Engineering Grand Challenges - Engineering better medicines
February 18, 2008
The TED blog points us to the release of Grand Challenges for Engineering released by the National Academy of Engineering. In other words, not something to be taken lightly. Over the next few days, I am going to discuss some of these challenges
We start with the challenge to Engineer better medicines.
The story is not new. We all know (or are in denial) that the traditional approach to drug development, aka the blockbuster model, is not cutting it any more. What we need are new approaches to drug development and new ways to approach and understand diseases, disease prevention and disease treatment.
Where do the grand challenges lie? Well, there is a laundry list of challenges, but many are focused on the same problem; how can we leverage our increasing knowledge of human genetics and systems biology to develop more personalized treatments. The engineering challenges are correctly identified as the need to develop multiplexed assays for assessing a genetic profile and for point-of-care and other diagnostic systems, an area where nanotechnology is going to make a huge difference. Another area where nanotech is likely to play a role, but other technologies as well, is drug delivery. One of the challenges facing drug makers is getting effective drugs to their targeted regions (rather than dispersing them in the blood). Novel drug delivery systems also make some drugs, that would be discarded for solubility or other reasons, viable again.
Synthetic biology is also identified as a grand challenge, and not surprisingly so. The field combines modern biology with bioengineering with multiple applications, including those in regenerative medicine. Personally, while I worry about overzealous legislators overregulating this fledgling field, and of the dangers of overhyping, it is clear to me that synthetic biology is worth pursuing. Not only is it fascinating scientifically, but if we can apply it safely, the possibilities are endless.
The challenge does mix up engineering with aspects that most would consider scientific challenges, e.g. creating new molecules in the lab is not chemical engineering, nor is the search for novel drug candidates to fight infectious disease engineering.
The take home message is simple in a sense. Tomorrow’s healthcare will be driven by a mix of chemistry, biology, informatics and engineering, and none can be successful without the other. We need to work together and try and address these problems. Too often you see big talk, the race to publish papers, but the people willing to take the risks, develop industrial scale facilities, to commercialize innovation and bring it to the masses are few and far between. Hopefully, we will see them soon enough, cause our future health requires some of these challenges to be overcome.
Technorati Tags: Engineering Grand Challenge, Drug Development, Futurist
Nanotechnology: The cool and the exasparating
February 13, 2008
When scientists use biomolecules to engineer novel nanostructures, it makes me smile.
When people insist on shoehorning developments in biology into nanotechnology, it makes me grimace. Improved structure determination may help with engineered nanostructures, but that’s almost an aside.
Technorati Tags: Nanotechnology, Structural Biology
If you don’t subscribe to Freelancing Science, you should
January 22, 2008
Pawel has taken his blog, Freelancing Science, to new heights recently. Go check it out
More on Freelancing Science in a new post currently in draft stage soon.
Technorati Tags: Freelancing Science
Nanotech Revolution
December 19, 2007
A week or so ago, I received an email from the Center for Responsible Nanotechnologies announcing a Scenario Series Depicting Nanotech Revolution, about that same time as the publication of the technology roadmap on product nanosystems. Those who’ve seen me in my nanotech hat probably know that I view certaom aspects of the nanotech future with some skepticism. I’ve always felt that molecular manufacturing was somewhat overhyped and faith in it a little misplaced. At the same time, I do believe that our ability to manipulate molecules and engineer functional systems is not only very cool, but likely to have a pretty big impact in a number of areas.
Regardless of where you stand in your opinion of nanotechnology, an area of science and engineering (I hate calling it a field), the scenarios are worth a read. Anything Jamais Cascio is involved in writing requires a read anyway.
Technorati Tags: nanotechnology, molecular manufacturing, CRN, Furturist
Slidecasting Nanotechnology
December 17, 2007
Damian Allis is one of the ten smartest people I’ve ever met. As a one time cohabitant of Deepak and Damian’s Dirty Dungeon, he doesn’t need to do much to be noticed on these pages. When he puts up a slidecast on single-atom mechanosynthesis, mentions Bioscreencast and screencasting, then I have no option but to point you to his post.
Technorati Tags: Nanotechnology, Mechanosynthesis, Slidecast, Screencast, Damian Allis
