Towards accelerated medical innovation

摘要

This talk will explore platform technologies that are currently being developed in the KarpLab at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, to tackle medical problems. Namely, minimally invasive sealing of tissues and wounds including blood vessels and heart tissue, achieving long term local immunosuppression for treatment of vascularized composite allografts, and engineered stem cell therapy for treatment of diseases such as multiple sclerosis and prostate cancer. Many of the technologies developed in the Karplab harness lessons from nature for inspiration, as evolution represents millions and millions of years of research and development and thus nature truly is the best problem solver (creatures used for inspiration include geckos, spider webs, jellyfish, porcupine quills, snails, and spiny headed worms). This talk will also highlight a new research model for accelerated medical innovation. Some of the technologies that will be described are rapidly advancing to the clinic and some are already on the market helping patients.