What is Your “Headline from the Future” of Medicine?

Inexpensive devices allow new types of monitoring

The $100 genome and related technologies will increase understanding and use of the base genomic code and the ability to inexpensively measure gene expression in normal and diseased tissues.

REFERENCES:

Munzner et al. MulteeSum: A Tool for Comparative Temporal Gene Expression and Spatial Data. IEEE Trans. Visualization and Computer Graphics 16(6):908-917 (Proc. InfoVis 2010), 2010. Available from Munzner et al.

Donna L Mendrick. Transcriptional profiling to identify biomarkers of disease and drug response. Pharmacogenomics, February 2011, Vol. 12, No. 2, Pages 235-249 , DOI 10.2217/pgs.10.184. Available from Future Medicine.

Rosenberg S. et al. Multicenter Validation of the Diagnostic Accuracy of a Blood-Based Gene Expression Test for Assessing Obstructive Coronary Artery Disease in Nondiabetic Patients. Annals of Internal Medicine October 5, 2010 vol. 153 no. 7 425-434. Available from Annals of Internal Medicine.

Levenson, Victor. DNA methylation as a universal biomarker. Expert Review of Molecular Diagnostics, Volume 10, Number 4, May 2010 , pp. 481-488(8). Available from ingentaconnect.

AIs integrate exponentially increasing knowledge across diverse fields in interdisciplinary ways, leading to new approaches for old problems and fundamental new discoveries at the edges of science.

REFERENCES:

Larry Greenemeier. Meet Adam and Eve: AI Lab-Bots That Can Take On Reams of Data:Scientists build autonomous labs that use computers, robotics and lab equipment to experiment and analyze results. Scientific American, April 2, 2009. Available from Scientific American.

Alberto Riva et al. An automated reasoning framework for translational research. Journal of Biomedical Informatics 43:3, June 2010, Pages 419-427.

Ross D. King et al. Inductive Queries for a Drug Designing Robot Scientist. Inductive Databases and Constraint-Based Data Mining (Džeroski, Goethals and Panov, editors) 2010, Part 4, 425-451, DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4419-7738-0_18. Available from SpringerLink.

Passengers Exposed to Virus on Plane: Vaccine Waiting at Arrival Gate

Air Circulation System Detect Mutation

Nurse’s Cell Phone Confirms Bioinformatics, data mining, nanotechnology and other devices for biosurveillance and point of care diagnostics together bring about rapid response, design and production of anti-virals and vaccines.

REFERENCES:

Globalizing Public Health and Bio-Surveillance (Panel, 2010) F. Doro et al. 2009.

Surfome Analysis as a Fast Track to Vaccine Discovery. July 1, 2009 Molecular & Cellular Proteomics, 8, 1728-1737. Available from Molecular & Cellular Proteomics.

Michele Kutzler and David B. Weiner. DNA vaccines: ready for prime time? Nature Reviews Genetics 9, 776-788 (October 2008) | doi:10.1038/nrg2432

Mike May 2009. Engineering a New Business. Nature Biotechnology 27, 1112 – 1120 (2009) doi:10.1038/nbt1209-1112. Available from Nature America, Inc.

Robert Carlson 2009. The changing economics of DNA synthesis. Nature Biotechnology 27, 1091 – 1094 (2009) doi:10.1038/nbt1209-1091.

Tissue Engineers Experiment with New Shapes, Sizes

Organ printing and the ability to build organs from scratch ex-vivo (including vasculature) are major aspects of regenerative medicine, used to address the huge unmet need for organ transplantation.

REFERENCES:

Ringeisen, Spargo and Wu, Eds. Cell and Organ Printing. Book, 2010 e00p. ISBN: 978-90-481-9144-4.

Kristine Rustad et al. 2010. Strategies for organ-level tissue engineering. Organogenesis. 2010 Jul–Sep; 6(3): 151–157. Available from: Organogenesis.

Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI): Fully implanted BCI to control devices such as computers and wheelchairs just by thinking, and deep brain stimulation to alter the course of Parkinson’s, depression and other diseases.

REFERENCES:

Jonathan R. Wolpaw 2010. Brain–Computer Interface Research Comes of Age: Traditional Assumptions Meet Emerging Realities. Journal of Motor Behavior Volume 42, Number 6 / November-December 2010.

Daniel P. Ferris 2009. The exoskeletons are here. Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation 2009 June 9;6:17. See also: Daniel Ferris, Editor. Thematic Series: Robotic Lower Limb Exoskeletons. Available from the Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation.

Ferris, Sawicki and Daley 2007. A Physiologist’s Perspective on Robotic Exoskeletons for Human Locomotion. International Journal of Humanoid Robotics 2007 September; 4(3): 507–528. Available from the NIH and the International Journal of Humanoid Robotics.

USF News 2009. Researchers Develop “Brain-Controlled” Wheelchair Robotic Arm, January 28, 2009. Available from the University of Southern Florida.

After Virus Detected, Lab-on-a-Chip Used to Find Patient Zero

Lab-on-a-chip technologies allow for rapid, point of care disease detection and treatments. Examples: sepsis detection (short term) and treatment (medium term), noninvasive fetal cell sampling to replace amniocentesis (medium term), nanofiltration replacement for dialysis (long term).

REFERENCES:

Grifantini, K. Lab-on-a-Chip Made of Paper:  Paper-based microfluidic devices could yield cheap, disposable diagnostic tests. Technology Review. May 14, 2008. Available from: http://www.technologyreview.com/biotech/20771/.

Farmer,  Melanie A. Columbia engineer designs handheld device used to diagnose illness. PhysOrg.com. October 15, 2010. Available from PhysOrg.

Engineering team invents lab-on-a-chip for fast, inexpensive blood tests: Next step will turn blood testing into a smartphone application. EurekAlert! January 11, 2011. Available from EurekaAlert!

Helicopter Delivers Autonomous Robotic Surgeon

Increasingly autonomous, minimally invasive robotic assisted surgery, and integrated telemedicine will enable remote medical supervision, and superior clinical outcomes for many procedures where the hands of the surgeon will be supplanted of those of a robot (initially human controlled, but increasingly with more and more autonomy).

REFERENCES:

Cleveland Clinic Unveils Top 10 Medical Innovations for 2011. Available from Cleveland Clinic.

“Telehealth monitoring for heart failure patients”. Nguan, C et al. Pre-clinical remote telesurgery trial of a da Vinci telesurgery prototype. The International Journal of Medical Robotics and Computer Assisted Surgery. 4: 304–309. doi: 10.1002/rcs.210

Wang, Brian. Pill-size to bacteria sized robots for surgery and in-body therapies. Next Big Future, October 15 2010.

Personalized Treatment for Cancer with frequent monitoring, captures and sequences malignant cells, detects changes and optimizes therapy

With exponentially cheaper genomics (and the ability to fully sequence a tumor and compare to the individuals normal genome), with point of care proteomics, each patients cancer can be fully characterized at the molecular level, and a cocktail of most effective, cancer-specific drugs prescribed. Cancer stem cells are targets for specific, less toxic and curative chemotherapies. A paradigm shift in treatment of malignancies, integrated with advances in detection, imaging, biomarker measures, and disease tracking leads to increasing prevention and cure rates.

REFERENCES:

Massachusetts General Hospital. Improved device provides more rapid, comprehensive analysis of circulating tumor cells. March 31, 2010. Available from MGH.

Caltech Media Relations. Caltech-led Team Provides Proof in Humans of RNA Interference Using Targeted Nanoparticles: Researchers unveil scientific results from siRNA Phase I clinical trial in cancer patients. March 21, 2010. Available from the California Institute of Technology. Cleveland Clinic. Cleveland Clinic Unveils Top 10 Medical Innovations for 2011.  November 3, 2010. Available from Cleveland Clinic

Singularity Hub. A Smartphone-Enabled Device that Detects Cancer in Under an Hour. March 10, 2011. Available on Singularity Hub.

National Cancer Institute. First therapeutic cancer vaccine approved by the FDA. Carmen Phillips. March 4, 2010. Available on National Cancer Institute