0.7 21st century technology, digital displacement, and the role of  (Page 17/17)

The grand interface: nano-bio-info

Consider that in 1970 the fabrication of a single transistor cost about 10 cents. The first Intel computer chip had 2300 transistors. This chip used 10,000 nanometer wide technology. The latest Intel Xeon processor (2014) uses 22 nanometer technology. These developments are driving down rapidly the costs of storage capacities and sequencing. In 1982 with the Intel 80386 chip, $1 bought several thousand transistors. By 2012, when chips contained as many as a billion transistors, $1 would buy 20 million transistors. Among other miracles, this has drastically reduced the cost of sequencing genes: less than a penny a pair. I leave it to you to imagine the future implications for preventative medicine.

The marriage of nano-bio and info technology is making deep inroads in detection and diagnosis of cancer, cardiac disease and severe traumatic injury. Researchers at Rice, M.D. Anderson and UTHSC have devised an inexpensive diagnostic nano-bio-info chip that promises to be quite effective in detecting both malignant and pre-malignant oral cancer and other diseases. With the chip, invasive, painful biopsies are not needed. Results are ready on the spot rather than days later, and the cost is affordable.

This chip is one of the growing number of biomarkers under development in nanomedicine. At present it is also being tested to detect heart attacks by analyzing saliva, with heartening results thus far. The chip works by deciphering body fluids such as saliva and blood to reveal unique chemical and biological constituents, and changes in them.

Tissue engineering, a field born less than 2 decades ago, is an excellent example of the grand interface. Traditional biomedical engineering used metals, polymers and ceramics to construct temporary or permanent replacements of body parts that interact minimally with surrounding tissue. I have one of those in my foot. These replacement parts often promote infections, wear out, and loosen with time. Tissue engineers take exactly the opposite approach: they design biologically active materials that interact extensively with adjacent tissues in order to facilitate the regeneration process. Blending materials and concepts from nanotechnology and information technology into biotechnology, the new field has begun to yield products for repair of damaged tissue. Skin for burn patients is already available from first generation tissue engineering. Tissue engineering more generally promises to allow fabrication of a range of spare human parts to replace diseased or spent ones, or even to improve functions of healthy tissue. Tissue engineering targets include bone, cartilage, blood substitutes and eventually a variety of organ replacements.

Already, scientists at Wake Forest University have grown gall bladders on artificial “scaffolds” of water soluble material. Seven patients have these new bladders, and they are still working. ( The Economist , February 20, 2010), while physicians in Europe have implanted lab-grown tracheas. In Japan several children are living with tissue-engineered cardiac blood vessels ( Science , Aug. 2011).

The second generation of tissue engineering is already upon us. Progress in rebuilding complex organs such as lungs will be difficult, but is no longer the stuff or science fiction. Tissue engineers, harnessing properties of intercellular communication, have even begun to induce in vivo heart muscle regeneration. If they are successful, it may be possible to generate muscle for a “cardiac muscle patch.” ( Science , February 12, 2010).

One new innovation in tissue engineering marries nanowires with human cells. In Sept. 2012 scientists from Harvard, MIT and other Boston-area universities announced the creation of Cyborg-like tissue, where a network of nanowires containing electrodes that will enable physicians to monitor changes in human tissue at levels not imagined before.

The third generation of tissue engineering is almost at hand. By 2020, engineers might deploy self-assembling nano-electronic components to create 3-D circuits to improve the tissue compatibility of implants. Especially promising are plans to print organs using inkjet technology to imprint stem cells. Scientists and engineers are adapting tissue engineering to deal with a multitude of medical problems such as kidney failure, atherosclerosis, spinal cord injuries, inflammations, age-related diseases, and osteoporosis. It now seems that there are only a few parts of the body that cannot be ultimately replaced with bio-artificial replications of body parts.

Conclusion: the nano-bio-info convergence

Nanotechnology will surely revolutionize energy and materials science. The potential for truly staggering applications of biotechnology as augmented by nano and information technology is also in little doubt. Whether much of this potential will be soon realized is, however, yet unclear. Financial constraints on transfer of innovations based on these technologies are loosening, but legal and regulatory constraints loom much larger than in past technological revolutions. In the U.S. the Food and Drug Administration has become increasingly risk-adverse in approving new genetic and nanotech treatments in medicine. And no one knows what the next session of congress will bring.

From genomics, biotechnology has already provided us with a complete parts list for humans. As a result of advances in wet nanotechnology and information technology, tissue engineering promises to provide widely available, inexpensive, and reliable spare parts for humans. If we can find ways to resolve ethical – and perhaps moral – issues raised by our fast-expanding capacities in these converging technologies, their economic and social impacts could be as profound and as positive as that wrought by any previous revolution in human history.

Even ten years ago, much of what we have discussed today seemed impossible. What can we say about that? We may close with a pithy quote from Arthur C. Clarke, the writer who first envisioned the idea of artificial earth satellites: “The only way to discover the limits to the possible is to venture a little past them – to the impossible.”

Developing nations who hope to successfully cope with the potential challenges arising from 21st century technology will clearly need to focus very strongly on programs of education and research that steadily enhances and expands the stock of human capital.