PRESS RELEASES   The Future of the Future is Science 06/06/2006 Oklahoma Health Center News Vol. 12 No. 3, 2006 There was a time, in the axial age of religion, when one could say the future of the future is religion, or, at the beginning of the Golden Age of Greece, it could be argued that the future of the future is philosophy. Today, science is in the driver's seat of Cultural Revolution. Every comprehensive news media covers the accelerating growth of scientific research: "U.S. researchers have identified a genetic switch involved in animal growth that also can prevent normal cells from becoming cancerous, a finding that could lead to the development of new cancer drugs." (Health Day News, April 20, 2006) What they "found" (I love that, science "finds" things, it is not about "creatio ex nihilo") was a tumor suppressor gene called PTEN which also functions to block cell growth when food is absent. Or, what about Pharmaco-metabonomics? Personalized medicine is just around the corner. Now, according to the MIT Technology Review, there is an efficient and effective metabolic screen that can predict individual drug reactions. We have a company in the PHF Research Park that works in this genre of activity. The folks at M.I.T. state: "Screening urine for metabolites might provide a new way to predict adverse drug reactions or proper dose levels." This process is called pharmaco-metabonomics, and it "could be" superior to genetic tests and speed the progress of personalized medicine. I.B.M joins the bioscience future in many ways, including the personalized medicine based on each person's DNA. They say, "It's coming--part of the radical shift under way in healthcare as science in which business and academia converge....IBM is working with Tgen and Arizona State to help turn genomic discoveries into personalized medicine. Sped along by advanced algorithms and supercomputing power, Tgen and ASU's Biodesign Institute now process billions of data points in days instead of months or years." IBM has a Computation Biology Center which is a long way from the old Selectric Typewriter days, isn't it? IBM can rightly call itself "The innovator's innovator." Or, way out in the thought pattern, but not far into the future, is Ray Kurzweil writing this week on nanotechnology and our biological future. A robotic white blood cell is being designed (M.I.T., of course). This complicated nano-device downloads software from the Internet to combat specific pathogens. If it sounds very futuristic to download information to a device inside your body to perform a health function, let us be aware that we're already doing that. There are about a dozen neural implants either FDA-approved or approved for human testing. One implant that is FDA-approved for actual clinical use replaces the biological neurons destroyed by Parkinson's disease. The neurons in the vicinity of this implant then receive signals from the computer that is inside the patient's brain. This hybrid of biological and nonbiological intelligence works perfectly well. The latest version of this device allows the patient to download new software to the neural implant in his brain from outside his, or her, body. Welcome to the future, welcome to science. Science is working here at the PHF Research Park bringing concepts to solutions for a better human future.