Breakthrough Bioscience Technologies In 2020 By MIT Technology Review
MIT Technology Review has released its annual list of technological advances that would make a real difference in solving major problems and the way we live and work.
Hyper-personalized medicine
The new class of drugs tailored to a person’s genes is changing the way doctors and scientists looked at hopeless cases caused by extremely rare and specific DNA mistakes. Hyper-personalized medicines are definitely one of the top Breakthrough Bioscience technologies in 2020
One such hopeless case was that of Mila Makovec, a little girl suffering from a devastating disease caused by a unique genetic mutation, who got a drug manufactured just for her. Doctors were able to develop a treatment from the readout of her genetic error within a year. The drug was named, milasen after her.
Even though the treatment couldn’t treat her illness completely, it stabilized her condition, reduced seizures, and made her stand and walk with assistance. The development of this gene medicine was the fastest in history.
The new medicines might take the form of gene editing, gene replacement, or a sort of molecular eraser like antisense (the type Mila received), which erases or fixes erroneous genetic messages. These treatments can be programmed in digital speed in a digital fashion to compensate or correct for inherited diseases.
Anti-aging drugs
Drugs that can treat ailments like heart disease, cancer, and dementia by targeting a natural aging process in the body have shown promise.
The first batch of anti-aging drugs has entered the human trials. These drugs not only let humans live longer but also cure specific ailments by reversing the process of aging. This makes the anti-aging drugs one of breakthrough bioscience technologies of 2020. Anti-aging drugs are expected to be available in less than 5 years.
Senolytics, an anti-aging drug first to enter a clinical trial, removes the cells accumulated in the body as we age. These cells can cause low-level inflammation that could suppress normal cellular repair mechanisms and create a toxic environment for neighboring cells.
Unity Biotechnology, a San Francisco–based company reported the primary results of anti-aging drugs in mild to severe osteoarthritis patients in June. By the second half of 2020, results from a larger clinical trial are expected. They are also developing anti-aging drugs for age-related illnesses of eyes and lungs.
Alkahest has developed a treatment to halt the cognitive and functional decline in patients suffering from mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease by injecting patients with components found in young people’s blood.
Researchers at Drexel University College of Medicine also tried to see if a cream with rapamycin, an immune-suppressing drug could slow down aging in human skin.
AI-discovered molecules
There are around 1060 molecules that could be turned into potentially life-saving drugs, a number larger than the number of atoms in the solar system. If scientists can find the worthwhile ones, these different molecules offer unlimited chemical possibilities
The large database of molecules and their properties can be explored using machine learning and could generate new possibilities. The use of machine learning can make the discovery of new drugs cheaper and faster. AI discovered drugs are expected to be available within 3-5 years.
Hong Kong-based Insilico Medicine and the University of Toronto researchers showed in September that synthesizing several drug candidates found by AI algorithms could be useful.
Scientists identified 30,000 novel molecules with desirable properties using techniques like deep learning and generative models. They chose six molecules to synthesize and test. One among the six proved promising in animal tests.
Chemists acquire the art of discovering new molecules through years of experience. But now researchers have a tool to help expand their imaginations.
Quantum Supremacy
One of major breakthrough technologies of 2020 would be quantum computers. Google has already provided proof of a quantum computer outperforming a classical one.
They can store and process data in a very different way from the classical ones. They can solve problems that would take millennia to solve using a classical supercomputer. Cracking a cryptographic code or stimulating the precise behavior of molecules useful in drugs or materials can be easily done using these quantum computers. They are expected to be available in 5-10 years.
In October, Google claimed the demonstration of a quantum computer with 53 qubits (the basic unit of quantum computation) that solved a problem in three minutes, which would have taken 10,000 years, or 1.5 billion times to solve using the world’s biggest supercomputer. IBM challenged Google’s claim, saying that it could not be more than a thousandfold fast. Even a thousandfold faster computer is a milestone, as every additional qubit will make the computer twice as fast.
Once quantum computing gains more ground, it could revolutionize the way we hunt for new biological molecules, and more.
Tiny AI
Researchers are using a huge amount of data and computing power, relying on centralized cloud services to build more powerful algorithms. This limits the speed and privacy of AI applications as well as emit alarming amounts of carbon.
But the concept of tiny AI is allowing us to run powerful algorithms in a phone. Academic researchers and tech giants are trying to develop new algorithms to shrink existing deep learning models, keeping the capabilities intact. Moreover, specialized AI chips are being developed which will help to run AI on far less energy and physical space.
Google announced last May that they can now run Google Assistant on users’ phones without sending requests to a remote server. Similarly, Apple runs its QuickType keyboard and Siri’s speech recognition capabilities locally on the iPhone. Amazon and IBM are also offering developer platforms for making and using AI.
This will make existing services like digital cameras, autocorrect and voice assistants faster and better without having to ping the cloud every time they need access to a deep-learning model. This will help achieve advancements in the field of systems biology & allied fields as well. Tiny AI is safer in terms of privacy and will make new applications like self-driving cars and mobile-based medical image analysis possible.
Tiny AI can also bring some challenges like harder to combat deepfake videos or surveillance systems. Policymakers, engineers and researchers should work together to develop technical and policy checks on these potential harms.
Climate Change Attribution
Researchers can now provide a clearer sense of how climate change plays a role in extreme weather and what can be done to prevent that.
The high-resolution simulations of worlds where climate change did and didn’t occur were compared by the World Weather Attribution group. They found its 2.6 times more likely and 28% more intense for a severe storm to occur in the former one, the world we live in.
Scientists were reluctant to link any event to climate change earlier this decade. But rapidly improving tools and techniques along with the extreme weather attribution studies have made them confident to link climate change to various events.
A combination of technological advances has made this possible. The first one would be the lengthening record of detailed satellite data which is helping to understand natural systems. Also, scientists can create higher-resolution simulations and conduct many more virtual experiments due to increased computing power.
These studies help us to predict what kinds of risks we need to prepare for including how severe heatwaves will get and how much flood to expect with the worsening global warming.