This Startup Offers a New Way to Treat Diseases: Will Lado Okhotnikov's Idea Work?

Holiverse wants to become the first provider of personalized medicine services in virtual reality. The company plans to create wellness programs based on human DNA to combat 12 signs of aging.

You may have noticed that the same medicine acts differently to the same diseases. The thing is that each of us has our own "biochemistry": genes, hormones, immunity, and even lifestyle. Therefore, what gets one person on their feet may be a dud for another.

For long experts have been puzzled over how to make a medicine that works for everyone. At first, everything was based on guesswork: maybe it was the dosage? Or does each organism somehow get used to different components in its own way? They tried different schemes, changed combinations, but each time they came across the fact that the ideal recipe simply does not exist.

A universal approach was never found, then experts realized that they needed to move on to personalized medicine. Instead of prescribing drugs according to a “standard scheme”, they selected them considering the characteristics of each patient. Nevertheless, the main problem remained unsolved - how to test drugs without risking people's health.

This is how the concept of “digital twins” arose. But where to create these digital twins became a new puzzle.

The #Holiverse company decided to solve it by taking it on. Experts have suggested using digital twins that can predict how the body will react to different drugs in virtual reality.

It took Lado Okhotnikov, the founder of the Holiverse metaverse, several years to figure out the concept of a "digital twin." He assembled a team of bioinformaticians, geneticists, and IT specialists, and together they began to build a system that could "read" the genetic code and turn it into a digital model of a person. This is how the prototype of a digital twin in the metaverse — #avatar — emerged.

The avatars were not perfect right away, but, nevertheless, they proved the viability of the idea.

"The first avatars barely resembled people, but they were able to react to stimuli, albeit very primitively," Lado Okhotnikov notes with a smile.

Lado Okhotnikov: avatars that changed medicine

Lado Okhotnikov tells how avatars are learning to predict the body's behavior in reality today.

Our body can resemble a big team, where each player has their own task. Genes are like a "captain" who sets the tone for the work of the entire body. They determine which substances and proteins will be produced, in what quantities and how the cells should react to stimuli.

Hormones as "messengers". Some tell the cells to store energy, some help to cope with stress, and others control appetite or mood.

Metabolism, which ensures that we have the strength for activity and growth. The immune system, which protects us from microbes or viruses. And there are many, many other subsystems.

Now imagine how difficult it is in practice to predict how exactly all these systems will react to changes in treatment, lifestyle or training. Hence the slow progress in studying the most important processes of our body. Because without available technologies, doctors have to prescribe medications or prescribe procedures literally according to a manual, and not based on the individual characteristics of the patient. Although doctors shouldn't be blamed for this - they comply with the standard, as prescribed by traditional #medicine.

Holiverse wants to move away from the standard approach to treatment, when drugs are prescribed "according to a template" and without taking into account the characteristics of each person. It is important to understand that for some, the processes in the body go faster, for others - slower, the former are suitable for certain foods, while others are not. This is the essence of a holistic, that is, personalized, approach - to look at the body as a whole, and not partially.

Six sources of vitality

Weight, training, appearance, psychological health, libido and cognitive functions are six dimensions of strength that together keep our body in harmony and energized.

Now imagine that you have a digital twin in the #metaverse that helps you to monitor these sources. Such an avatar takes into account your unique characteristics: how much sleep you need, what food is right for you, how to train effectively, so as not to overwork.

Holiverse expects personalized treatment to become more popular among those who want to test their hypotheses and treatment plans without putting their health at risk in reality.

According to the company's CEO, the decision to use personalized medicine will help avoid mistakes by obtaining reliable data on the future effect of a particular stimulus.

"Medicine can make great strides... But so far no one has created a tool - call it an environment, a platform, or whatever - where you can test different scenarios on your "virtual self" before they are reflected in real life," Lado Okhotnikov emphasized.

Indeed, many have tried to transfer the theory of human digital twins to practice. For example, the US Government Accountability Office has shown several variations of their use - in space, on land, and on water.  McKinsey & Company explained the idea through the integration of digital copies in products and data sets. But perhaps IBM has understood this issue better than anyone else. They said directly: a digital twin is not just a simulation.

Simulation is when you model a process or behavior to see what happens if... And a digital twin is almost like a living organism in a digital format that collects data in real time, "thinks" and can predict the development of events.

The catch in this whole story is that everyone understands what problems digital twins can solve, but so far no one has really found a way to transfer a person to the virtual world for real. Holiverse has gone further than others here: they were the first to suggest using human DNA in the metaverse. And for this, you don’t need to wait for any unique developments - all the tools are already there. The only thing you need is to develop this topic, which is what Lado Okhotnikov and his team are currently doing in the Holiverse metaverse.

Read more in the article Меtaverse for health.

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