Skolkovo biomedical technologies will grow

Skolkovo recommends biomedicine
About the first day of the session – in the correspondent's report ER-portal.ruOn Tuesday, February 1, Moscow hosted the opening of an international session dedicated to the development of biomedical technologies.

According to the organizers of the event, it will last two days. The session is held within the framework of the meeting of the Advisory Scientific Council of the Skolkovo Foundation. The previous meeting of the Advisory Scientific Council of the Skolkovo Foundation was held in Moscow on October 15, 2010 and was devoted to organizational surveys.

"The first day of the session, without any exaggeration, can be called a stellar one," he shared his impression with a correspondent ER-portal.ru The representative of the host party is Igor Goryanin, Executive Director of the cluster of Biological and Medical Technologies of the Skolkovo Foundation, Professor at the University of Edinburgh, Head of the Laboratory of Biological Systems at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology. – It is enough just to list the names of the speakers, Academician Alexander Archakov, Academician Mikhail Kirpichnikov, academician Yuri Gulyaev, founder of "4-P" medicine Leroy Hood, Nobel laureate Zhores Alferov."

The only Nobel Prize winner among scientists living in Russia, Zhores Alferov, in his speech made a special emphasis on supporting young scientists, wished them to dare and achieve success. Alexander Archakov spoke about the progress of Russian scientists in the implementation of the international program on "Proteomics", Yuri Gulyaev about the prospects of a multi-scientific approach in science. It was obvious that the listeners of the session, mainly representatives of the scientific community, listened to each of the speakers with great interest. The title of "the highlight of the program", according to the general opinion of the guests, was given to the founder of the project to compile a table of a complete set of human genes, the winner of the Lemelson-MIT prize for the invention of "four tools that allowed us to discover many secrets of human biology", the founder of the so-called "4-R" medicine, Professor Leroy Hood.

Hood came to Skolkovo with a proposal to organize an institute of systems biology and medicine, similar to the one he organized in Luxembourg. The activities of such an institute, according to Lee Hood, require rather modest funding, namely 100 million US dollars for 5 years.

Perhaps it will seem a lot, the American scientist clarified. However, we should not forget that in order to commercialize science, it is necessary that this science itself be. It is required to start with education. According to the master, the shortage of educated personnel in science is not only a Russian problem, but a global one: "We spend a lot of time and money on education, training, training of young specialists. It takes years before the young specialists who come to us begin to understand what they are doing and can have their say in the development of the subject. But at the same time, we understand that young scientists need to be given the opportunity to establish themselves in science, to be given the opportunity to have their say."

Research in the field of systems biology, Hood continued, is funded by the US government, governments of other countries, as well as business, industry, for which special non-profit partnerships are being created: "We must clearly understand where we can move within the framework of our strategic partnership, understand what tasks we set in the field of commercialization of results."

In the very near future, Lee Hood believes, biology as a science should transform, become multidisciplinary: "I'm talking about a revolution in biology. I believe that the future lies in the fact that all sciences use the same tools, including information, and "speak" the same language. In this regard, I repeat, the training of new scientists is a big and very urgent task."

According to Professor Hood, healthcare has great prospects in the field of commercialization: "When we first started our research in the field of systemic medicine, we had quite a lot of opponents who looked skeptically at our experiments. Therefore, systems biology and systems medicine have become something like parallel brands in order to distinguish them from traditional biology."

"A systematic view of diseases," Hood said, "means that to some extent there is a violation in the biological network that actually causes the disease. If you arm yourself with this principle, you can take a completely different look at the treatment of diseases itself, and at the possibilities of medicine in general. Currently, we have identified 5 main types of people for ourselves, and 8-9 diseases, including oncological (cancer – ed.)."

The task we have set does not look simple, the scientist added, we will need to learn how to extract information about the activity of the whole organism from one cell, translate this information into digital mode, while doing it all online. This means that out of about 70 thousand genes, it is necessary to isolate the one that, whether as a result of mutation or other change, causes the system to malfunction. The detection of such a gene can be carried out in a preventive mode, even before the manifestation of the disease. It is clear, Hood noted, that at the level of practical activity, in each clinic, for example, a simplified, formalized method of work will be required: "But at the same time, the use of such a method will bring medicine to a qualitatively new level. In two years, we plan to deal with all types of DNA."

In a word, Professor Hood clarified, the overall task is not easy, however, a lot has already been done in its solution: "We are now approaching the fact that we would do up to 25 thousand measurements based on the analysis of one drop of blood. At the same time, billions of pieces of information are needed for the operational control of diseases, the development of techniques will require the efforts of many doctors, it will be necessary to collect thousands, millions of patients."

"For us, the report of Leroy Hood," commented ER-portal.ru the speech of the American scientist Professor Evgeny Nikolaev, sounds like science fiction. I really want to clarify that, from the researcher's point of view, none of the theses uttered by Hood is fabulous or unreal. The tasks are urgent, they need to be solved, it's another matter how. This requires knowledge and technology that we do not have today. I cannot speak on behalf of the Skolkovo administration, accept or not accept Professor Leroy Hood's proposal, it will be decided by the project administration. My expert opinion is as follows: the knowledge and technologies possessed by the scientific school of Leroy Hood, without any doubt, are interesting and would be useful for our science and medicine."

The signing of memorandums of cooperation between the Skolkovo Foundation and the institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences will take place on February 2, on the same day the presentation of urban planning concepts of the Skolkovo Innovation Center will take place.

As already reported ER-portal.ru The Skolkovo Innovation Center is intended to become Russia's largest testing ground for a new economic policy. Special conditions for research and development, including the creation of energy and energy-efficient technologies, nuclear, space, biomedical and computer technologies, will be created on a specially designated territory.

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02.02.2011