Technology Speeds Scientific Research, Generates New Knowledge

Months Become Hours or Even Minutes

By Ken Stuart, Ph.D., Founder & President, Seattle Biomedical Research Institute

The mid-1970s was an interesting time, as Seattle – and the world – sat poised on the brink of a new era of technology. Microsoft was in its infant stages, practical use of the Internet was still in the distant future, and research into infectious diseases, quaintly called “tropical diseases” at the time, was practically nonexistent in America. In the past 35 years, technology has become increasingly valuable to scientific research, making discovery possible at a rate never imaginable even just a few years ago. What once took days or months now takes hours or minutes to achieve. Imagine what the next 35 years will bring.

Using a wide array of state-of-the-art technologies and approaches that include molecular biology, immunology, genomics, other “-omics” and bioinformatics, scientists at Seattle BioMed study diseases that are among the world’s most important killers and causes of suffering, but which are often the most neglected in terms of research. Our goal is quite simply to generate the new knowledge that is needed for the solutions to the disease problems. We are doing so by producing the critical data more rapidly, more reliably and in a more cost-effective way through the use of the multiple technologies that are now available to us.

Genomics is an excellent example. We’ve seen the genomics revolution begin in force, providing researchers with vast amounts of data that presented new possibilities. In October 2002, there was a landmark achievement in the world of infectious disease research: Nature published the complete genome sequence of Plasmodium falciparum, the cause of the most lethal form of human malaria.

Importantly, malaria researchers around the world have used this knowledge to develop new strategies to fight this age-old disease. In fact, Seattle BioMed has initiated human malaria vaccine clinical trials that would not have been possible without genomics. Some of the trials will test the first generation of a novel malaria vaccine in which key genes have been removed from the human malaria parasite, P. falciparum, to create a live genetically attenuated parasite vaccine. The key genes were identified experimentally using a combination of molecular and bioinformatic technologies.

Combining Infectious Disease Research with Systems Biology
There has been explosive growth of many high-throughput and sensitive experimental analyses that assess the activities and functions of genes that were identified in genome projects. In addition, there have been complementary advances in the field of informatics and computation that provide the ability to store, integrate and evaluate the massively increasing abundant data. This is accelerating the ability to translate these findings into applications and has given birth to new approaches, including the discipline of systems biology.

Seattle BioMed is integrating a systems biology approach to infectious disease research. To our knowledge, it’s the first time that systems biology has been broadly applied to global infectious disease research, and the potential is great. We can more deeply develop an understanding of the biological and disease processes at the level of complexity at which they occur in the disease agents and their hosts. We can also gain new knowledge at a faster rate, more comprehensively and more definitively as is engendered by systems biology, a discipline not possible without present-day technologies. Imagine being able to accurately predict whether or not a malaria or HIV vaccine would work before it goes into human trials. This will move us more rapidly toward translating new knowledge into new products to combat deadly infectious diseases.

Now the question becomes – what’s next? How can research results be more rapidly translated into the products that prevent the suffering and death from global infectious diseases? Perhaps the greatest challenge may be to integrate the manifold types and rapidly expanding information that is accumulating and convert the resultant knowledge into practical applications. I believe non-profit organizations and for-profit businesses will continue to harness the power of technologies as they develop in ways that we cannot yet imagine. This, in turn, opens up a world of possibilities for all types of organizations and businesses to develop innovative working relationships to accomplish these important goals related to improving the health of the world. Imagine what the next 35 years will bring.

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