HP Innovation Journal Issue 10: Fall 2018 | Page 61

landscape, including metabolic and immunological changes as
well as the influence exerted by the microbiome.
BIO-ENHANCING OUR MINDS AND BODIES
» Our brains and bodies
will also benefit from
exploration in the biological
realm, in the form of energy
boosts, aging deterrents,
productivity enhancers
and disease controllers, to
name a few. This segment is
growing in investment and
demand, with just the anti-
aging therapies and services
market forecast projected to
reach $85.6 billion by 2022.
3
In traditional medicine, disease diagnostics and treatment
strategies are developed for the population average and
therefore do not always lead to improvement and may even
lead to severe or even deadly side effects.
With growing health concerns and an increasingly aging
population, we can no longer rely on a one-size-fits-all health
care approach. In the future, diagnostics and treatment
approaches will be targeted according to individual
biomarkers, creating personalized solutions for a better
patient outcome.
The field of theranostics is a significant area of focus in
medicine. Theranostics describes the combination of precision
diagnostics and therapeutics to provide custom-made,
individualized therapies for various ailments and diseases.
Breakthroughs in molecular biology have been vital in getting
precision diagnostics off the ground. As an example, recent
advances in next-generation DNA sequencing now allow
routine genetic mutation identification to understand what
drives specific diseases or how well a particular person would
respond to treatment. While this approach is informative,
genetic profiling alone does not capture the broader molecular
Megatrends Center of the Future
Multiomics profiling, which maps an individual’s genetic
(genome), gene expression (transcriptome), protein
(proteome), metabolic (metabolome) and gut microflora
(microbiome) makeup, will be essential to accurately predict
changes in health, monitor disease progression and inform of
personalized drug therapies and dietary and lifestyle plans.
In the therapeutics spectrum, regenerative medicine is
generating a lot of excitement, as it promises to enhance
functionality or repair what is broken or disabled.
One approach to regenerative medicine is to harness the power
of stem cells. While the therapeutic potential of embryo-
derived stem cells has long been recognized, researchers
have since made significant strides in demonstrating that
adult stem cells can also be recovered from adult tissue and
be differentiated into the desired cell line for therapy. This
procedure bypasses the need for embryos and can instead be
made in a patient-matched manner, which means that each
individual could have their own unlimited stem cell line supply
without risking immune rejection.
The first clinical uses of adult stem cells in the U.S. have relied
on blood-forming stem cells derived from cord blood, bone
marrow, or blood in transplant procedures. This U.S. Food
and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved approach is now
used by doctors to treat cancer and disorders of the blood and
immune system.
Meanwhile, promising results have surfaced from ongoing
research on stem-cell-based treatment of other important
diseases such as macular degeneration, multiple sclerosis,
diabetes and Huntington’s disease.
There are also explorations of how to differentiate adult
cells without the need for biopsy. For example, Ohio State
University researchers presented a new technique called
tissue nanotransfection. A stamp-sized device loaded with
a biochemical reagent is placed on the skin, and a small
electrical current is applied to create nanochannels that can
be used to access the cell compartment where the DNA is
held. The biochemical reagent is then injected through those
channels, where it begins to reprogram the cells into the
desired cell type. This advancement could ultimately lead to a
noninvasive, point-of-care procedure to use the patient’s own
issue to repair elements of a declining organ, blood vessels, or
nerve cells.
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