Nnews
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.