What will the future look like? On June 5, four research experts and around 200 guests gathered at the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines to answer this question. The event, Sanford-Burnham’s annual President’s Circle reception, brought together Dr. Anthony Tether, former director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Greg Lucier, chairman of both Life Technologies and the Sanford-Burnham board of trustees and Dr. Michael Jackson, vice president of Drug Discovery at Sanford-Burnham and was moderated by Duane Roth, CEO of CONNECT. Together, they shared their thoughts on how research will impact human health in coming years.
DARPA has been a key part of the United States’ technological success for 50 years. The agency was created after the first Sputnik launch, an event that shocked the American public and led to new approaches to research. “DARPA was initiated to create technological surprise,” said Dr. Tether.
From microelectronics, to the internet to numerous medical advances, DARPA has either conducted the underlying research from which these world-changing technologies sprang or created the technologies themselves.
Dr. Tether noted that DARPA works differently from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). While NIH requires detailed data to support a research proposal, “at DARPA, we take a bet on an idea.” One idea DARPA is betting on is artificial limbs. The agency has been supporting efforts to translate neural signals into mechanical movements, with great success. In the future, these artificial limbs may dramatically restore function for amputees.
Greg Lucier spoke about the great promise of genome sequencing. “The first genome cost $3 billion to produce,” said Lucier. “Now, you can do the same thing for around $4,000.”
Lucier feels that these new economies will lead to a revolution in personalized medicine. In the future, physicians will routinely sequence both cancer patients and the tumors that afflict them. With that information, they will determine which drugs will be most effective against that particular patient’s cancer.
Dr. Jackson detailed a different type of genomics—chemical genomics, which seeks chemical compounds that can beneficially alter a dysfunctional protein’s behavior. In particular, he noted how researchers are now creating “diseases in a dish”, which use a patient’s own cells to model his or her individual disease. He gave one example from the Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics, where scientists are studying muscle cells derived from a child with a rare form of muscular dystrophy and testing chemicals that may one day treat this disease.
Earlier in the event, the Eric Dudl Award, which each year is given to an outstanding postdoctoral researcher, was presented to Dr. Peter Mace of the Riedl laboratory. Dr. Mace is studying ways to overcome drug resistance in cancer, particularly Tamoxifen resistance in breast cancer.
The President’s Circle honors Sanford-Burnham supporters who have made gifts of $1,000 or more.