Flood-Tolerant Rice

Who says Biotechnology is just for healthcare? This article talks about a precision breeding strategy to create rice that can grow even in flood conditions. While there is no genetic engineering involved, scientists do look for the presence of a certain gene when breeding plants. Technology such as this is incredibly important for the developing world. After hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, and other natural disasters, thousands more people die due to dehydration and starvation.

My primary interests for the last several years have been healthcare and international development / international relations. It's nice to see that biotechnology can have an effect on all of these issues.

Stem Cell Therapy

By now, I'm sure many of you have heard that Obama has signed an executive order lifting the ban on federally funded stem cell research. It was one of the first things he did when he took office. For all of my blog readers who are interested in the subject of stem cells, I thought I'd give you a primer on what's going on (which will in the process teach me about what's going on). In my opinion, this is the most exciting thing happening not just in health care but in all of science.

Stem Cells
There are several stages of stem cells, in order of most general to most specific:

1. Totipotent
2. Pluripotent
3. Multipotent
4. Oligopotent
5. Unipotent

Embryonic cells are typically Totipotent can make any kind of cell with the right kind of stimulation and preparation. Adult stem cells are much more specific, usually Multipotent. These stem cells can be found in a number of tissues and umbilical chord blood. Adult stem cells are already used in treatment of disease - an example of this the transplanting of bone marrow for leukemia patients. The challenge with stem cells is making sure that they become the desired cell - if not, a cancerous condition called teratoma could result. In addition, the stem cell must be recognized as part of the body to prevent an immune response from developing.

Geron

Geron, a bay area Biotech company, is launching the "world's first clinical trial of embryonic stem cell-based therapy". This trial, which has just been approved by the FDA, will be conducted on 8 - 10 patients with severe and permanent spinal chord injuries and it could begin as early as the summer. I suggest you go to Geron's website on watch the mouse video to see what happens when stem cells are are injected at the point of the spinal chord injury. It's amazing. Geron also has pretty interesting 'telemorase-inhibiting' drug for use against cancer - check that out as well. This drug is intended to stop the mechanism involved in cell division.

Neural Stem

Neural stem is another company to check out. This one doesn't seem to be as far along as Geron, but it seems to be in the same general business. Neural stem seeks to make large quantities of neural stem cells for use against ALS, Parkinsons, etc. Neural Stem appears to be a competitor of Geron.

These are exciting times for stem cell-based therapies, and I know that the world will be hoping for positive results of Geron's soon-to-begin clinical trials.

The Power of Biotech

I'm taking what might be the flagship course of the entire M. Biotech program - Engineering Biotech II taught Prof Scott Diamond, who is the director of the M. Biotech program. This is an amazing class which discusses all major topics in modern biotech. In the first class we went through a case study of tPA (tissue plasminogen activator), a clot buster that is used to break up clots in the cases of heart attacks and strokes. Drug probably isn't the best word here - tPA is a protein, but I'll call it a drug.

We studied Genentech's discovery of the drug, and the myriad different drugs that compete with this technology - drugs that are half the size of this drug to allow for better penetration in the clot, drugs based on snake venom (Amgen / Nuvelo), drugs based on bat venom, drug coated stents. We explored patent and business issues - getting into European generics.

There is an analogy to the world of electrical engineering and computer science in biotech. First, there is the 'algorithm' - how are you going to solve a problem? What's your strategy? In biotech, that means isolating the gene you want to alter, etc. Then, there's the 'hardware' - how are you going to physically make your algorithm work? There are the specific manufacturing steps to go through and delivery mechanisms for the 'drug'.

This class is a reminder of why I'm in this program to begin with. The science, business, and legal aspects are fascinating. But mostly it's the science that is fascinating. The problem solving strategies are limitless in biotech. Chemists can only do so much with traditional chemical techniques and can only manufacture small molecules. Large molecules are too difficult or expensive to manufacture. Chemists can't manufacture anything remotely close to a cell. But cells can do this - for free, and quite well. Biotech takes advantage of biology's inherent ability to manufacture very complex things. Basically, don't try to beat 'em, just join 'em. Make that cell your assistant and get it to make the things you want. The possibilities are now limitless. Genetic engineering can create better and more plentiful crops, etc. This technology can revolutionize the world, and not just in healthcare - this can change economics, international relations, and social interactions. It may even lengthen life spans. It's like having the code to your Microsoft OS and manipulating it so that you can have a green background screen, faster load time, automatic loading of certain programs - basically whatever you want. When you know the code and can change the code, the world is your oyster.