Wednesday, December 27, 2006

The Year in Biotech

Brain Chips, Gene Chips, Magical Pills, and Stem-Cell Cures.

By Emily Singer

Transplanted photoreceptor cells (green against a backdrop of host-retinal cells, shown in blue) offer hope for people already blind from degenerative eye disease. Credit: Robin Ali and Robert MacLaren

A pill for having your cake and eating it too.
Resveratrol, a component of red wine, has previously been linked to longevity: the compound can extend life in yeast, roundworms, fruit flies, and fish. In November, scientists found that it also boosts the health of mice.(See "A Life-Extending Pill for Fat Mice.") The compound, when administered in doses many times that found in a glass or even a bottle of red wine, keeps middle-aged mice on a high-fat, high-calorie diet as healthy and long-lived as mice on a more sensible diet, improving insulin sensitivity and heart and liver function. Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, a startup that participated in the research, is developing a resveratrol-like pill that it hopes will slow or stop the diseases of aging, including type II diabetes.

Restoring vision in blind mice.
In November, a breakthrough in stem-cell research brought new hope to people with macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa, two degenerative eye diseases that lead to blindness. Researchers in London created retinal cells from stem cells and then implanted them in the eyes of mice that had been bred to suffer from retinal degeneration.The cells integrated into the retina, forming functional connections with existing retinal cells. (See "Retinal Transplant Restores Vision in Mice.") While it's not yet clear if the same process will work in humans, scientists at the University of Washington, in Seattle,developed a method to reliably grow retinal cells from human embryonic stem cells,providing a potential source of cells for human transplants.(See "Using Stem Cells to Cure Blindness.")

Banana-scented bacteria, engineered to order.
Sweet-smelling bacteria are just one of the unusual biological creations that emerged this year from the growing field of synthetic biology. The ultimate goal of synthetic biology is to create biological machines that can perform useful functions, such as producing energy or attacking diseased cells in the body. While tumor-killing bacteria are still a ways off, biological engineers are currently developing -- and showing off -- the "biological parts" needed to make more-complex designs.(See "Bizarre Bacterial Creations," "Better Fuel Cells Using Bacteria," and "Tumor-Killing Bacteria.") Each part is generated with bits of DNA that, when inserted into living organisms, can make the organisms glow, detect light, and perform a number of other novel functions. Scientists submit theirs parts, such as those used to create the banana-scented bacteria, to the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, a sort of hardware store for genetic parts housed at MIT. The registry then distributes the genetic building blocks around the world.