The Future Is Here Today...Robots, Genetics, AI, Longevity, Singularity

Personalized Medicine Conference Comes To Silicon Valley – See Us There!

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by Keith Kleiner on December 17th, 2009

pmwc-2010-personalize-medicine-conferenceOn January 19-20, 2010 the first annual Personalized Medicine World Conference (PMWC) will be held in Silicon Valley.  The event boasts an impressive lineup of speakers, including Complete Genomics CEO Cliff Reid, Silicon Valley heavyweight Esther Dyson, and Navigenics Chief Medical Officer Vance Vanier.  Personalized Medicine is a big theme for us here at the Hub and the event looks to be the perfect mousetrap for us to pick up some juicy stories for our readers.  Singularity Hub will be attending the event in style sporting our finest duds and even hosting our own booth.  Why not buy a ticket (or get your company to buy you one) and join us for the fun?

Although the impressive list of speakers will be reason enough to attend, the PMWC will be kicking things up a notch by offering an exciting exhibition where 20 promising companies will compete to win the PMWC 2010 Most Promising Early Stage Company award.  Several of these relatively unknown companies will be presenting some pretty awesome innovations in the field of personalized medicine and we can’t wait to see them and write about them.  The PMWC is still accepting entrants for the competition, so be sure to let them know if your company or one that you know of is the next hot thing that we all have been waiting for.

The conference is being organized and produced by Silicom Ventures, an angel and venture capital investment fund, and is being co-hosted with the Stanford University Medical Center.  The event will be held at the Computer History Museum just up the street from Singularity Hub Headquarters in beautiful Mountain View, CA.

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Guest Post: Top 10 Innovations at TEDMED

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by Alexandra Carmichael on November 10th, 2009

This is a guest post written by Alexandra Carmichael. She is a co-founder of CureTogether, a Health 2.0 company that brings patients with hundreds of conditions together in overlapping data communities. Alexandra is currently an advisor on the Biotech/Medical Board of the Lifeboat Foundation, a guest blogger at The Quantified Self, and a prolific Tweeter on topics of health and chronic conditions @accarmichael.

I spent last week in San Diego for TEDMED, the medical version of the TED conference. It was an incredible experience for me, almost overwhelming at times with the quality and number of amazing people there. Singularity Hub wrote a preview of the event a few weeks ago.


I spent last week in San Diego for TEDMED, the medical version of the TED conference. It was an incredible experience for me, almost overwhelming at times with the quality and number of amazing people there.

Here are my top 10 takeaways:

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1. Disability to Super-Ability – Mullins, Kamen, Angle

Three incredible stories, told back to back, left the audience in tears and on the edge of their seats.

mullins

Prosthetically augmented athlete Aimee Mullins gave a moving account of how being “disabled” has affected her life in a positive way. She reframed our thinking: “Adversity isn’t an obstacle to get around, it’s part of our life. We adapt.”

Dean Kamen spoke of his passion to build prosthetics for war veterans that are ultimately better than real limbs, imparting super-ability to the wearers.

iRobot co-founder Colin Angle continued the story of augmented reality by demonstrating how robots will become caregivers for elders like his mother. “In 2030, every person under 65 will be responsible for the care of a person over 65,” Colin said. “Can robots help with this?”

Saving lives, restoring functional living: these are inspiring applications of robotics and engineering. I highly recommend watching these three TEDMED talks when they are released.

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TEDMED 2009 is Coming – The Best of the Best Will Speak on Medicine

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by Aaron Saenz on September 25th, 2009

tedmed-2009It’s hard to find a group of speakers that are as famous, as inspiring, or as successful as those found at TED. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design – and occasionally- Medicine. TEDMED is the medically inclined offshoot of TED, and is run by Marc Hodosh and Richard Saul Wurman. The list of TED and TEDMED speakers is impressive. We’ve already shown you Catherine Mohr, Neil Gershenfeld, Eric Giler and many others. There’s about to be a whole new batch of videos as TEDMED 2009 takes off October 27th in San Diego. With more than 50 presentations, this year is going to be amazing.

Each TEDMED speaker is at the top of their field. We have spiritual gurus like Deepak Chopra, public health figures like CNN’s Sanjay Gupta, and Singularity Hub regulars like 23andMe’s Anne Wojiciki. Of course, sprinkled into the conference are more familiar names like Martha Stewart, Goldie Hawn, and David Blaine. Each presenter, celebrity or otherwise, has a tale to tell about the past, present, and future of medicine. There is literally no other conference on Earth that has such a diverse and star studded set of speakers.

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New Device Can Detect Viruses In A Matter Of Minutes

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by Andrew Kessel on June 3rd, 2009

Hypochondriacs rejoice!  Researchers at the University of Twente in the Netherlands have created a prototype device that is capable of detecting viruses and bacterium within the body in a matter of minutes rather than the week or two that is commonplace nowadays.  The technique was first used to detect the Herpes Simplex Virus and scientists are now in the process of making it capable of detecting all known infectious diseases.  There goes the character-building suspense of having to wait for test results.

diagram of virus detection device

Light and Channels and Receptors, Oh My!

This device could be tremendously useful when an epidemic breaks out.  There would be no need for guesswork in outbreaks like the recent swine flu.  Once the disease itself is isolated and added to the database, patients could be told in mere minutes whether they are affected and quarantined so as not to spread the disease.  If these devices disseminated into home use, the results could be even more effective.  Parents would know immediately what their children are suffering from and could respond accordingly.  The entire family could be treated before symptoms are even seen.

Conversely, this system could also help to save money in the already bloated healthcare system.  Patients could test themselves at home for a disease and, if it just turns out to be the common cold, they would not need to go in and see their primary care physician.  There would be no need for extraneous visits to the doctor to run tests that will simply come back negative.  This device could be the biggest breakthrough since thermometers went from rectal to oral.

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Another Step in Genetic Engineering: Glowing Primates

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by Andrew Kessel on June 3rd, 2009

The primate family tree seems to have gotten a bit brighter lately.  Earlier, Singularity Hub reported on Ruby Puppy, the genetically engineered glowing dog, and now the puppy has been one-upped by a team of Japanese scientists who have created a gaggle of glowing marmosets.  Monkeys are just steps away from humans on the evolutionary ladder.  Does that mean that we’ll soon be glowing too?

Glowing Primates: Terrible at Flashlight Tag

Glowing Primates: Terrible at Flashlight Tag (credit Erika Sasaki - Hideyuki Okano / AP)

The marmosets were given the glowing gene in much the same way as Ruby Puppy but, instead of glowing red like the transgenic dog, the primates glow green.  The genetic mutation of these marmosets holds many of the same implications as a glowing dog, including the potential study of many human diseases as well as the ethical dilemmas that come with the territory.  The marmoset itself was targeted for study because it reaches sexual maturity faster and has more offspring, allowing experiments to take less time from breeding to data collection.

Aside from the usual perks of having a genetically engineered pet/lab experiment, the plethora of scientists credited with writing the report believe that this is the first time that the offspring of genetically engineered primates are able to inherit the new trait.  This was proven when three out of the four second-generation marmosets bred in the experiment were capable of glowing under ultraviolet light.  The presence of this gene in the sperm and egg cells of the marmoset could not only lower the cost of each animal, but also increase the yield.  Whereas only a few marmosets matured to adulthood from the 900 original embryos, tradition breeding could allow for a much better survival rate.

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The Scientific Battle Against Alzheimer’s Disease

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by Andrew Kessel on May 29th, 2009

HBO’s documentary, “The Alzheimer’s Project”, is free for viewing on their website.  If you have not yet seen it, make sure to take a look because this masterfully crafted, easily digestible film is an eye-opening look at Alzheimer’s disease, those who are afflicted by it, and those who are working to stop it.  The heartbreaking stories and informative scientific analysis meld together to easily convince any viewer that this terrible disease must be stopped before it ruins more lives and more families.  Watching somebody else’s family member fade away into a helpless brain-numbed state is bad enough, but knowing that it may soon hit even closer to home makes The Alzheimer’s Project’s call to arms even more stirring.

For all those Singularity Hub readers out there who want to live forever, Alzheimer’s disease should be very high on the radar.  Humanity looks to be well on the way to establishing a cure for cancer, heart disease and several other afflictions within our lifetimes, but for happy living well past a century the Alzheimer’s riddle must be solved.

The Alzheimer’s Project

The Alzheimer’s Project is made by HBO, the National Institute on Aging and the National Institutes of Health in association with the Alzheimer’s Association, Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund, and the Geoffrey Beene Gives Back Alzheimer’s Initiative.  Forty-five scientists and doctors were interviewed for the program, creating a nearly complete compendium of knowledge from which the film’s producers could draw.  The collection of films document the struggles of families that are afflicted by the disease as well as the scientific approach to finding a cure and understanding how it affects the brain.

Alzheimer's Patients

Alzheimer's Disease: Longevity's Worst Enemy

The project takes a deep look inside the lives of patients who suffer from Alzheimer’s.  The filmmakers bring to life the fear and anxiety that the elderly feel as they watch themselves slip down into the clutches of the disease.  The psychological tests that doctors use are as simple as remembering three words or drawing the face of a clock, but there is a profound heartbreak at the instant where one realizes that this patient can no longer do either of those tasks.  One plays along at home, much like avid Jeopardy watchers, trying to make sure that their marbles are still intact.

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ORlive – online repository of webcasts and videos of live surgeries

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by Keith Kleiner on July 17th, 2008

I just stumbled upon an incredible site called OR-live.com where you can witness live video of the latest surgical procedures. This is an excellent resource for researching and understanding how the medical field is saving lives and helping people to live longer and healthier. A few of my favorites below (warning: these videos may be hard for some people to watch):

Robotic Hysterectomy for Endometrial Cancer

Cochlear Implant Restores Partial Hearing to Completely Deaf Patient

Video of Real Heart Transplant Procedure

picture of heart transplant in action!

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