Comments on "Engineer Better Medicines"

The paradigm for this Grand Engineering Challenge (GEC) needs to be opened up for a truly conceptually global and thus really fruitful discussion of it. For example, my experience as a research physicist in the biological sciences indicates that macroscopic medical imaging can also be very important for “personalized medicine.” However, the term “medical imaging” or just “imaging” could not be found in the text of the article itself or the comment responses to it. This topic of imaging is contained, however, within a second GEC article of "Engineer the tools of scientific discovery." For example, this statement appears in the article on this GEC, with regard to how engineering will impact biological research: “Biologists are always seeking, for instance, better tools for imaging the body and the brain.”

Thus I was pleased to learn of the Seattle Grand Challenge Summit of May 2010 in Seattle, Washington, USA, with a focus on just these two, mutually interacting GEC's, viz.,

(A) "Engineer better medicines" and
(B) "Engineer the tools of scientific discovery."

Welcome-address and Session-1 speakers and panelists for the first theme on better medicines as explored at this summit included: Hugh Chang (PATH), Matt O'Donnell (Univ. of Washington), John Markoff (correspondent, The New York Times), Nicolas A. Pappas (Univ. of Texas at Austin), Suzie Pun (Univ. of Washington), Lonnie Edelheit (General Electric, retired senior VP), and Bruce Montgomery, M.D. (Gilead Sciences, Inc.). Details including videos and pdf documents are available at or through the grandchallengesummitDOTorg web site.

Delving into all the content available online is a large and time-consuming task, only part of which I completed. Yet in doing this I did encounter enough material to identify these two suggestions for opening up the discussion online here or even adding to the program of a possible follow-on summit on these two inter-related GEC's:

(1) Expand the reach of the general notion of "medicines" to include the use of radiation fields to track and enhance drug delivery across barriers in tissue (e.g., the BBB) or even to induce palliative and other beneficial chemical or biochemical reactions there or elsewhere, but without administration of drugs. The term "radiation" is used here in a generalized sense to include acoustic, elastodynamic and electromagnetic fields as well as nuclear. At low or ‘signal’ levels of intensity, these types of radiation can be used for imaging purposes. At high or ‘power’ levels, though, they can be used to change structure, composition, and properties of biological tissue in controlled ways, including beneficial induction of (A) chemical or biochemical reactions or (B) changes in their rate constants. This might be especially useful for treating chronic diseases, as opposed to infectious ones. This suggestion is prompted in part by watching the archived video of Suzie Pun's presentation at the Seattle Summit in which optical movies were shown of the spatial movement within the single cell of structural features in response to progress in the local delivery of an administered drug.

(2) Make term-searchable full-text transcripts (and PPP versions) of all the talks (and posters) delivered or presented at this GEC summit.* This would help researchers to find out where their own expertise intersects the details of the challenges involved, so that they know not only more about where to join the conversation but also, perhaps, how to fine-tune their present research projects or even to propose new ones via grant applications to federal agencies such as one of the Institutes at NIH to join the hunt itself for better medicines in the 21st century.


* Doing the same for the “global grand challenges summit” in London in March 2013 could help, too, due to possible future expansion by the NAE of the topic of “personalized medicine” to “regenerative and personalized medicine.” Details are available at the web site for the (U.K.) Royal Academy of Engineering.

Understanding nature will be a perpetual task in the creation of new technology, which have to be in harmony with each other. Pharmaceutical drugs and medical technology do help in many situations as does the effects of letting life take it's course. Maybe the best thing we can do is accept life how it is during the present, not worry of the mishaps, and pursue our dreams with optimism. Maybe a form technology can be invented that scans and reads extreme details of an individual along with the community of their family to furthure understand the DNA "blood-line." Such technology surely has to be similiar somewhere. This kind of information might be helpful with a system that reads patterns/ similarities/ new findings to match complex cenerios that effect the human body when certain situations are inputed automatically to find the best possible solution. So maybe we need robot doctors? lol

Also to add, the pursuit of "immortality" should be important in my opinion. With a longer life span, everyone would have so much more time to solve problems and live life with less stress. There have also been studies on populations with long lifespans on average (that they reproduce less often and such.)

Just a couple of inputs I have...

hii 'Time And health are two precious assets that we don't recognize and appreciate until they have been depleted." i saw this quote on internet and i really liked it and it is true. sometimes i tell my mom that our world is growing fast and there are so many discoveries made;for example new technologies are being invented, new medicines etc. i am not interested in medical field but when i see shows of dwarf people i really want to invent a medicine that will make them average size. i know when i see commercial of medicines there are so many side effects which nodoby likes. people are not realizing that our nature is so beautiful... What about plants which can grow in our garden like tulsi, neem, eucalyptus they are some plants which can cure many diseases, but we take artificial things(medicines)like advil or something else. i think that herbs are the best thing that can cure any medical problems and i am not going to say that it will work ,but you have to try.may be it will.

Several of the commenters seem to be opposed to the idea of engineering medicine. Their solution seems to be, don't get sick. Of course, that's not always within people's control. Some people are born with illnesses and some develop over time. In fact, even if all other illnesses are cured, you will eventually die of old age, which is nothing more than accumulated damage to your body. Engineering better medicines can help with developmental disabilities, chronic conditions, and, yes, even aging. Your body is a very complex machine, but like other machines, when parts suffer damage, they can be repaired. The problem is that everyone's body is different, and thus treatments that work for one person may not work as well for another. Engineering better medicines needs to start with engineering diagnostic devices to determine which medicine or combination of medicines will work best for which people, possibly even synthesizing compounds specific to their subject.

In response to Svetlana, Los Angeles and Hemophilia A. Yes, advancements are being made. Check out the research being done by Dr. Gupta at the Albert Einstein Coll. of Med. of Yeshva University. His team has cured hemophilia A in mice in their lab.

Where would such medicines make the biggest difference? I think the authors of the article just grazed over the most important issue driving this challenge. Health care costs are exploding. When the baby boom retires and begins to consume vast quantities of medicare, we will either bankrupt the country or cut them off, UNLESS we are able to engineer personalized health care. Moving to a personalized care based upon genetics should allow us to fight disease more effectively, striking at disease in its earliest stages when it is easiest to cure. The promise of personalized medical care is far lower costs and better results. Both of my parents experienced one form or another of senior dementia. This is one of the cruelest forms of disease leaving a shell that physically resembles a lolved one while robbing us of that individual. Determining what causes dementia and preventing it is just one example of where personalized medicine could not only reduce costs (without decreased capacity, they could care for themselves) but also improve the quality of life for the affected and their loved ones. Tony

Where is medicine the cheapest in the world? Germany and Cuba. Why? Because the Government pays for everything and will only pay x amount. America is held captive by the lobbiest and pharmisudical companies. We need to get back to the natural stuff.

I believe that improving th overall quality of human health will depend more on educating the public about disease prevention (health, nutrition, safety, etc) and aproaching the problems of disease from a more root-cause analysis than curing already existing cases.

More research into endogenous retroviruses and genetically engineered medicines will benefit hunans as wel as all other living things.

Mabey better drugs for HIV patients, of meds that conqure cancer?