“We have learned that the impossible is possible, and advances are being made that we could not have imagined just a few years ago,” said Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and President for Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System, at the conclusion of the school’s third annual SinaInnovations conference in November.
The conference, which took place on campus Tuesday and Wednesday, November 18 and 19, respectively, focused on breakthroughs in medicine and engineering that improve human health and was sponsored jointly with Mount Sinai’s academic affiliate Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI).
Among the leaders from academia and industry who shared their thoughts and discoveries was keynote speaker Eric J. Topol, MD, Director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla, California, and a best-selling author. Dr. Topol said the wireless digital world and the world of genomics are beginning to converge and will lead to a transformation in the way health care is practiced and the way disease is diagnosed and treated.
Andrew Conrad, PhD, Director of Google X, Google’s innovation laboratory, was also a keynote speaker. He said in today’s medical environment there is so much we still do not know about the human body. But the future will rest on knowing far more about what is going on in a patient’s body at the cellular level. Google X is studying the use of nanoparticles, he said. With enhanced nanotechnology and personalized information, physicians will be able to penetrate the patient’s body and gather more detailed information.
Angela Belcher, PhD, Chair of the Department of Biological Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said her laboratory is building new imaging tools to help surgeons locate small cancerous tumors that are not visible to the eye. The probes are currently being tested in mice. Her goal, she said, is “to develop inexpensive, minimally invasive technology to track single cells.”
Miguel A. Nicolelis, MD, PhD, Professor in Neuroscience and Co-Director of the Center for Neuroengineering at Duke University Medical Center highlighted the progress his lab has made in using brain power to control body movement.
“The age of brain-activating technology is here now,” said Dr. Nicolelis, who told the audience that as a young doctor in the late 1980s, he was frustrated by his inability to treat the conditions he could diagnose.
The latest breakthrough, he said, was seen throughout the world in June, when his patient, 29-year-old paraplegic Juliano Pinto, was able to kick a soccer ball at the opening ceremony of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. Mr. Pinto’s movements were guided by his brain waves through electrodes, sensors, and a robotic exoskeleton worn as a vest. The new technology holds significant promise for improving the psychological and physiological outcomes of patients with spinal cord injuries.
To see videos of the conference, visit http://icahn.mssm.edu/sinainnovations/videos/2014-videos
QUOTES:
Scott L. Friedman, MD
Dean for Therapeutic Discovery; Fishberg Professor of Medicine; Professor of Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics; Chief, Division of Liver Diseases, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
“At SinaInnovations, we have seen exceptional discoveries that integrate medicine and engineering. The breadth of development in areas such as nanotechnology, imaging, and brain plasticity is astonishing and points to today’s need for multidisciplinary science.”
Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, PhD
Mikati Foundation Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University
“This is the most exciting time to work in bioengineering. We are growing biological replacements of damaged tissues and organs. We are instructing the patient’s own stem cells to rebuild original tissue using bioengineering tools. There are many challenges, but the progress being made in the field is really gratifying and will enable people to live longer and better lives.”
Shirley Jackson, PhD
President, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
“Medicine, today, increasingly rests on a multiplicity of disciplines, including nanotechnology, data science, high-performance computing, advanced modeling and simulation, and the entire range of biotechnology and engineering disciplines. The possibilities are inspiring, but will only be realized fully when we use these advanced technologies to enable collaborations on a grand scale.”