In 1796, British physician Dr Edward Jenner created the world’s first successful vaccine. He used a cowpox culture to inoculate an eight-year-old boy, rendering him immune to smallpox. Centuries later, medicine is still pushing the boundaries of how treatments can be more accessible—the sooner the better, maybe even before one feels symptoms—with as little invasiveness as possible. The gentle prick of an injection or a gulp of water is all it will take to one day fight deadly diseases.
Banking on Bio-bots
What if you had to swallow an artificial life form to cure your illness? Imagine it moving inside your body and removing diseases from their root cause or helping diagnosis. Sounds eeky and far-fetched? Well, this could be a new line of treatment in the far, far future, if researchers from the University of Southern Denmark and Kent State University in the US have their way. According to this team, specially-designed, hybrid molecules of DNA and protein could be the next frontier in medicine. These fingertip-size bio-bots could be coded to target specific health issues, crawling and swimming to enter narrow spaces.
A Stanford mechanical engineer has also created what is called a “spinning-enabled wireless amphibious origami millirobot”. Researchers are working on the theory that some disease-causing viruses do not have a natural enemy, and that these engineered viruses, bacteria and cells could be that. These artificial life forms could also be used to form the basis of custom-made vaccines—the medicine would be tailored to an individual’s DNA blueprint, making treatment faster and personalised. Additionally, these bio-bots combined with peptides—strings of protein-building amino acids—can also be used to provide targeted cancer treatment.
The possibilities are remarkable. If someone has a gut issue, a nano-bot can be introduced into the body to pinpoint the cause and dispense treatment. Or, say, deliver payloads to a brain tumour. These tiny robots will probably someday be able to link our brain up to the cloud, says futurist Ray Kurzweil. According to him, it will be a step closer to “singularity, wherein we will multiply our effective intelligence a billion-fold by merging with the intelligence we have created”. Will that effectively turn us into cyborgs? While the jury is still out on that one, longer lifespans are a certainty.
Imprint Reprint
Engineer David Gracias of Johns Hopkins University recently developed a nano-imprint lithography technique that allows for gold tattooing on living tissue—basically using a stamp to imprint nanoscale patterns. This could have significant health applications. One could imprint a chip to monitor and control individual cells in real time. This cell-based therapy would help diagnose and treat diseases much earlier—as soon as a cell develops an abnormality, it can be treated and repaired before it gets a chance to multiply silently and damage an entire organ.
Engineers have been looking for a way to integrate electronics with human biology for some time, but there are significant roadblocks. One of the biggest hurdles is the incompatibility of living tissue with manufacturing techniques used to construct electronics. The nano-imprint lithography technique is relatively simple and low-cost.
On similar lines, researchers from Duke University and Harvard Medical School have developed a new way to 3D print inside the human body, using ultrasound waves and biocompatible ink. The ‘deep-penetrating acoustic volumetric printing’ (DVAP) process can allow doctors to repair bones or even fix malfunctioning heart valves without surgery. With DVAP, one can reach tissues, bones and organs with high precision. The team has already worked on a goat’s heart to stop blood from pooling inside the organ, and also addressed a bone defect inside a chicken leg. With a special sono-ink hydrogel, they are now looking at slowly releasing a chemotherapy drug inside a liver sans invasive procedures.
The Quest for Immortality
In a decade from now, experts believe that clinical trials will only be conducted in the confines of a lab or glass cubicle, ruling out the many unnecessary health complications that may arise on ground, not to mention unethical testing in the poorest of regions. Some also hope that one day a single blood test will help rule out genetic or lifestyle disorders. No more battery of tests or hospital admissions. Precision medicine and gene-sequencing will take centrestage. What Benjamin Franklin said in 1735—“an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”—is literally the way forward.
Speaking of diseases, mortality remains the big constant. But can the science of tomorrow reverse ageing altogether and herald an era of immortality? Tech millionaire Bryan Johnson thinks so, and is trying. He ingests over a hundred pills daily, injects his son’s blood into his own, and spends millions on gadgets to gauge his every breath in an effort to transform his 46-year-old body to that of an 18-year-old.
Earlier this year, a team of scientists at Harvard Medical School screened molecules that could rejuvenate human cells. It’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, only more curious. Research continues on turning the clock back from 40 to teenage. While a person’s organs will cycle back into the past, the outer body will perpetually live in the present: in this case, at age 40. Slow ageing is passé; reverse ageing is the drug of the future.
Also in the works
Can you put the heart of a pig into a human? This may sound like a bad idea but modern medicine is foraying just here. Known as xenotransplantation, the technique infuses a human with cells, tissues or organs from an animal source. This can revolutionise surgery, making organ transplants easier and cheaper. Of course, gene-editing needs to take place to make this a reality. Also, like 3D-printed organs, tricalcium phosphate—a material with similar properties to human bones—is being used to 3D-print bones. It can provide patient-specific implants.
3D is the way to go. Researchers at the National Eye Institute in the US have produced retinal tissue using stem cells and 3D bioprinting. It will help better understand and develop treatments for diseases and conditions, like age-related macular degeneration.
Sci-fi dramas often show how the entire body can be digitally scanned for signs of illness and injury. Doing that in real life would improve prognosis and diagnosis. US company Q Bio has built a scanner that will measure hundreds of biomarkers in an hour—from hormone levels to the lipid profiles to inflammation markers and even cancers. The scan will come up with a 3D digital avatar of the patient’s body—akin to a digital twin. This will, hopefully, herald an era of preventative, personalised medicine. It would also individualise treatment and give doctors a peek into prioritising which patients need to be diagnosed and when.
Estonian biotechnology startup ÄIO has come up with a healthy alternative to palm oil. An edible yeast created by Nemailla Bonturi, senior researcher of food technology and bioengineering at Tallinn University of Technology, can consume the sugar found in sawdust and metabolise it into lipids, turning it into edible oil packed with antioxidants and omega-3. Using a fermentation process similar to brewing beer and adding heat to activate the yeast treats the lipid-rich biomass to create food-grade oil.
A single fungal pathogen is responsible for the loss of 30 per cent of rice production. Is it possible to bioengineer plants to have an adaptive immune system? Scientists are trying to coat the surface of plant cells with immune receptors to monitor microbial threats. These receptors act like security cameras, setting off an alarm when they recognise something suspicious, initiating a cascade of protective measures that kill the pathogen.