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Science | DOI: 10.1145/1516046.1516051
micromedicine
to the Rescue
Medical researchers have long dreamed of “magic bullets”
that go directly where they are needed. With micromedicine,
this dream could become a life-saving reality.
Don Monroe

these ideas help patients is “probably measured in decades, not in years,” Shapiro admits. Long before that, however, researchers could use the new tools to explore biology in the lab. The challenge of engineering biology, rather than merely observing it, could yield powerful insights into how biological systems work.

A hEaDaChE or other pain will send many of us to the medicine cabinet for a pain reliever. Molecules from the swallowed pill quickly find their way directly to the source of the pain. But how do they know where to go? Of course, they don’t; the molecules travel throughout the body, chemically reacting wherever they can.

aDaPteD from yaakoV benenson, binyamin giL, uri ben-Dor, riVka aDar & ehuD shaPiro, nature 429, 423-429 ( 27 may 2004)

The consequences of “ broadcasting” drugs to the whole body are profound. Drugs that attack rogue, cancer-causing cells also afflict other dividing cells, such as those in the intestine. In fact, chemotherapy doses are often reduced to avoid nausea and other unpleasant side effects, and other, more powerful drugs are too toxic to even be considered.

Researchers have long dreamed of “magic bullets” that go directly where they are needed. Indeed, many current drugs are formulated to be taken up by particular tissues, and nanotechnology is giving researchers even more delivery options. But what if the delivery system could “diagnose” the local conditions? In contrast to today’s “dumb envelopes,” Ehud Shapiro, a computer

scientist and biological chemist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Re-hovot, Israel, likens this approach to a “smart envelope.” The envelope “would open up only at the right place and the right time for the specific action,” such as releasing a potent but toxic cancer drug, he says. “This would open up a whole range of molecules that are totally inaccessible today as drugs.”

In addition to delivering drugs, microscopic agents could transform the regeneration of damaged tissues and the diagnosis of disease. The time until

 

mRna disease indicators

hijacking Biology

Recent years have been revolutionary for biology. The human genome, as well as computer-based tools that measure thousands of biological chemicals simultaneously, have inundated biologists with data about how these chemicals interact to create the processes of life. An eager group of researchers around the world take this data glut as a challenge to build new biological circuits from scratch, in what is known as “synthetic biology.” Using various strategies, they are assembling pieces

 

Input
identification of
disease indicators

Computation diagnosis

Output
drug
administration

ssDna drug

an example of a test-tube “molecular computer” created by ehud shapiro and colleagues.