The immune system is very complex.
It exists everywhere in our bodies and in all sites..
from the skin -- to the eyes -- 
to the heart, the lungs, the organs.
And there's a couple places where it's concentrated in the body --
in the bone marrow and in the spleen.
But parts of the immune system go everywhere.
The immune system, in many ways, is a sensory organ...
as much as it is an organ that's protecting us.
It's seeing everything that's going on in your body all the time.
An immune cell that's circulating in your blood in your left hand...
may end up in your heart in an hour.
The next day it may be circulating through your brain surveying for something wrong.
Every day most of us wake up and we don't think about our immune system...
but it's hard at work.
But then the immune system makes a mistake...
and it causes autoimmunity by attacking healthy tissue.
What we're trying to understand is:
What is the mistake that was made?
And I think the important part is that we've realized over the years...
that if you're gonna understand what's wrong with someone who's sick...
you better understand how the immune system works in a healthy person.
You know there's two things we look at when we talk about immunotherapy...
-- what's going on.
There's people who respond very well -- people who do not respond necessarily very well.
And we're trying to understand what's different between these two sets of people.
Working with the Allen Institute, we'll be able to do that..
and not only go and generate data across many different patients in the trail...
but also go very deep and looking at what are the differences...
between the immune cells and the cancer cells...
and how are these important in predicting responses to therapy.
The responses that are being seen with manipulating the immune system now...
are really dramatic.
But we know that we are really at the very beginning of this.
We're just starting to understand
how to do it.
Technologies exist to make this better.
There's no question it's gonna be better.
It's already a standard part of a lot of treatments, which didn't exist just four or five years ago.
So it's a very exciting time.
Generating new knowledge is always very
important.
It allows people to gain new insights about fundamental mechanisms of biology.
But one of the chief goals of this project -- and the partners and the Institute --
would be to generate data that can then move medicine forward.
So we are not just focused on generating data for data's sake...
or doing science for science's sake.
Our touchstone for this is our patients
We expect our data to provide clues to
basic scientists around the world.
But we also expect people, including ourselves, to capitalize and leverage that
so that we can then move some of these ideas from the laboratory and into the clinic.
Industry -- the pharmaceutical industry, the biotechnology industry --
is very much focused on...
taking what's learned in science and making drugs for that, that work.
The Allen Institute is perfectly positioned...
to be able to take all of the information from many people, bring it together...
apply these incredibly complicated technologies and computational capabilities...
and bring that together to make discoveries.
So we're essentially looking at the immune system like a new opportunity for developing drugs.
If we can understand the immune system...
we can turn it in the patients favor to treat many many diseases.
What we learn about healthy people will be immediately translatable...
to people with an immune disease.
So our goal is to be the heart of this project...
in terms of developing our understanding
of human health.
And working very closely with our partners who are studying diseases of the immune system.
I think the biggest impact that will come out of this...
unique collective with the
Allen Institute for Immunology...
is understanding how the immune system behaves in both health and disease.
And be able to translate that into not only better therapies for people with conditions...
that can be related to the immune system like cancer, like autoimmune disease...
but really get at the core of this which would be: prevention.
Well I think if we do this right, we will change the way we practice medicine.
We will change medical ideas about what immunology is.
And we will turn immunology into a clinical discipline.
We're at a point where the more we understand...
the more likely we're going to be able to turn these partially effective therapies...
where we're curing 20% of patients...
to be curing 80% or 90%.
So this is big.
And the unprecedented depth with which...
the Allen Institute for Immunology is
committed to looking at the immune system...
is going to provide information that the scientific community...
would otherwise not have for many many years.
And it's going to accelerate discovery...
accelerate innovation...
and benefit patients.
