SAMPE Journal - January/February 2013 - (Page 26)

Perspectives Steven Rodgers SAMPE Past President and Consultant, EmergenTek LLC Steven.R@EmergenTek.com Stop and Look Around “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” – Ferris Bueller's Day Off Do you ever find yourself feeling restricted by a narrow technological niche? I know I do sometimes. Yet it is important to remain open to new technologies and the materials and processes that will empower them. I like to think of myself as a technologist with a broad array of interests in materials and their applications. On the other hand, sometimes I have to admit that my thinking is sometimes shaped by the focus of my career, which has been largely in aerospace composites. So I find myself delighted when I am lifted by circumstances from that which is familiar into discovering something that technically is related to some of the work that I have done but in an application that is far removed from the world in which I have lived and worked. It is for this reason that I attend a number of local technology events that are outside my immediate areas of expertise. Imagine my delight when I received information from one such local group doing a presentation on “Personalized Healthcare”. The event was located in a wine bar and the format supported three speakers giving their perspectives followed by a moderated question and answer session with the panel. I immediately sent in my RSVP and registered to attend. Things of a bio-medical nature have always been of interest to me. I nearly changed my major to biology when I was in college. Later after I had spent several years in aerospace composites one of my favorite programs was one in which we designed and qualified a dialysate tank for in-home kidney dialysis. I was looking forward to this evening on general principles, but I had no idea what my eyes were about to be opened to. As the presentations unfolded that night I found that personalized healthcare is the name given to a bold new approach to medicine in which the efficacy of potential therapies are connected to a database of genomic types. Once your malady is diagnosed the doctor can choose the appropriate therapy based on your specific genome. Therapies become much more targeted. Success rates improve as the doctor no longer has to give you a handful of potential pharmaceuticals and have you tell him how they worked for you. There is only one complicating factor: In order to usher in this new era of healthcare, we need to read and record every patient’s genome quickly and economically. In case you have forgotten, we were able to read and record a single human genome for the very first time in 2003. Here is an idea of the magnitude and scope of the Human Genome Project: • • • • • It was finished ahead of schedule in only 13 years, compared to the original 15-year program plan, 20 institutions were involved, There were more than 2000 people involved, It was a multinational effort involving more than 7 nations, and, The total cost of the project was $2.7 billion. That was the level of effort involved in reading the first human genome a decade ago. At the risk of seeming redundant, let me repeat that there is only one complicating factor in moving forward with personalized healthcare: We need to be able read and record every patient’s genome quickly and economically. The target is to be able to read and record an entire human genome accurately in a few minutes for a few hundred dollars. And this is where personalized healthcare meets the world of advanced materials. As you may remember, DNA is a double helix of nucleotides connected together like the rungs of a ladder by specific combinations of four base chemicals. It is the sequence of the four paired base chemicals that we want to read and record. The paired combinations of the four base chemicals each have a discrete electrical resistance. If we could quickly and accurately measure the resistance of each rung of the ladder we could record the genome by that method. 26 SAMPE Journal, Volume 49, No. 1, January/February 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of SAMPE Journal - January/February 2013

SAMPE Journal - January/February 2013
Contents
President's Message
Technical Director's Corner
Materials & Products
Welcome SAMPE’s Newest Members
SAMPE LinkedIn Communities
SAMPE 2013|Long Beach
SAMPE Proceedings
Perspectives
Europe News & Views
SAMPE Journal Editorial Calender
SAMPE Europe’s SEICO 2013, Paris, France
SAMPE Europe’s SETEC 13 Wuppertal, Germany
Corporate Partners
Industry News
The SAMPE Foundation
SAMPE Tech 2012-A Review
SAMPE Tech 2012-Photo Gallery
SAMPE Tech 2013|Wichita, KS Call for Papers
SAMPE China 2012-A Review
SAMPE China-Photo Gallery
Advertiser’s Index
Resource Center
SAMPE Membership Application
SAMPE Books & CD’s Order Form
Industry Events Calendar
Chapter Contacts

SAMPE Journal - January/February 2013