"press:here is sponsored by storage information". this week, we take you inside the multimillion dollar bio hub where scientists are working to end disease. not cure it, not treat it, end it. the bio hub's co-director is my guest this morning. and later, from controversial company making plenty of money. our reporters, john schwartz of usa today, this week on

"presshere." good morning. i'm scott mcgrew. we've grown accustomed to people changing the world. steve jobs and the iphone, elon musk with all kinds of things. musk says he wants to go to mars and i have no doubt that he will. but here is priscilla announcing that she and her husband mark zuckerberg will stop disease. >> by investing in science today, we hope to build a future in which all of our children can live long and rewarding lives. we set a goal. can we all together work to cure, prevent or manage all disease within our children's lifetime? >> chan, a pediatrician, wiping away tears as she talks about the children she could not save in the past. there is a laboratory in san francisco on the ucsf hospital

campus where scientists right now are bringing an end to the disease. it's a staggering goal. they put a doctor in charge of the grant and he's made himself who has made great headway in fighting malaria and asthma. he's co-president at the chan/zuckerberg bio hub. let me start with this concept of stopping, managing or preventing disease. it doesn't seem possible. >> i agree. it's an incredibly bold vision to cure, manage or prevent all diseases in our children's lifetime seems like an audacious goal. but you have to remember that the way lifeç span is going no that's probably about 100 years. if we think about what science was 100 years ago, 1917, what we didn't know and what we know now

and the amazing advances that have been made, there's no way that you can predict what 100 years -- >> if someone said we are going to the moon, you would have looked like a lunatic. you would have sound insane. >> absolutely. >> but you're not casting that wide of a net to begin with, right? you've chosen what you are going to focus on and how have you made those decisions? >> the chan/zuckerberg bio hub is one small initiative being executed by mark zuckerberg and priscilla chan. it's joining together three powerhouse universities that we have here, uc berkeley, stanford and uc san francisco, to bring forth new tools and developments that is going to actually deliver on the promise of managing, curing and preventing diseases in our children's lifetime. this is very serious here.

>> let's look at that analogy. instead of building the golden gate bridge, when they said, hey, we're going to go to the moon, back to the moon analogy again, we don't have the math. we don't have the materials or the knowledge of doing this. we literally have to build the tools to build the rocket first. is that where you are? your scientists are not trying to cure cancer. they are trying to build the tools that will cure cancer. is that accurate? >> well, it's not inaccurate. we are focusing on new innovations and technology development and we're trying to translate it into action at the bedside or future bedside. so we're trying to do point a to

b. >> so for mark zuckerberg, does he bring the organizational oommph that you're doing that creates another task? >> absolutely. i think both priscilla and mark's energy are inspiring the bio hub. what you've just said is correct. you do an experiment, doesn't work out, make the next one better than that. the bio hub is a ten-year experiment that will be it rated on and developed and pro tellpe forward. >> this may be a bad comparison but zuckerberg will roll out something that initially consumers may not like but eventually they will get it right. so it's kind of trial by error and i'm saying on a different scale it's happening with your

organization. >> the bio hub is an experiment in bringing together three universities who work in an ad hoc way well together but not in a systematic way together. >> joe, walk me through. you have these scientists, and 40 of them got grants. is that right? >> we've awarded 47 investigatorships. >> and they have their own labs. >> and you are going to cure cancer, you're going to cure malaria, you're in charge of -- how do you tell 47 incredibly smart people what -- and what's your role? >> how do you manage it? >> you don't tell them what to do. you give them money in a lab and they make amazing things. but then what is your job? >> the process, first to get to your point, is not scrutinizing what their detail projects are.

that's not about this process. we're taking bets on human capital. we're trying to identify outstanding individuals in our research community and we're placing bets on them. but not telling them what to do. these investigators are totally discretionary. do your best science. we believe in you. >> is there an overlap with the bill and melinda gates foundation? they are looking for the cure to malaria, at least preventive. >> so we work very closely with many other foundations, including bill and melinda gates foundation. they work in a different way. it's a different kind. they are focused on global implementation in the prevention of malaria, which is near and dear to my heart as well. i think we're highly complementary. >> we're going to take a quick break but we'll be right back in just a moment.

my wife called and told me that her water broke and between the excitement of that and also dealing with this, my only response was, okay.

"press:here" is available on come past. >> welcome back. we're talking to joe from the bio hub. >> where are you guys making the most headway in all of the projects going on? >> we're only six or seven months old. we've managed to attract some amazing talent to the bay area. so we're actually hiring some outstanding talented young investigators, early career investigators that have amazing new ideas and that's been part of it, is actually tracking great talent to the bay area in the life sciences. and so it's an early goal but i think we're making great headway. >> is one of the novel things about this, the way that you're organized with the sharing of information and collaboration. we've been hearing more and more of these efforts. is that something as unprecedented as it's been made out to be?

>> it's one of the major goals of the bio hub experiment. can you have an entity that brings powerhouse institutions that have their own turf and egos to bring them together to a common goal and work together in a highly collaborative fashion. >> isn't that what science is supposed to be, though? is it private companies and drug companies that have closed things off? where did we lose this fact that scientists should be sharing information and collaboratively or is it human nature, i'm not going to tell you? >> there's many answers to that questions. one of the things that has historically prevented sharing is the public sharing of our science was often held by corporations in perpetuity. that is, if a family member is suffering from a disease, you may face a pay wall, have to pay

to see that article. we're involved in getting information into the public and other researchers' hands without pay walls as fast as possible to accelerate the pace of research. >> it's interesting what you're trying to do is so ambitious and one of the criticisms is that it solves small problems. we mentioned the iphone at the beginning but it's become a fact that you can have something delivered to your home. i think does that appeal to somebody like, again, zuckerberg or bill gates that will have lasting impacts? >> there's no question that mark zuckerberg and dr. chan have extremely ambitious long-term goals. they are not in it for the next year, next two years, next product cycle. they are in it for the next century and that is the scale and distance. >> to remind the viewer of what

we're talking about, the bio hub is where they want to cure, prevent or manage all diseases. not just heart attacks but all diseases. you're a smart guy. when they came to you and said we want to put you in charge of this, i think i'd still be intimidated. you say all disease. how about 75% of diseases. >> it's a shocking goal and took me back but think about it, what did we know 100 years ago? how far have we come and how fast are we learning now? even ten years ago, no one even had a clue what genome editing is. i'm sure you've heard about it on the show. and now that revolutionizing everything that we do, making things possible that we didn't even think were possible ten years ago. you extrapolate 100 -- >> sure. >> and i imagine that helps attract amazing people to --

>> part of our goal is to attract the top mibnds, hottest talent in the field. >> is this something that maybe is the most easily obtained -- it sounds stupid. but the most easily obtained things to cure? >> i don't think you can necessarily cherry pick and say there's low hanging pick in the disease world. there's always a counterargument about why something is so important. but -- >> we're closer to solving or preventing than others perhaps? >> i don't know. >> you know, we just mentioned the revolution of genome editing. it's the ability to cure single gene defects in people. you can think about sickle cell

anemia. that's an obvious one. and this new technology, which we didn't even conceive of or have an understanding of ten years ago, it's most assuredly going to cure that disease. there are many diseases that call into that category and one at a time they will be knocked down. as the technology accelerates and gets faster, i anticipate the spread of disease that becomes attractable only to go faster. >> it's my understanding that dr. chan and zuckerberg gave you $50 million to develop this center? >> it was funded at $600 million. >> not sure where i got 50 million. is that enough? what number is the right number for curing all of the disease? >> bio hub is a small experiment in a larger portfolio. the chan/zuckerberg is a variety

of other philanthropic efforts. we're one small subcomponent and only a ten-year experiment. >> i guess my question is, if somebody came to me and said, i want you to build this bridge, i'd go over the numbers and say, all right, my numbers are going to be "x." i want you to cure all disease, stop all disease, there's no number. how could there be a number? 6 million, 60 million, it doesn't make a difference. >> i don't think it's useful to imagine what that number would be. it could have such a major impact that you can't calculate what its value would be. >> what is the -- you got involved in this after a number of different things. you did -- it was an attempt to have a ship understand what disease somebody has, which kind of reminds me of the theranos

thing. we'll get to that in a second. where did you come from and what landed your interests other than the huge challenge of this? >> so i'm a professor at utsf and my interest is infectious disease. half my lab works on malaria and the other half on diagnosing unknown infections and we do that by technological tool developments. doctors throw up their hands, we have no idea what it is, we try to figure out what is wrong with somebody to hopefully cure them and we have actually done that in many cases. >> you're like dr. house. >> we're dr. house with data. not intuition. >> have you tried the mouse fights? this is the co-president of the chan/zuckerberg bio hub.

please know you'll be a welcome guest. i can't imagine a bigger attempt. thank you for being here. >> thank you for having me into well, now we pivot to cute cat videos when "press:here" continues.

"press:here" is available as a podcast on itunes. >> welcome back to "press:here." i assume you know what a jif is even if you don't know it by name. if it doesn't sound familiar, let me remind you. they are looping videos, almost always low-quality video. people post them to twitter or send them to each other in text messages. there's a whole section of i messages on your iphone dedicated to this. the most talked about recently is the trump versus cnn jif that

the president posted to his own twitter account. president obama has had his own controversy with gif. that's the way it's spelled, g-i-f. >> you've made up your mind that it's gif? >> yes. >> an online gif resource, let's start with how do you -- >> the burning question. >> is it gif or jif? >> so, the creator called it gif. we call it jif. >> president obama is entirely wrong. let me start with this. gifs, as i remember, started back when we could barely transmit video over the internet. you had these low frame rate,

low-quality videos and yet we're still using them. >> when the age of computers game, we putç typewriters on t pc and that was fine. and then we took the querty keyboard and put it on the phone and instead it was so bad for what we're trying to achieve, it's an easy way for you to transmission your thoughts and ideas and the person you're conversing with. >> it's kind of like their own language. for instance, i have two daughters. one of them likes gifs with dogs and another with drake. >> she loves those. >> is it a way of communication between people? >> it is. you can imagine like when you take a piece of content and you

just look at the visual element and the time element and remove the sound element, then people can interpret that content in many, many different ways. so your emotional attachment to that piece of content becomes the reason why you want to share and talk about it. and that create as new way for people to talk about. >> it really is interesting that it's become a new mode of communication, to go back to our president's recent gif and that he tweeted out. this is an expression and saying -- which he's said in many other ways as well. is that totally new territory? >> so i think -- our current president is an amazing piece of content for all we're trying to do. like the campaign has started. it's been amazing content after amazing content that people want

to share and discuss. our content is being shared on a lot of different publications. they are all embedding our content and talking about it because all these facial expressions that are given day after day. >> so trump should use more gifs because he doesn't have to type anything. >> cnn was the first one. he may have just now discovered gifs. >> maybe we're entering a whole new -- >> realm. >> let me ask you, richard, oh, the new yor times ma"the new yo content. how do you make money? >> we wanted people to come and create content and then they

share it and the ones that become viral are the ones that basically people like and share, et cetera. because people are sharing widely on all of these articles and magazines and publishers, that's created a lot of con tebt f content for us all through the power of these gifs and through advertising. >> you turn the video into a gif for me. and you're selling banner ads, i assume? >> yes. over time, that's what we will do. although, we've been very focused on goat. >> so you don't make any money? >> we're not making any money. but people are attracted to these pages.

there will be banner ads that people can also look at and get value out of them. >> what's your favorite gif? >> so, you know, until recently, it was -- so at the induction of the president, hillary clinton gave him a nasty look and somebody recorded it with the cell phone and shared it. it's an amazing piece of content. >> wow. >> what make as good one? if i'm going to sit down and say, all right, this is where i want to go viral. first of all, probably can't, but what makes a good gif? >> so there are two things that are really important when it comes to gifs. the first one is the time element. you want the immediate attention, like the first couple

of milliseconds has to be something very colorful that will attract your attention. that's very important. and anything that has a lot of motion in it is what gets people excited about it. so that's why trump is so interesting because there's so much happening. >> ee the people they are showing and the way they react, right? >> right. >> is there a celebrity here, male or female, an animal that is the number one gif? >> yes. there are millions and millions of views. >> wow. >> is it still super popular? >> yes, like with the younger audience. cats created the internet. >> not al gore.

>> a lot of times cats because of all the different emotions that are recorded a that can be shared, people use animals as an easy way to express either i like you or i hate you. >> what we've learned today is that drake gifts are popular and cats either like you or hate you. that i already new. richard is the head of giffy. we appreciate you being with us. >> thank you so much for having me. >> "press:here" will be back in just a minute.

"press:here" is available as

a podcast on itunes. that's our show for this week. if you missed the top of it, there are lots of interviews that you can watch, including this week's at presshere.com. i'm scott mcgrew. thank you for making us part of your sunday morning. "press:here" is sponsored in part by barracuda network and storage solutions.

"comunidad del valle." i'm damian trujillo, and today, celebrating 50 years at cet, and they're having a bash, on your "comunidad del valle." male announcer: nbc bay area presents "comunidad del valle" with damian trujillo. damian: well, we begin today with the monthly visit by the mexican consulate in san jose. with me once again is the consul general of mexico in san jose, embajador mauricio toussaint. welcome to this show, welcome back. mauricio toussaint: thank you, thank you, damian, and it's a pleasure as always to be here in "comunidad del valle." damian: it's always good to have you back. first of all, talk about your title because you're the consul general, but we all call you embajador. tell us why we call you embajador. mauricio: well, it's--the thing is my rank in the foreign service is ambassador. but my post is consul general in san jose.