Bold healthcare revolution predicted over next 2 decades

By Dick Pelletier

      

    Last March, President Obama lifted the Bush ban on federal funding for embryo-derived stem cell research. This order marked an important step forward in the search for lifesaving medicines, and has given renewed hope to research scientists everywhere. A recent government report, 2020: A New Vision – A Future for Regenerative Medicine, predicts that a revolution in stem cell therapies and genetic engineering is underway which could one day eliminate most diseases.

    In this new approach, scientists are focusing on actually curing health problems, not just treating them. Their goals include therapies to completely eradicate diseases like cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, arthritis, and spinal cord injuries. Virtually any disease that results from damaged or failing tissues can be targeted for elimination with this new science.

    Imagine creating an organ in the lab that can be transplanted into a patient without risk of rejection; or programming stem cells to replace aging body parts from inside the body. This may sound like science fiction, but it's not. It's the new field of regenerative medicine, where scientists are learning to harness the body's own power to regenerate itself.

    Derived from biology, physics, and engineering, regenerative medicine will utilize stem cells, genetic engineering, and nanotech to repair tissues and organs inside the body, and build new body parts in the lab when necessary. Given adequate funding, the report states that progress could be realized in the following timeline:

    2010-2015 – Encourage industry to develop inexpensive personal genomes that will help patients avoid many genetic diseases they could be afflicted with; develop nanotech and biotech therapies to make cancer manageable by 2015; enact laws insuring that all citizens have access to quality healthcare.

    2015-2020 – Further understand stem cell biology; build 'smart' degradable cellular scaffolding; produce tissues with their own complete vascular circulation; design patches to repair hearts and other organs; learn to engineer genes that copy how salamanders restore lost limbs and apply this technology to human amputees.

    2020-2025 – Replace body parts damaged from disease or aging with new 'youthful' ones including tissues and organs such as entire hearts, lungs, bones, and muscle structures.

    2025-2030 – Create nanodevices to enter into cells and remove pathogens and toxins and repair faulty DNA throughout the body. This technology could one day eliminate human aging completely.

    Institute for Molecular Manufacturing's Robert Freitas believes that although we're still a long way from producing complete designs for many of these procedures, all appear possible and could be developed on the aggressive schedule noted above.

    CEO Thomas Okarma, whose firm, Geron, was the first U.S. company to inject embryonic stem cells into damaged spines of paralyzed victims, told colleagues we are on the cusp of a revolution in medical science that "will enable living cells to become tomorrow's pills."

    Wake Forest University researcher Anthony Atala has grown 18 different types of tissue in the lab so far, including muscles, whole organs, and pulsing heart valves. Atala believes that every type of tissue already has cells ready to regenerate if only researchers can prod them into action.

    This healthcare revolution offers the potential to bridge most of us alive today into what promises to become an incredible "magical future" journey.

This article appeared in various print publications and on-line blogs. Comments always welcome.