Future of Life Sciences: Top 10 List

The next wave of the biotechnology revolution is underway and promises to reshape the world in ways even more transformative than the agricultural, industrial, and information revolutions that preceded it.

It is not unimaginable that at some point, all biological processes, human and otherwise, could be understood and managed directly.

Here is a top ten list of key areas of contemporary advance in life sciences:

1. Synthetic Biology and Biotechnology 
2. Regenerative Medicine and 3D Printing 
3. Genomics, “Omics,” and Preventive Medicine 
4. Neuroscience 
5. Nanotechnology 
6. Big Health Data and Information Visualization 
7. Quantified Self (QS), Wearable Computing, and the Internet-of-Things (IOT) 
8. DIYscience, Citizen Science, Participatory Health, and Collective Intelligence 
9. Aging, Rejuvenation, Health Extension, and Robotics 
10. Space 

More information: Slideshare talk from the Max Planck Institute

Status of Stem Cell Research

The World Stem Cell Summit in Baltimore MD held September 21-23, 2009 attracted several hundred professionals to discuss contemporary science, industry and societal perspectives on stem cells. Attendance was high, but down from last year and, similar to cancer meetings, a key theme several keynote speakers acknowledged was

the overall lack of truly meaningful progress in stem cell research in the last twenty years.

Science Focus: Safe Stem Cell Generation
The science tracks featured current research in different stem cell areas including the production of safe hESC (human embryonic stem cells) and iPS (induced pluripotent stem cells) for use in regenerative medicine, the research and therapeutic use of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and reports from specific sub-fields: cancer stem cells, cardiovascular stem cells and neural stem cells. Overall, the work presented was incremental and in many cases, confirming what has been known already, such as a growing confirmation that cancer stem cells are probably responsible for triggering the resurgence of cancer but cannot at present be distinguished from other cells at the time of tumor removal.

Contract Research Demand: Cell Therapies and Recombinant Proteins
One stem cell area experiencing growth is contract research organizations, the outsourcing tool of choice for research labs and pharmaceutical companies in the production of biological materials. For large contract research manufacturing such as Basel, Switzerland-based Lonza, the biggest demand area is in cell therapies. Cell therapies denote the introduction of any type of new cell into other tissue for therapeutic purposes, but in the current case generally means any variety of stem cell-based therapies. Other large contract research manufacturing organizations such as Morrisville, NC-based Diosynth (owned by Schering Plough) lead in biologics (antibodies, protein production) production, an important area for nextgen biotech where synthetic biology could have a big impact.

For smaller contract research manufacturing organizations producing test compounds (e.g.; 1 liter for $10,000) and scaling to Phase I and II clinical trial quantities such as Baltimore MD-based Paragon Bioservices, the biggest demand is for recombinant proteins. Recombinant proteins are created by inserting recombinant DNA into a plasmid of rapidly reproducing bacteria and can take many useful forms such as antibodies, antigens, hormones and enzymes.

Venture capital hot topics: zinc fingers, RT PCR, tech transfer
Zinc fingers (small protein domains that bind DNA, RNA, proteins and small molecules) have been surfacing in a variety of cutting-edge biotech innovations. In July 2009, St. Louis, MO-based biotechnology chemical producer Sigma-Aldrich (SIAL) announced the creation of the first genetically modified mammals using zinc finger nuclease (ZFN) technology to execute modifications such as taking away the tail of the zebrafish. A second example of recent landmark research involving zinc fingers is that of Carlos Barbas at Scripps who uses zinc finger proteins to reprogram serine recombinases as a more specific alternative to the homologous recombination method of genome modification. In addition, the Barbas lab has a useful web-based zinc finger protein design tool available for public use, Zinc Finger Tools.

Real-time PCR offerings continue to expand and flourish with declining prices as startup newcomer Helixis announced a $10,000 real-time PCR solution at the conference.

Bethesda, MD-based Toucan Capital, a leading investor in stem cells and regenerative medicine discussed their sixteen interesting portfolio companies such as San Diego CA-based VetStem who is conducting joint and tendon stem cell therapies for race horses.

Johns Hopkins has one of the country’s leading technology transfer programs, licensing a growing number of technologies each year (nearly 100 in the last fiscal year), and has a searchable, though not extremely user-friendly, website.

Next-gen computing for terabase transfer

The single biggest challenge presently facing humanity is the new era of ICT (information and communication technology) required to advance the progress of science and technology. This constitutes more of a grand challenge than do disease, poverty, climate change, etc. because solutions are not immediately clear, and are likely to be more technical than political in nature. The raw capacity in information processing and transfer is required and also the software to drive these processes at higher levels of abstraction to make the information useable and meaningful. The computing and communications industries have been focused on incremental Moore’s Law extensions rather than new paradigms and do not appear to be cognizant of the current needs of science, and particularly the magnitude.

Computational era of science
One trigger for a new ICT era is the shift in the way that science is conducted. The old trial and error lab experimentation has been supplemented with informatics and computational science for characterizing, modeling, simulating, predicting and designing. Life sciences is the most prominent area of science requiring ICT advances, for a variety of purposes including biological process characterization and simulation. Genomics is possibly the field with the most ICT urgency; genomic data is growing at 10x/year vs. Moore’s Law at 1.5x/year for example, however nearly every field of science has progressed to large data sets and computational models.

Synthetic biology – what is next?

Synthetic biology is the engineering of biology, re-designing existing biological systems and designing new ones, for a myriad of purposes. The most obvious killer apps are the improved synthesis of drugs and other medicines and the synthetic generation of biofuels.

Right now the most exciting aspect of synthetic biology –suggesting that the field is getting some traction – is that three key community constituents are getting more heavily involved: traditional academic researchers (SB 4.0 conference videos and agenda), undergraduates and high school students through the annual iGEM (international genetically engineered machines) competition (1200 students from 112 teams are expected at this fall’s iGEM Jamboree at MIT, and a growing group of non-institutionally affiliated enthusiasts, diybio’ers, the 2000s version of the Homebrew Computer Club, for both wetlab (an interesting recent example) and computer modeling, simulation and data management projects.

Venture capitalists are slowly starting to realize that synthetic biology could be a huge growth industry and could be the next generation of biotechnology. Amyris is probably the best-known synthetic biology company, estimating to launch its biofuel (ethanol) business publicly in Brazil and the US in 2011.

The long road to automation
Other waves in the history of biotechnology have shown that life sciences problems tend to be much more complex, take much longer than expected to solve and ultimately underdeliver results. There is no reason to think that synthetic biology would be any different, but it is obviously not futile to work on the challenges. When the synbio community analogizes their status to the heterogeneous screws and bolts of the construction industry circa 1864, they are not kidding.

The DNA synthesis process is astonishingly unautomated, unstandardized and expensive ($0.50-$1.00 per base pair) at present (it would be $15-30 billion to synthesize the full genome of a human (ignoring ethical, legal, etc. issues)).

Synthetic biology is a new field and the demand for synthesized DNA is still small; the 2,000 or so iGEM community members are the biggest market. Ginkgo Bioworks is working to deliver robotic synthesized DNA assembly and other startups would be likely to spring up in this area. Ginkgo has also helped to expand and improve one of the main synbio tools, the Registry of Standard Biological Parts.

Status of life sciences

Right now is an exciting time in life sciences. The field is advancing, growing and changing in nearly every dimension, not just content-wise but also structure-wise. Tremendous content is coming forth in the form of key research findings, affordable new technologies and simultaneous holistic and reductionist expansions via systems biology approaches and new sub-field branching. Structure-wise, life science is changing in three important ways: the concept of life science, how science is conducted and the models by which health and health care are understood and realized.

Conceptually over time, life sciences have transitioned from being an art to a science to an information technology problem to now, an engineering problem. The way science is conducted is also shifting. Science 1.0 was investigating and enumerating physical phenomenon and doing hypothesis-driven trial and error experimentation. Science 2.0 adds two additional steps to the traditional enumeration and experimentation to create a virtuous feedback loop: mathematical modeling and software simulation, and building actual samples in the lab using synthetic biology and other techniques.

A second aspect of Science 2.0 is the notion of being in a post-scientific society, where innovation is occurring in more venues, not just government and industrial research labs but increasingly at technology companies, startups, small-team academic labs and in the minds of creative individual entrepreneurs.

Economics taboo in life sciences

It is considered impolite at best to ask life sciences companies about their cost structure and pricing strategies. Life sciences executives can often appear naive, incognizant and uncaring about the basic economics of their industry. They appear to exclusively and superficially target profit maximization and wholly propriety IP development and protection; ironic given the greater goals of healthcare. Life sciences as an industry seems to be at least twenty years behind the high tech industries such as computing and communications in terms of understanding and delivering economic value to a wide audience of end consumers, and in terms of openness and collaboration.

Fixed and variable costs, pricing strategies and quantitative aspects of customer demand are much more known and openly shared and discussed by companies in the high tech industries. That critical piece of entrepreneurialism, understanding the specific economic value of a product or service to the end consumer is absent in life sciences. The problem of course is the “third party pays” dynamic in life sciences where a third party, insurers, pays for services consumed by patients. If patients knew, or perhaps were even paying, prices, their behavior would likely be much more rational, and so too would health services offering have to be much more rational. Price is not discussed and is rarely even available at the doctor’s office.