Page 11 - Biotech Career Guide

New Ways to Fight Diseases
Mosquitoes are not
only annoying, but
they also spread
deadly diseases like
malaria, dengue,
and Zika, killing up
to 1,000,000 people
per year. But it’s the
females who bite,
hungry for blood to
produce their offspring. Now, Oxitec has genetically
modified the male mosquitoes to produce only other
male offspring. They are being released into the wild to
mate with females, generating offspring that cannot sur-
vive. The process offers a promising solution to combat
the devastating impact of mosquito-borne illnesses on
human health. Could cockroaches be next?
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SYNTHETIC SKIN AND
REPLACEMENT TISSUES
Soldiers in the field can suffer some of the worst
wounds imaginable. The good news is that scien-
tists have made enormous advances in what’s
called regenerative medicine. They’ve created
synthetic tissues that work just like real skin and
organs. This means that we can use these tissues
to help treat burns and wounds, and even re-
place organs that are damaged. So even if sol-
diers are in really far away or dangerous places,
they can still get the medical care they need to
recover. Regenerative medicine is an enormous
area of biotechnology, with many companies
around the globe developing these technologies.
And it’s not just soldiers who will benefit. These
same regenerative technologies will also im-
prove the lives of injured firefighters, who sustain
serious burns on a regular basis — and anyone
else with similar injuries.
REAL-TIME MEDICAL SENSING
Companies like Profusa
Biosciences are develop-
ing implantable biosen-
sors: super-tiny devices
that are implanted in the
skin and allow for real-time, remote monitoring
of a person’s health, stress levels, oxygen levels,
and blood chemistry. As you can imagine, this
kind of information would be extremely useful in
the battlefield, making it easier for medical per-
sonnel to monitor soldiers’ vital signs remotely.
These biosensors could also be used to help
doctors and patients manage chronic conditions,
such as diabetes or kidney disease — like having
a medical team 24/7.
Gene technologies hold enormous potential for humans,
too. Biotechnologists at companies like CRISPR Thera-
peutics and Intellia Therapeutics are now able to make
precise changes to DNA sequences, allowing them to
correct genetic mutations. Since more than 6,000 hu-
man diseases are caused by genetic mutations, this
technology has huge potential for major medical break-
throughs — and enormous economic growth.
Gene Therapies
PROTECTING OUR TROOPS
SHUTTERSTOCK; COURTESY PROFUSA BIOSCIENCES BIOTECHNOLOGY CAREER GUIDE