DNA Effect | Webcast Recap
Did you miss the live-streaming panel discussion on the future of biotech? Tune in to the recap.
October 24, 2013 - On October 24, 2013, four thought leaders came together at the Smithsonian American History Museum to discuss where biotechnology and medicine are headed in the future as part of The Birth of Biotechnology exhibit opening.
In case you missed it, we had an informative panel of experts weigh in on biotechnology today and how it will impact patient treatment in the future. Matt Herper, science and medicine reporter at Forbes, led the panel in their discussion of The DNA Effect. The panel included:
- Art Levinson, Chairman of Genentech Board of Directors, Chairman of the Board of Apple
- George Church, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School
- Kimberly Blackwell, Professor of Medicine at Duke University Medical Center and oncologist at the Duke Cancer Institute
- Daniel Kraft, Executive Director of Futuremed and Chair of Medicine at Singularity University.
Some topics that the panel touched on were what the future holds for biotechnology and medicine, how Big Data is changing the face of science and health, and ultimately, how biotechnology is helping patients now – and in the future.
@MatthewHerper asks are we entering a new wave of innovation? The future of biotechnology is bright, according to Levinson:
Nevertheless, Levinson concedes that there are peaks and valleys in the rate of scientific discovery. Currently, biotechnology is progressing at an exponential pace, but the size of the exponent remains unknown.
Church believes that the next 20 years will have exponential growth as well. He relates the pace of scientific discovery to Moore’s law, which equates to a 1.5-fold per year increase in the performance and value of technology. This is a steep expectation, but genomic sequencing has already surpassed this rate of growth. Church explains that certain parts of the industry can be measured, such as the cost and accuracy of genomic sequencing. According to Moore’s Law, we should have had an affordable genome – thousands vs. billions of dollars - in 60 years, but it arrived in 6 years. This pace is “unsustainable probably, but exciting while it’s happening,” says Church.
Biotechnology is more than the application of molecular biology to medicine. Kraft sees the merging of biology and technology as a means of empowering the patient in their care:
Blackwell believes we’ll be integrating the information we’re deriving from the patient into practice. She says, “I’d like to see the wristband put into the tumor, actually, so it tells me how it’s feeling today…I actually think that’s going to be here in the next decade.”
As a physician, Blackwell wants to bring the scientists from the lab and into the clinic to be able to more directly apply newly obtained data to patient care:
Genome projects have accelerated the rate of acquiring disease data based on individual mutations. As personalized medicine becomes more individualized, Levinson believes this could create a problem for the development of new therapies:
However, the genomics revolution, in tandem with the evolution of software and computing power, has created opportunities for physicians like Blackwell to better understand each patient and their disease. She believes that clinicians will soon be able to accurately answer whether a drug will help or hurt a patient.
With imminent biotechnological advances, Blackwell believes she will be be able to tell her patient, “I understand more now about you as a person and what this medicine is going to do to you, and I understand more about your tumor.” She continues, “At the end of the day, I think that’s a very reasonable goal in the next 5 years. Those are questions that we don’t necessarily have the answers to right now for the patient sitting in our clinic, asking for our help.”
Being able to say, I understand more now about you & what this medicine will do…that’s a reasonable goal. - Kim Blackwell, M.D.
Ultimately, technology will allow physicians to give patients treatments that will work. If we can efficiently incorporate the technology and personal monitoring into treatment plans, the percentage of effective treatments will dramatically increase. “If you can get the right drug to the right patient 90% of the time instead of 30% of the time…it could totally accelerate the way we give drugs,” says Blackwell. “We don’t just want something new; we want something that makes an impact on human disease.”
Recently, there’s been a movement of thinkers from Silicon Valley into the biotechnology industry. Levinson understands both of these worlds and recognizes the problem of bringing the fast-paced Silicon Valley mindset into healthcare innovation. “When you are talking about therapeutics, you just can’t do that, it’s a very long …and necessarily painful process,” Levinson says. “The FDA has certain standards…correct standards, and if you’re going to look for side effects in patients that have, for example, modest diseases, they understandably and appropriately have high expectations for safety.”
Looking to the future, can we create drugs that prevent disease? Church believes this idea could have far-reaching economic impacts:
While the panel was enlightening and inspiring, the evening wasn’t entirely about the serious business of biotechnology and healthcare. Here’s a recap of the fun we had throughout the night’s events: