1. Genes That Fit—Finally! (Genomics): The price of sequencing a gene has plummeted 100 million-fold since 1998 and, amid continued exponential progress in sequencing technology, the field shows no sign of abating. This suggests that the cost of sequencing the 3 billion genes in an individual’s genome will drop from $10,000 today to less than [...]
The think tank known as The Millenium Project has recently published a new report, “The State of the World 2011.” One particular paragraph caught my attention because it reinforces a concept (accelerating change) I’ve been espousing for some time: “The coming biological revolution may change civilization more profoundly than did the industrial or information revolutions.” [...]
New reports have demonstrated that certain skin-cancer treatments which target specific genes are yielding extraordinary results. According to Hal Barron, chief medical officer of Roche, the findings “mark a major step forward in personalizing the treatment of metastic melanoma.” Said another doctor of the results, “[it] takes your breath away if you’re a melanoma doc.” [...]
Here’s novel idea. Rather than treating disease, health care professionals should treat patients. Thanks to advances in nanotechnology this might soon be possible. It is a fact that different drugs work differently on different people. New imaging probes now portend the day when doctors will be able to predict the effectiveness of a particular drug—before [...]
In 2003, I wrote the book, ”The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business.” In it, I outlined the many ways in which nanotechnology will impact the pharmaceutical industry in the near future. Recently, researchers at Children’s Hospital in Boston have uncovered a method of reviving a [...]
A few weeks back I had a posting entitled ”Change or Die … Unnecessarily” in which I provided a few examples of how our inability to unlearn could, quite literally, cost some people their lives. Well, the other day, one of my favorite thinkers, Josh Wolfe, sent me a copy his weekly newsletter, The Forbes/Wolfe [...]