学习的通用语言。
