Attendees came together over a love of wine and to potentially save lives with a little spit.
The event, held on July 21 at Roche Harbor, was hosted by Pattern Computer, a 5-year-old startup company with Mike Anderson of Friday Harbor as its CEO. They were able to collect 80 saliva samples to help with COVID-19 and cancer research, he said.
Anderson has been on the island since 1973 and has a long history of experience in science. It was that history of experience that led him to wind up on the islands while he was part of a Ph.D. program at the University of British Columbia.
With experience being the chief scientist in the Caribbean working on whales and teaching a Harvard course in marine biology, Anderson built The Whale Museum in Friday Harbor, the first of its kind in the country.
Once again, Anderson is hoping to lend a helping hand with his new technology — a computer system with the sole purpose of detecting patterns, he said.
Anderson and his team took the idea to a Future in Review conference in 2016.
“We got to pick some of the 10 smartest chief technology officers in the world and put them on stage and give them an impossible problem, which was to design a pattern computer system,” Anderson said.
After a week, Anderson and his team presented their report, receiving two standing ovations.
“We were funded and staffed before we could make it from the stage to the coffee room. … It was really amazing.”
Anderson said he thinks this program can detect patterns better than anyone in the world.
“The Department of Energy says we are the most advanced machine learning company on the planet,” he said.
The pattern-detecting system can work in any environment, allowing it to help with a wide range of issues. About half of Pattern Computer’s work is in medicine and biology and the other half is in a variety of industrial places, such as aerospace. The company started with biology and today they have about six different pipelines of discoveries, treatments, and products in medicine.
One of Pattern Computer’s earliest discoveries was in the field of breast cancer.
“We currently have two cocktails for treating what is called triple-negative breast cancer that is in their fifth level of testing,” Anderson said. “They have so far succeeded either really well or pretty well in killing breast cancer cells and not human cells.”
Pattern Computer wants to continue down this road of discovery, making it the company’s goal to detect patterns in the top five cancer killers this year. While working toward that, they realized they could do research on detecting patterns in COVID-19, which they also added to their list of goals for 2021.
“We got some existing sensors and we applied our analytics to an existing system of sensors and it appears — we are not even done yet — it appears we are already the best in the world,” Anderson said. “But we have a problem. And the problem is there are a lot of positive samples out there in the world for people who have symptoms and got tested and this case by spitting, but there are very few negatives available. We are at some point where we are between about 99% and 100% able in detecting positives. But we are only around 97% in detecting negatives. We’d like to have both those numbers as high as possible.”
While valuing negative samples just as much as positive samples, this event that Anderson’s team constructed allowed them to gain samples of more negatives.
Later on, Anderson hopes that they will be able to detect patterns in more specific areas of COVID such as patterns in the infections of people who are vaccinated; the number of people who have had COVID and received the vaccine after being sick; in many young people who have gotten COVID; in the number of older people who have gotten COVID; and in symptomatic and asymptomatic cases.
The more patterns they can accurately detect, the more knowledge they will have of varying diseases.
“We will see more depth of patterns, more numbers, and more types than other people can see,” Anderson said. “So that allows us to create a profile specific to people who have the bug, who have COVID.”
There are three things that Pattern Computer scientists have had to keep in mind while developing this program and that is — speed, accuracy and ease of use.
“We aren’t taking swabs and stabbing them up to your brain — which people appear not to enjoy,” he said laughing.
The event at Roche Harbor allows Pattern Computer to progress through the stages it has to complete before it receives approval to build machines to be used in hospitals and industrial fields.
Participants who offered up saliva samples at the event will have their identities protected, Anderson explained. The process is highly regulated and those collecting saliva received a 3.5 course before they began.
Samples will be frozen and sent to Los Alamos National Laboratory, Anderson said, which is qualified to receive both positive and negative data. The lab will send the data they acquire to Pattern Computer, where samples will only be organized by number, not by name. The company will then apply its system to the data received. Every sample will also have a PCR test attached to it, which will let the lab know what is detected in the sample.
Anderson calls the PCR test, the “Gold Standard.”
While they have collected samples at Roche Harbor, Eventide Health will also be collecting samples as well, which Anderson hopes to lead them further with their innovation.
“We want to say how much we appreciate islanders for coming over and trying to help us make an even better, maybe the best system in the world for detecting COVID,” he said.
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Roche Harbor's Spit, Sip and Save Lives - Journal of the San Juan Islands
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