Proposals are emerging within the biotechnology industry to adopt open-source approaches to drug development,
at least for early-stage work, as a means not only of fostering innovation but
also of reducing the cost of development.

The outsourcing of drug
development could also accelerate the introduction of new drugs and lower
their costs. It may also speed the development of the “outsourcee” countries’
own pharmaceutical and biotech industries.

The FBI is weighing in on the case of a group of “DNA artists” who are
inciting the development of mutant
organisms to disrupt the biotechnology industry.

A drastic decline in the use of
research libraries makes the robot librarian reported in our May issue look
rather redundant, except perhaps as something that might interest future
anthropologists as artifacts of a bygone civilization.

A private detective agency can
compile data on 205 million Americans, but the healthcare industry cannot manage
to create what would be a highly beneficent national EMR
system.

Self-cleaning toilet bowls are here (or in Taiwan, anyway), and
self-cleaning underpants are not far behind, if you are prepared to strip down
to bare essentials and stand out in the sun for a bit. All this and more in our
Nanotech roundup.Much human intercourse takes place over the Internet today. Tomorrow, it will
include the sexual variety.

Less than a year ago, we quoted researchers as saying that teleporting whole atoms
was about five years away, following the successful teleportation of photons.
They were wrong: it has been done already.

The recent discovery of organic
materials in abundance around some stars seems to suggest that organic life
could be much more common throughout the universe than previously
thought.

MIT researchers have developed robotically manipulated microarrays that
“dramatically speed the process of finding materials upon which to grow
embryonic stem cells,” reports Gabe Romain in Betterhumans. Identifying
materials that support proper cellular attachment, proliferation and gene
expression is critical for the therapeutic use of embryonic stem cells. The new
technology screens hundreds to thousands of different materials simultaneously,
using a minimal number of precious embryonic stem cells. The technology has
already helped identify “a host of unexpected materials that offer new levels of
control over cell behavior,” says Romain.

Reference: Romain, Gabe (2004). “Robot
Speeds Embryonic Stem Cell Work: Allows rapid screening of materials for
repairing tissue, growing replacement organs.” Betterhumans, June 14.

Open Source Drug R&D

Drug discovery via the current proprietary/patent model is costly in terms of
money, time, and innovation, says the Economist magazine. High costs mean
high prices, and high prices mean smaller markets, which is especially
pronounced in the case of “orphan” conditions and impoverished populations.
Therefore, says the magazine, “a number of medical biologists, lawyers,
entrepreneurs and health-care activists have . . . suggested borrowing the
“open-source” approach that has proven so successful in . . . software
development.”

“In fact,” notes the article — as we too have noted earlier — “open-source
approaches have emerged in biotechnology already,” and goes on to cite the human
genome project, the International HapMap Project, and the bioinformatics
community — which often shares software code and databases. “The question,”
says the Economist “. . . is whether it will work further downstream, closer to
the patient, where the development costs are greater and the potential benefits
more direct.”

At a recent biotech industry conference, some participants called for an
open-source approach to tropical disease drug development, via a website where
databases and notes could be publicly shared among researchers themselves.
However, “the final development of drug candidates would be awarded to a
laboratory based on competitive bids” and “The drug itself would go in the
public domain, for generic manufacturers to produce.” This would bring down the
development cost so drugs for exotic diseases could be made affordable in
developing exotic countries.

Another proposal essentially amounted to using evidence-based medicine to
discover successful off-label uses of existing drugs. Another is to stimulate
sharing among academic researchers worldwide. Even so, “The closer to the
patient one goes [from basic research through laboratory testing to clinical
trials], the tougher it is to imagine open-source processes making a significant
impact.” The unidentified Economist writer, clearly ignorant of the fact
that much of proprietary software is derived from open source, errs in
questioning “whether open-source methods can genuinely foster innovation.”

Reference: Unknown (2004). “An open-source
shot in the arm?” Economist, June 10.

Outsourcing Drug Development

Outsourcing of drug development by US pharmaceutical and biotech firms is
growing at 15 to 20 percent per annum, writes Kerry Dolan in Forbes.
“With pressures on pharmaceutical companies to reduce the time and money it
takes to develop a drug — typically seven to ten years at a price of $800
million or more — lower-cost locales like India and China look likely to take a
bigger piece of the action.” Improved international patent protection has helped
encourage the firms to release their intellectual property to overseas
subcontractors (though this, it seems to us, still helps those firms and those
countries become better informed and trained to become competitive at some
future point.)

A venture capitalist told Dolan that a US-trained PhD in life sciences in
China would make about US$8,000 to $10,000 per year. It would cost much more
than that in the US. Cost is not the only driver, however: “genomics and
proteomics have produced a host of new drug targets–too many to work on all of
them in-house at even the largest drug companies.”

Reference: Dolan, Kerry A. (2004). “Outsourcing:
The Drug Research War.” Forbes, May 28.

DIY Biotech/Bioterror

The US Justice Department is charging “DNA artist” Steven Kurtz with running
an illegal biotech laboratory in his home. His wife, a healthy 40-something,
died suddenly in May at home, where the ambulance crew saw petri dishes and
other lab equipment scattered about. The U.S. Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism
Act of 1989 prohibits the use of certain biological materials for anything other
than a “prophylactic, protective, bona fide research, or other peaceful
purpose,” writes Mark Baard in Wired.

Kurtz is not the only artist using bacteria and DNA as an artistic medium.
There is even a traveling exhibit, Gene(sis), which includes “a
performance arts piece aimed at deconstructing and disrupting the growth of
genetically modified foods produced by companies like Monsanto,” says Baard. An
e-book published by the group of artists who contribute to the exhibit
“advocates releasing mutant organisms into the environment to disrupt the work
of biotech firms,” while “Another proposes secretly releasing mutated flies into
restaurants.”

The FBI is all over the case.Reference: Baard, Mark (2004). “Twisted Tale of
Art, Death, DNA.” Wired News, June 4.

Google vs. the Library: Changing the Way We
Think

A three-year study of research habits at US universities has found that the
Internet trumps the library for scholarly research, particularly among
undergraduates but also among faculty, and that is even without Google access to
most libraries’ digital holdings. “Use Google, for instance, to research Upton
Sinclair’s 1934 campaign for governor of California,” writes New York
Times reporter Katie Hafner, “and you will miss an entire collection of
pamphlets accessible only from the University of California at Los Angeles’s
archive of digitized campaign literature.”

Reference librarians are trying to change all that, with “dozens” now
“working with Google and other search engines to help put their collections
within reach of a broader public.” “The nature of discovery is changing,” the
chair of library and information science at the University of Washington told
Hafner. “I think the digital revolution and the use of digital resources in
general is really the beginning of a change in the way humanity thinks and
presents itself.”

However, it may be a long time before all archive materials are digitized,
and the extent researchers neglect non-digital resources, some see it as having
huge ramifications for the nature of instruction and scholarship, while others
seek to see past the apocalypse to the new world beyond.

Reference: Hafner, Katie (2004). “Old Search
Engine, the Library, Tries to Fit Into a Google World.” New York Times, June
21.

Privacy? What Privacy?

A Blackberry wireless device enables law enforcement officers to search the
LocatePlus company’s database of online public records on approximately 205
million Americans. The company assembles a “complete dossier” on people from the
records. The company says it has more than 15,000 customers, including more than
2,000 law enforcement agencies.

Reference: Unknown (2004). “Police
at Logan to use wireless database.” Associated Press via USA Today, June 23.

Nanotech Roundup

“The prospect of self-cleaning clothes,” writes Mark Peplow in Nature,
“might be getting closer.” He is referring to cotton cloth coated by Hong Kong
researchers with nanoparticles of titanium dioxide, which function as catalysts
that oxydize carbon-based molecules in the presence of ultraviolet light
(provided in sufficient abundance by ordinary sunlight). The fabric could be
made into clothes that cleanse themselves of dirt, pollutants, and
microorganisms.

The breakthrough was to find a way to arrange the nanoparticles’ atoms into
‘anatase’ crystal structures, which amplifies the catalysis. “When light hits
the catalyst,” explains Peplow, “it frees up electrons within the crystal and
these react with oxygen from the air. This generates free-radical oxygen, a
powerful oxidizing agent that can break down grime into smaller particles such
as carbon dioxide and water. Because the catalyst does not get used up, it can
keep on working as long as it is exposed to sunlight.”

According to Peplow, all toilet bowls coming on to the market in Taiwan
already come with self-cleaning nano-coatings, so Asians may quickly adopt
self-cleaning clothes.

In other Asian coups: Chinese physicists have made a light bulb with a
filament made of carbon nanotubes, that emits more light at a lower voltage and
could be on the market in three to five years; and Japanese researchers have
created self-assembling graphite-like nanotube helixes that “exhibit remarkable
uniformity, and possess properties necessary for molecular electronics.”
Self-assembly may be precursor to self-replication. Nanotech pioneer K. Eric
Drexler does not think that self-replicating machines are vital for large-scale
molecular manufacture, and that his earlier fears of runaway self-replicating
nanomachines (the “gray goo” scenario) need not happen.

To help humans assemble mesoscale (between nanometer and millimeter) machines
by hand rather than letting them self-assemble, Irish physicists have developed
a technique using electric fields rather than mechanical means to manipulate
components. At true nanoscale itself, which to date chiefly relies on expensive
atomic force microscopes to manipulate components, a much cheaper laser has been
made to pick up and move carbon nanotubes. This is important for bringing down
the cost of devices incorporating carbon nanotubes such as high-end computer
chips from LSI Logic that will be on the market next year.

A long way from market is a “diamondoid-based medical nanorobot” for “cell
surgery, age curing, DNA analysis and more.” It is not easy for lay people (like
us!) to imagine how nanomachines actually look. Yuriy Svidinenko’s article
provides fascinating diagrams of his concept design for just such a device.

Reference: Peplow, Mark (2004). “Clothes launder own
fabric: Catalytic cotton chows down on dirt.” Nature, June 14.

Reference: Dum�, Belle (2004). “Nanobulbs Make Their Debut.”
PhysicsWeb, June 4.

Reference: Halford, Bethany (2004). “Twisted By Design.”
Chemical and Engineering News, June 7.

Reference: Dum�, Belle (2004). “Self-Assembly Made Easy.”
PhysicsWeb, June 11.

Reference: Biever, Celeste (2004). “Dancing Lasers
Levitate Carbon Nanotubes.” New Scientist, June 4.

Reference: McCoy, Michael (2004). “Nantero to Move
Nanotubes Into Computer Chips.” Chemical and Engineering News, June 14.

Reference: Unknown (2004). “Nanotechnology
Pioneer Slays ‘Grey Goo’ Myth.” Innovations Report, June 9.

Reference: Svidinenko, Yuriy (2004). “Cell
Repair Nanorobot Design and Simulation.” Nanotechnology News Network, June
7.

Remote Sex

At a recent pornography trade show in Los Angeles, sexual stimulation devices
were shown that can be operated remotely over the Internet, enabling two distant
people to simulate sex together, and even emulate specific sequences recorded as
scripts by other people. The devices will be on the market before the end of
2004. “I know that within a few years, someone’s going figure out how to
simulate sex close to 100 percent accuracy, and deliver it to consumers at a
reasonable price. And that’s a scary thing. When they do, why would any of us
need to leave the house?” said a porn merchant.

Reference: Jardin, Xeni (2004). “High-Speed Love
Connection.” Wired News, June 24.

Teleportation

By “entangling” a pair of atoms, US and Austrian research teams have
independently managed to teleport the characteristics of one atom onto its
quantum-entangled colleague. (The Americans used beryllium atoms, the Austrians
used calcium atoms.) In a step toward making ultra-powerful computers, Such
“quantum teleportation” of characteristics had been demonstrated before between
photons — subatomic particles — but never before on whole atoms. The work was
described as “a landmark advance” in Nature. One of the American
researchers told the Associated Press that teleportation between atoms is a step
toward quantum computers.

Reference: Unknown (2004). “Quantum Leap
for Teleportation.” Associated Press via Wired News, June 16.

Life May Abound in the Universe

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has led to the discovery of “significant
amounts of icy organic materials” — water, methanol, and carbon dioxide —
coating dust particles around some stars in the Taurus constellation. It is
taken to indicate that star and planet formation is a very active process in our
galaxy.

Reference: Cowen, Robert C. (2004). “Outer space: not so
lifeless after all.” Christian Science Monitor, June 17.