The NYT has a great story today about how the genome can be used to identify the cause of disease. Read more here.

Here is a fantastic article in CNET News today describing one student’s journey. The “student” in question is Rob Nail, an entrepreneur who “helped start Velocity11, which built robotics and automation equipment for cancer research and drug discovery, and as its CEO, he grew it to $50 million in sales and membership on several most-exciting-in-Silicon Valley-type lists. In 2007, Agilent Technologies bought Velocity11.”

Other students participating in the executive program included, “a top decision maker in the U.S. Department of Defense, a best-selling author of business books, a Uruguayan venture capitalist, the owner of an entertainment marketing company, a Scottish investment manager with a Ph.D. in chemistry.”

From CNET News:

“This month, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Applied Materials Research (IFAM) in Bremen, Germany, are unveiling a new type of screw that not only biodegrades within two years but actually encourages bone growth into the implant itself so as not to leave gaping holes where the screws used to be.”

Scientists have been experimenting with “printing” various types of human tissue for years now, often using their own tricked-out devices. The Economist has a great article on a company that is now making printers specifically for this purpose. In addition, over at the Singularity Hub, there is a nice discussion of some of the players in the field. And this article from Canada discusses how doctors hope that, in the near future, “tissue engineers will be able to regrow a breast for women suffering from breast cancer” or will be able to regrow parts of the brain to fight mental decline. This is the first time I’ve heard organ growing researchers talking about the brain — a very exciting development.

The ability to successfully grow replacement parts for ourselves would mean longer and healthier lives. I’m looking forward to seeing if the new printers speed up research results.

Great article on the topic from the NYT. This sentence is of interest:

Ideally you wouldn’t even need to know anything about DNA to
manipulate it, just as a 5-year-old doesn’t need to understand the
chemical composition of the plastic in his Legos to build a fortress
on the living-room carpet.

We will soon be living in a much different world.

I’m looking forward to attending the TED2010 conference this week in Long Beach. If you’re going, I recommend hitting all the Singularity University events, one of which I’ll be leading on Friday at 12:45 in the Dome (topic is how exponential advances in technology will affect the future of social communications).

Here’s a rather disturbing article published by CNN today. Apparently, many “states mandate that newborns be tested for anywhere between 28 and 54 different conditions, and the DNA samples are stored in state labs for anywhere from three months to indefinitely, depending on the state.”

I live in California and we did have our baby tested for various genetic conditions before he was born. It wasn’t mandated by the state, but now I wonder what happened to the samples after they were collected.

Here’s more from the CNN article:

In many states, such as Florida, where Isabel was born, babies’ DNA is stored indefinitely, according to the resource center. Many parents don’t realize their baby’s DNA is being stored in a government lab, but sometimes when they find out, as the Browns did, they take action. Parents in Texas, and Minnesota have filed lawsuits, and these parents’ concerns are sparking a new debate about whether it’s appropriate for a baby’s genetic blueprint to be in the government’s possession.

Oh boy!

This is an excellent video of Anthony Atala of the Wake Forest Regenerative Medicine center. Regrowing organs is a therapy that has already been done in test cases and isn’t too far away from becoming mainstream.

Spike TV’s John Papola and GMU economics professor Russell Roberts teamed up to create an exceptional and entertaining “rap video” pitting John Maynard Keynes against F. A. Hayek. If you ever wondered what would happen if the two famous economists went out drinking together, here’s one answer. Now, this is a great use of social media.

The Personalized Medicine World Conference in Silicon Valley last week showcased huge opportunities for new advances in medicine and personalized health. What remained unclear was who will take the lead, what techniques or products will win, and whether the medical establishment will go along or stand in the way.

Folks in Silicon Valley are used to the fast pace and uncertainty that come along with exponentially growing technologies like those in the field of genomics, and it was easy to spot the venture capitalists in the crowd. The medical profession and the healthcare industry, on the other hand, are not quite as comfortable with accelerating change. That dynamic played out not only in the scheduled talks, but also informally among participants.

“It feels like the Internet conferences I went to in 1994,” said entrepreneur and investor Alex Jacobson of Aleo Capital — but it is also different, because “the Internet didn’t come out of a regulated industry.”

During her talk, investor and 23andMe board member Esther Dyson was asked “how to sway the FDA to empower consumers.” Her response was that the problem is “not so much the FDA as the medical establishment,” which she compared to officials in the Catholic Church who want to interpret everything for their patients.

[...]

Read more here.

Today’s WSJ contained a well-written review by Matt Ridley of a new book about the anti-aging market. Ridley says that in “Eternity Soup,” author Greg Critser meets “snake-oil salesmen, then the hard-headed scientists and along the way people who cannot quite be pigeonholed as either.” He also notes that “average life expectancy across the world has roughly doubled in the past century. In the U.S., the passing of every day marks another five hours added to people’s lives; the number of Americans who are 100 or older has doubled since 2000.”

I’m looking forward to reading about Mr. Critser’s journey.

NewScientist reports that Jon Vogel and colleagues at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland have come up with a procedure that creates “patches of synthetic skin could deliver gene therapies to patients without the need for injections.”

As someone who doesn’t really love needles, this is a good sign for the future. Read the full story here. Thanks to Elissa for sending this story to me.

At the third annual U.S.-China Internet Industry Forum last week, top government and technology leaders gathered to discuss business and policy topics of mutual interest, such as online child protection and intellectual property issues. The United States and China are the world’s two largest Internet communities, so the conversation has broad implications for the Net as a whole.

[...]

Read the whole story here.

From the Scientist:

“Newly created synthetic particles that mimic red blood cells may one day carry drug molecules and/or oxygen through bloodstreams, according to researchers writing in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). ”

“University of California, Santa Barbara, chemical engineer Samir Mitragotri led the team of scientists and told The Scientist that the blood cell-like particles could evolve into useful tools in the clinic.”

“Mitragotri said that he and his team tested the ability of the particles to carry oxygen, finding that they had a “comparable” oxygen-carrying capacity to actual red blood cells. He added that it may be possible in the future to link therapeutic agents destined for the vascular system, such as heparin, to the particles so that they can be easily distributed throughout the blood. The artificial blood cells, with attached iron oxide nanoparticles, could also one day improve MRI resolution by serving as contrast agents that provide a different imaging signal compared to the surrounding tissue, Mitragotri said. “

Yesterday marked the beginning of the third annual US-China Internet Industry Forum (held this year in SF). The purpose of the gathering is to increase mutual understanding of key business and policy issues in China and the US. It is an invite-only event, so I was excited to be there with top government and technology leaders such as Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales, Sina.com’s Charles Cao, Harvard law prof John Palfrey (author of Born Digital – loved that book), Microsoft’s Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie, Google’s Chief Economist Hal Varian, Baidu’s COO Ye Peng, The FBI’s Jeffrey Troy, China’s Deputy Director of the Internet, Liu Zhengrong, and a bunch of others (eBay, Yahoo, Intel, Facebook, etc). The main topics of discussion were intellectual property, online child protection, and cybercrime.

What struck me most about the discussions was the degree of concern the Chinese attendees showed for intellectual property. Now that China is moving towards a knowledge-based economy, they are realizing that it is in their best interests to do a better job of protecting IP. Most Americans probably don’t realize it, but there is a vibrant start-up community in China and it won’t be long before we start to see more innovation coming from that country.

The event was co-hosted by Microsoft and the Internet Society of China and co-sponsored by Google, eBay, Intel, About.com, Verisign, Akamai, Yahoo, People.com, Xinhuanet.com, China.com.cn, CCTV.com, SOHU.com, Netease.com and Baidu.com.

Using nanotech to target cancer cells is an idea that’s been in the works for a while. A team “led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has just successfully combined an antibody with single-walled nanotubes to create a precision search-and-destroy weapon that targets aggressive forms of breast cancer.” Get the rest of the story here.

If you’re in the LA area and interested in longevity issues, I’ll be speaking at the H plus summit tomorrow.

From the NYT:

“The National Institutes of Health said Wednesday that it had approved 13 new human embryonic stem cell lines for use by federally financed researchers, with 96 more under review.”

and

“Researchers’ interest in human embryonic stem cells has abated since the discovery in 2007 by the Japanese biologist Dr. Shinya Yamanaka that the mature cells of the body can be reprogrammed to the embryonic state.

These induced embryonic cells are highly similar to the real thing but may not be exactly the same. One reason is that the mature cell may perceive the forced walk-back to embryonic state as unauthorized and switch on its anticancer defenses.

Because the reprogrammed cells and those derived from leftover human embryos may not be identical, researchers need to work with both kinds, Dr. Collins said.”

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Here’s a preview of my column on health tech we can be grateful to have:

“There have been striking advances in healthcare, thanks to technology, that have nothing to do with the controversial “reform” efforts under way in Washington. Among the life-improving — even potentially life-saving — gifts of recent years: less costly genome sequencing; health-promoting iPhone applications; electronic health records; and crowdsourcing for better living.”