Your Excellency President Lula da Silva,

Excellencies, Heads of State, Heads of Government,

Heads of delegation,

Dear colleagues and friends,

Thank you, President Lula, and Brazil’s BRICS Presidency for your commitment to equity, solidarity, and multilateralism.

My intervention will focus on three key issues: challenges to multilateralism, cuts to Official Development Assistance, and the role of AI and other digital tools.

First, we are facing significant challenges to multilateralism.

However, there was good news at the World Health Assembly in May.

WHO’s Member States demonstrated their commitment to international solidarity through the adoption of the Pandemic Agreement. South Africa co-chaired the negotiations, and I would like to thank South Africa.

It is time to finalize the next steps.

We ask the BRICS to complete the annex on Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing so that the Agreement is ready for ratification at next year’s World Health Assembly. Brazil is co-chairing the committee, and I thank Brazil for their leadership.

Second, are cuts to Official Development Assistance.

Compounding the chronic domestic underinvestment and aid dependency in developing countries, drastic cuts to foreign aid have disrupted health services, costing lives and pushing millions into poverty.

The recent Financing for Development conference in Sevilla made progress in key areas, particularly in addressing the debt trap that prevents vital investments in health and education.

Going forward, it is critical for countries to mobilize domestic resources and foster self-reliance to support primary healthcare as the foundation of universal health coverage.

Because health is not a cost to contain, it’s an investment in people and prosperity.

Third, is AI and other digital tools.

Planning for the future of health requires us to embrace a digital future, including the use of artificial intelligence. The future of health is digital.

AI has the potential to predict disease outbreaks, improve diagnosis, expand access, and enable local production.

AI can serve as a powerful tool for equity.

However, it is crucial to ensure that AI is used safely, ethically, and equitably.

We encourage governments, especially BRICS, to invest in AI and digital health, including governance and national digital public infrastructure, to modernize health systems while addressing ethical, safety, and equity issues.

WHO will be by your side every step of the way, providing guidance, norms, and standards.

Excellencies, only by working together through multilateralism can we build a healthier, safer, and fairer world for all.

Thank you. Obrigado.

Journal/conference: Nature Communications

Research: Paper

Organisation/s: The University of Sydney

Media release

From: The University of Sydney

Australian scientists have successfully developed a research system that uses ‘biological artificial intelligence’ to design and evolve molecules with new or improved functions directly in mammal cells. The researchers said this system provides a powerful new tool that will help scientists develop more specific and effective research tools or gene therapies.

Named PROTEUS (PROTein Evolution Using Selection) the system harnesses ‘directed evolution’, a lab technique that mimics the natural power of evolution. However, rather than taking years or decades, this method accelerates cycles of evolution and natural selection, allowing them to create molecules with new functions in weeks.

This could have a direct impact on finding new, more effective medicines. For example, this system can be applied to improve gene editing technology like CRISPR to improve its effectiveness.

“This means PROTEUS can be used to generate new molecules that are highly tuned to function in our bodies, and we can use it to make new medicine that would be otherwise difficult or impossible to make with current technologies.” says co-senior author Professor Greg Neely, Head of the Dr. John and Anne Chong Lab for Functional Genomics at the University of Sydney.

“What is new about our work is that directed evolution primarily work in bacterial cells, whereas PROTEUS can evolve molecules in mammal cells.”

PROTEUS can be given a problem with uncertain solution like when a user feeds in prompts for an artificial intelligence platform. For example the problem can be how to efficiently turn off a human disease gene inside our body.

PROTEUS then uses directed evolution to explore millions of possible sequences that have yet to exist naturally and finds molecules with properties that are highly adapted to solve the problem. This means PROTEUS can help find a solution that would normally take a human researcher years to solve if at all.

The researchers reported they used PROTEUS to develop improved versions of proteins that can be more easily regulated by drugs, and nanobodies (mini versions of antibodies) that can detect DNA damage, an important process that drives cancer. However, they said PROTEUS isn’t limited to this and can be used to enhance the function of most proteins and molecules.

The findings were reported in Nature Communications, with the research performed at the Charles Perkins Centre, the University of Sydney with collaborators from the Centenary Institute.

Unlocking molecular machine learning

The original development of directed evolution, performed first in bacteria, was recognised by the 2018 Noble Prize in Chemistry.

“The invention of directed evolution changed the trajectory of biochemistry. Now, with PROTEUS, we can program a mammalian cell with a genetic problem we aren’t sure how to solve. Letting our system run continuously means we can check in regularly to understand just how the system is solving our genetic challenge,” said lead researcher Dr Christopher Denes from the Charles Perkins Centre and School of Life and Environmental Sciences

The biggest challenge Dr Denes and the team faced was how to make sure the mammalian cell could withstand the multiple cycles of evolution and mutations and remain stable, without the system “cheating” and coming up with a trivial solution that doesn’t answer the intended question.

They found the key was using chimeric virus-like particles, a design consisting of taking the outside shell of one virus and combining it with the genes of another virus, which blocked the system from cheating.

The design used parts of two significantly different virus families creating the best of both worlds. The resulting system allowed the cells to process many different possible solutions in parallel, with improved solutions winning and becoming more dominant while incorrect solutions instead disappear.

“PROTEUS is stable, robust and has been validated by independent labs. We welcome other labs to adopt this technique. By applying PROTEUS, we hope to empower the development of a new generation of enzymes, molecular tools and therapeutics,” Dr Denes said.

“We made this system open source for the research community, and we are excited to see what people use it for, our goals will be to enhance gene-editing technologies, or to fine tune mRNA medicines for more potent and specific effects,” Professor Neely said.

-ENDS-

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