Young innovators: only biotechnologists are in the top three

A new wave of innovation
All the best youth innovation projects selected last week turned out to be from the field of biotechnology and medicineTigran Oganesyan, Elena Kulikova, "Expert"
Participants II 

The All-Russian Youth Innovation Convention, which was held in From December 9 to 11, hundreds of young scientists, inventors and innovative entrepreneurs began to work in St. Petersburg. The forum was initiated by the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs (Rosmolodezh), the work on attracting projects to participate in the convention and their expertise was organized with the help of the Innovation Bureau "Expert".

II The All–Russian Innovation Convention was initially positioned as the most important final event of 2009 – the Year of Youth - and was intended to demonstrate the first concrete results of the implementation of the state program for the development of youth innovation in our country. Everyone should have seen how intensively the process of supplying the sluggish domestic economy with "fresh blood" – a new generation of entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers.

The convention site was visited by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. He visited the exhibition of finalist projects of the competition for the National Innovation Award named after him. Vladimir Zvorykin and got acquainted with the brightest young talents. Numerous representatives of the business community also showed considerable interest in promising projects, and several participants of the project competition managed to find serious investors directly during the presentations in The Youth House.

Kaku and smart nanoparticlesThe organizers of the convention chose a very non-standard way to warm up young people.

An hour and a half lecture "Innovation as the engine of society" was delivered by a venerable American scientist, head of the Department of Theoretical Physics at New York University Michio Kaku. Professor Kaku, the son of Japanese immigrants born in California, has been considered one of the world's leading string theory experts for several decades. In addition, he is widely known as a tireless popularizer of the achievements of modern science and technology, the author of a series of books and special TV and radio programs devoted to the analysis of the most promising innovations of the future and their impact on humanity in the XXI century.

According to Michio Kaku, "our future will be determined by four breakthrough scientific and technological directions: telecommunications, biotechnology, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence." For each of these main directions, quite clear guidelines are already visible today. For example, one of the obvious engines of the development of both the IT sphere and the global economy as a whole will be the World Wide Web: on the basis of new Internet technologies, a rapid growth of virtual commerce will arise and will be supported and a further sharp reduction in transaction costs will be ensured.

The biotechnological trend promises to become no less important. In recent years, there has been clear progress in understanding the mechanisms of aging of the body, in developing methods of effective treatment of various diseases with the help of genetic engineering, technologies for operational monitoring and early diagnosis, point delivery of drugs into the body with "smart" nanoparticles, as well as by creating artificial implants of various organs and parts of the human body.

Professor Kaku emphasized that he pinned his hopes on the current young generation of inquisitive scientists and inventors, including representatives of the new Russian innovation wave who were present in the hall. As an illustrative example, the speaker chose Singapore's "economic miracle". As you know, back in the middle of the last century, Singapore was one of the most backward regions of Southeast Asia and at the time of independence in 1965 was a small poor country that imported even fresh water and construction sand. However, in just a few decades, Singapore has made the leap to a highly developed country with one of the highest indicators of average living standards. And, as Michio Kaku noted, the most important role in the transformation of a modest city-state into a leader in the region in the field of high technology and scientific knowledge was played by a well-thought-out state policy of growing young innovative personnel, total reform of the educational system and strong financial support for the training program of Singaporean students at the best universities in the world.

Fight illnesses on an equal footingAs the results of the innovative competition held within the framework of the Zvorykinsky project implemented by Rosmolodezh showed, the level of projects presented this year has increased dramatically, and almost any of the 12 finalists of the competition had a real chance to become a winner in one of the three nominations.

This year, all three winners are the authors of projects in the field of biotechnology – one of the most popular and promising areas of the global scientific and technological progress. The expert council of the Zvorykin project in the nomination "Innovative Idea" recognized the development of a young scientist from Kazan, Marat Mukhamedyarov, as the best innovative idea. He proposed a new way to treat neurodegenerative diseases – ailments associated with the death of nerve cells. First of all, these are currently incurable Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Diseases lead to a sharp decrease in mental abilities and various mental disorders, and on average, a person dies eight years after the first signs of the disease appear. Learning to interrupt the process of nerve cell death or at least slow it down means starting to fight these terrible ailments on an equal footing.

Marat Mukhamedyarov began by studying the fundamental problems of nervous systems, and then turned to the study of the mechanisms of the onset and development of Alzheimer's disease. He found out that the disease "adopted" beta-amyloid peptide – a special type of protein that occurs in the intercellular space. This protein destroys cell membranes, causing cells to die. It also causes oxidative stress in cells, helping the active forms get into them. This year Marat interned at Harvard University, studying the properties of beta-amyloid peptides, and the first in the world to find direct evidence of their direct effect on the course of the disease.

According to the results of publications in Western scientific publications, the 29−year-old scientist was awarded the prize of the European Academy of Sciences for outstanding young scientists of Russia. Based on his own discoveries, Mukhamedyarov developed a drug that could slow down the death of cells of the nervous system in the future. Tests of a laboratory sample on transgenic mice (the gene that causes Alzheimer's disease is artificially "embedded" in their genotype) showed that the drug restores cell membranes, prevents oxygen starvation of cells and prevents their aging. The scientist needs about 100 million rubles for the final stage of preclinical and the beginning of clinical trials. "This idea is already in the transition to the stage of a full-fledged project, which was less typical of the works of other finalists in this nomination. In addition, we decided to support a biotechnological project in order to send a certain signal to the scientific community and business," Ivan Bortnik, a member of the expert council of the competition, chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Fund for the Promotion of Small Forms of Enterprises in the Scientific and Technical Field, explained the selection of the jury.

In the nomination "Innovative project" the winner was Lilia Anisimova from Ufa with a biological product for cleaning the environment from dangerous xenobiotics – chemicals alien to living organisms that are not part of the biotic cycle. She proposed her project at last year's competition, but then it was at the idea stage and did not receive recognition. At the Second Convention, Lilia Anisimova presented samples of the drug, the production of which will be organized next year. With the help of this innovation, Russian agricultural enterprises and small farms will be able to clean the land from pesticides accumulated in the soil of acreage. According to Lilia, today in Russia has infected about 74 million hectares of land.

"We found four strains of destructive bacteria that feed on toxic compounds. No one had described them before us, so we added them to the collection of microorganisms and patented them. They “eat” about 80 percent of those used in Russia pesticides," says Lilia Anisimova. Such bacteria are bred in a test tube, then they are placed in reactive drying, after which a powder is obtained from carefully dried and therefore not damaged bacterial cells. When diluted with water, the bacteria "come to life", since water is their natural nutrient medium. The soil is watered with a solution, thus ridding it of pesticides. Lilia Anisimova has learned how to make a paste from bacteria, which has the same properties as powder, but at the same time is easier to produce. It will be possible to process 5-6 acres for $ 15, which is 30 times cheaper than existing methods of cleaning the earth today – composting and pyrolysis at high temperature (up to 1500 ° C).

In the nomination "Innovative product", the expert council again singled out a biotechnological project – the cultivation of artificial leather. Its author is Ramil Rakhmatullin from Orenburg State University. In 2004, a young scientist participated with his idea in The contest of Russian innovations, organized by the Expert magazine, and became a finalist in the nomination "Promising idea". Over the past five years, he has finally managed to come close to production – the production of Russian artificial leather can begin as early as the third quarter of 2010.

The new biomaterial is based on hyaluronic acid. It is a viscous gel-like substance that is contained in the human body and performs various functions: binds water in the intercellular space, participates in its distribution in tissues, acts as a lubricant in joints and normalizes intraocular pressure. Ramil Rakhmatullin created a new pharmaceutical and biotechnological product based on this substance. Artificial skin consists of natural components, is not rejected by the body and, moreover, actively promotes wound healing, gradually dissolving on the body. Peptides included in the material trigger the process of self-regulation in the cells and contribute to the production of hyaluronic acid by the cells themselves. "It is painless, does not require bandages, helps quickly and gives a good cosmetic effect – there are no scars and scars," says the scientist from Orenburg. The effect of bio-skin was successfully tested on several dozen patients with severe burns who were not helped by existing treatment methods.