Monday, August 26, 2013

The future of medicine

The life span of a man or woman would be 10-20 years longer should modern medicine was efficient at monitoring human health, detecting deviations to future standards biomarkers and driver genes of diseases timely, and treating using targeted approaches efficiently delivered.  It is also true that given the number of processes to be monitored, we have to wake up to the fact that future doctors would be a computer since minutia sorting through the multitude of genes and their state and prominent interactions would be hard to process by one human brain!  The quicker we realize this, the better for human kind!   The understanding of current top physicians is minuscule compared to the task at hand!  We are at the door of the cell which is cracked barely to see what is inside, and our understanding is quite preliminary because at a "gross level" not at the NANO-PARTICULE LEVEL.  Indeed, if we are planning to deliver medicine using nano-vehicles, we got to get to this level of science!
The surprising part to this is that things are in our side!  Life wants to survive, and any help it can get will be for the better.  And we have not sufficiently help because we still do not know enough and mismanage our resources.  The current knowledge is preliminary and fragmented at best!.
We know life wants to survive because when it starts it moves deliberately to produce an organism that is able to sustain life by properly processing the environment. A viable unit such as man,
full of purpose even beyond its corporal limits.  This drive to conquer the environment come deep from the purpose of life: survival and differentiate and adapt if necessary!  Every important lesson learned is written into our genes for a very quick answer to stimuli that challenges us daily.  The writing is in the epigenic area of our cells.  Indeed methylation of genes is not random.  The writing is is in the Macromolecules organized in "Core Binding proteins", into pattern of methylation of genes through CPGs but also through miRNA which regulate gene expression!
The drive to life preservation and survival follow strict forces of nature occurring into chemical chain reactions following basic chemical rules (laws of nature).  These forces are deliberate, organized and constantly occuring driven again by patterns learned.  The unlearned stimulations go through the NF-kB which reads the epigenic repertoire that exist, and ready to write new ones! 

Defining new new Biomarkers is an important step.
And we have started to do just that.  Today the diagnosis POEMS (polyneuropathy, Organomegaly,Endocrinopathy, M proteins, and SKIN changes ) include one criteria that was unheard of 20 years ago, "elevation of VEGF (Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor)". (to be continued)

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