Here's a closer look at the medical world's next biggest quantum leaps
While breakthroughs in any industry always make for fascinating stories, perhaps none of those stories are more exciting than the ones made within the field of healthcare.
Quite often, these developments are life changing, and even life saving. At one point, cancer was a virtual death sentence. Ditto for HIV. It’s only been within the past few years researchers considered the possibility that what used to be the cause of Alzheimer’s may actually only be a symptom of the cause.
Point being, breakthroughs are still happening.
And what are the next big evolutions from the world of healthcare? Here’s a closer look at the ten most fascinating projects in the works from the realms of pharmacology, biotechnology and more.
Healthcare Innovations: Crispr
It’s not clear who actually holds the patent on it; the University of California Berkeley and a joint venture combining the work of MIT and Harvard researchers are arguing the matter out in court.
Whoever owns Crispr– short for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats” — may be sitting on a gold mine. See, it’s not hyperbole to say that the biotechnology could be the biggest leap the world of medicine has ever seen.
How so? Crispr may give caregivers the ability to edit a genome, or DNA, making it the holy grail of HIV treatments, cancer therapies, and more.
The delivery of the correct genome is driven by an engineered protein. At one end of the chain lies a correct DNA sequence, which will only attach to the proper area on a broken DNA strand (the biggest hurdle with DNA repair to this point). At the other end the protein chain is a cutter, of sorts. The repair to the cut is made with the correct DNA delivered by the protein.
Such a capability could change the face of medicine.
Healthcare Innovations: 3D-Printed Body Parts
To be fair, it’s a bit late in the game to be calling 3D-printed organic body parts a breakthrough.
Organovo Holdings Inc (NYSEMKT:ONVO) started doing it in back in 2013, and though it has yet to revolutionize regenerative medicine (printed body parts don’t work as well as they need to) it’s at least proven the premise. The next big leap in the world of 3D-printed bodily tissue may now be underway.
Thank a team of researchers at Wake Forest University for the leap. They’ve come up with the right materials and process to “print” a body part that starts out as a gel and then solidifies at the right time, and also allows blood vessels to grow in the matrix rather than just on the physical matrix … like real living tissue. This had been the proverbial missing link.
A living, printed body part fit for a human is now in sight.
Healthcare Innovations: Anavex 2-73
While we know considerably more about Alzheimer’s disease than we did a decade ago, even merely promising treatments and effective therapies remain few and far between. There is one drug from Anavex Life Sciences Corp (NASDAQ:AVXL), however, that deserves all the buzz it’s created.
It’s called Anavex 2-73. The sigma-1 receptor agonist reduces oxidative stress, protein misfolding and brain inflammation … all the biggies associated with Alzheimer’s.
In phase-2 trials it’s been able to restore one patient’s ability to play the piano and another Alzheimer’s sufferer’s ability to paint. In an environment where simply slowing the disease’s progression down is considered success, Anavex is showing signs that it can reverse the disease’s effects.
Healthcare Innovations: The Argus II Bionic Eye
While it’s not an all-out replacement for a functioning eye, the Argus II — from a company called Second Sight Medical Products Inc (NASDAQ:EYES) — is a respectable, functional step to that end.
The Argus II is a camera/sunglasses combination that can distinguish things like where the edge of a sidewalk is, or even see large letters. That in itself isn’t a showstopper though. The electronic eyeballs used for automotive safety purposes and even self-driving cars can distinguish the difference between the road and another car.
What makes the Argus II so compelling is the fact that the camera’s sensors are connected directly to the user’s retina, which then send that message to the brain.
It’s a low-detail image, but as the technology develops, the detail level of the interface with the retina could improve dramatically, and eventually send a clear image to the brain.
