Advertisement
Health

The future of medicine: 10 innovations to know about

A cancer-sniffing machine, a nasal spray for autism — we tracked down the most exciting, innovative and just plain weird stuff that’s coming in health care, and you won’t believe what we found
The future of medicine: 10 innovations to know about

By Lia Grainger

The Future of Medicine: Diagnosis by DNA

Doctors had done everything to treat six-year-old Nicholas Volker’s inflammatory bowel disease. They’d tried drugs and done numerous surgeries, eventually removing his colon. Yet nothing helped. Desperate, his doctor wrote to researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin, asking them to take the unusual step of sequencing Nicholas’ genome. They did — at a cost of $75,000 — and discovered a mutation on his X chromosome, which was causing an uncontrolled immune response that affected his intestinal tract. They gave him an umbilical-cord-blood transplant, essentially providing him with a new immune system. A year later, though still vulnerable, Nicholas eats normally, plays sports and is back at school.
Scientists have known for decades that genome sequencing — decoding some or all of the three billion pairs of DNA we each carry — could revolutionize medicine. It has long been used for research, but Nicholas’ case took it further: It proved the procedure could also be used for diagnosis and treatment.
“Right now, medicine is one-sizefits- all,” says Kerry Bowman, a bioethicist at the University of Toronto. “If we knew our genomes, the efficiency of treatment would jump.” It could also potentially show patients their genetic disposition to health problems, so they could take pre-emptive action or change their lifestyles accordingly, says Cheryl Shuman, director of genetic counselling at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.
But that doesn’t mean doctors will have all the answers, cautions Bowman. Genes aren’t isolated triggers; they react to one another and to outside variables, and scientists believe it’s those complex interactions that cause many diseases. Still, some global health companies are so excited about the technology’s potential — and the market — that they’re in a race to make gene sequencing cheap enough for all doctors to use. “The magic price point seems to be around $1,000,” says Steve Scherer, director of the Centre for Applied Genomics at the Hospital for Sick Children. The cost has plummeted from $300 million in 2003 to roughly $5,000 today, and it’s expected to hit the $1,000 mark within the next five years.
“Genomic sequencing’s revolutionizing our basic understanding of disease, and things are moving quickly,” says Marco Marra, director of the B.C. Cancer Agency’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre. “We could wake up next year with whole-genome sequencing in much, much wider use. It’s not as distant as people think.”

med01By Lia Grainger

The Future of Medicine: Helping our hearts

A new machine offers an alternative to heart transplants
Lauza Legere beat lung cancer and survived a heart attack. Then the 55-year-old Quebecer needed a new heart, but she wasn’t eligible: The anti-rejection drugs she would have to take after an organ transplant can cause cancer reoccurrence, and her doctor didn’t believe an artificial heart was the best option because her condition didn’t require the full replacement of her heart. Fortunately, she was about to become the fi rst Canadian to get a new kind of heart pump, the C-Pulse.
The C-Pulse is an aid rather than an organ; it’s for people with damaged hearts that aren’t strong enough but still work. Dave Rosa, CEO of Sunshine Heart, the U.S. company that invented the device, says over six million people worldwide could benefi t from it (right now, it’s still in the early stages of testing). According to Legere’s doctor, Renzo Cecere, it may help thousands of Canadians live longer while waiting for a transplant, and it could serve others, like Legere, for the rest of their lives. The next generation, to be released by year’s end , will be 58 percent smaller and 28 percent lighter.
Today, Legere walks easily down the hall at Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital. She sits and places a black satchel the size of a shoebox on the chair next to her. It contains a battery and a computer, which connect to her heart pump through a grey tube that passes through her abdomen and up her chest. She carries the bag everywhere.
The C-Pulse is audible. It’s as if we’re inside a stethoscope; the rhythmic beat permeates the hallway. It’s the sound not of her heartbeat but of air inflating and deflating a small balloon attached to the large artery at the exit point of her heart. After each beat and the closing of the valve, the balloon inflates to make a thumbprint on the ascending aorta. Then the balloon deflates, creating a vacuum effect that reduces the workload of the left ventricle, making a second pulse. The mechanism is 40 years old, but this is the first time it has been implantable.
The invention has changed Legere’s life. She tears up when she talks about her health before the C-Pulse, describing how she was unable to do basic chores and how she gasped for air every few seconds. Now she spends hours cooking and walks her two dogs in the fields behind her home in Laval, just north of Montreal. If all goes well, it’s a turnaround story that will soon be shared by many other Canadians.

A new machine offers an alternative to heart transplantsBy Morgan Dunlop

Advertisement

The Future of Medicine: A vaccine that fights cancer

A team led by Canadian scientists has created a virus that hunts out and destroys cancer cells. Scientists at the University of Ottawa and the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute genetically modifi ed a smallpox vaccine so it was able to infect tumours and replicate itself within them. The outcome: The tumours in 75 percent of the preliminary trial’s 23 participants stabilized or shrank. After being injected into patients, the virus travelled through the bloodstream and infiltrated hard-to-see tumours . And unlike chemotherapy and radiation, the innovative viral therapy’s side effects were only mild to moderate fl u-like symptoms. A second trial with 120 liver-cancer patients is set to begin soon.

The Future of Medicine: A vaccine that fights cancerBy Alanna Glassman

The Future of Medicine: A definitive depression diagnosis

Mental-health patients suffer with the stigma of a disease still seen as subjective. But Dutch researchers say they’re on the cusp of a breakthrough: a blood test that diagnoses depression. They identified a set of seven genes as the molecular signature of depression and were able to detect them in blood. During clinical trials, results were about 70 percent accurate, possibly putting a commercial test on the horizon.

The future of medicine: 10 innovations to know aboutBy Stacy Lee Kong

The Future of Medicine: Life Span Predictor

It sounds like a b-movie plot: Would you really want to know how old you’ll be when you die? But Spanish doctor Maria Blasco has developed a blood test that may be able to tell you just that. It measures the length of your telomeres, the tips of chromosomes that act like shoelace tips, helping protect DNA as it duplicates.
Research shows that aging and unhealthy habits like smoking and stress can shorten your telomeres, which means they may be a reasonable proxy for your biological age. And that means that knowing your telomeres’ length could help predict how long you’ll live. — S.L.K.

The future of medicine: 10 innovations to know about

Advertisement

The Future of Medicine: The cancer sniffer

Hossam Haick had an aha moment six years ago. The Israeli associate professor of chemical engineering was chatting with colleagues about how patients with kidney disease often have breath that smells like ammonia, when he suddenly thought: “What if there was a device that could detect disease on the breath?” Six years and more than $17.9 million in funding later, Haick presented the NA-Nose.
It’s a portable and inexpensive sensor that can smell many cancers, as well as kidney disease, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and multiple sclerosis in people’s breath. It detects disease earlier than traditional tests do, and it’s impressively accurate, even capable of distinguishing between malignant and benign breast-cancer tumours in women. “The ultimate goal of the NA-Nose is to identify cancer at the earliest stage possible,” says Haick. Having just begun testing, the NA-Nose could reach the market in the next three or four years, and the device has the potential to be revolutionary. “Only positively tested patients will require conventional, unpleasant and expensive imaging diagnostics to locate their tumours,” says Haick. “And they will be treated in an early stage, when curability rates are much higher.”

The future of medicine: 10 innovations to know aboutBy L.G.

The Future of Medicine: The virtual doctor

Skyping your specialist, getting test results by email — welcome to a new kind of doctor’s appointment.
Health care is about to get a whole lot more plugged in, thanks to video-chat software, e-health platforms, and apps that turn smartphones into medical tools. Encrypted websites now let some patients request prescriptions and access lab results and important documents like immunization records online — or just email their doctor a question. And some Canadian therapists already see patients by video chat.
But that’s far from what telemedicine is truly capable of. For a glimpse of the future, we turned to the U.K. and the States, where it’s taking off. In the U.S., several online companies allow patients to log on from anywhere in the country and video chat with a doctor or specialist, who can give advice, send e-prescriptions or direct patients to labs for further tests (a level of accessibility that would be a godsend to Canadians in smaller towns).
In parts of England, meanwhile, some people discharged with heart disease can have their homes equipped with machines that measure their weight, blood pressure and pulse daily, then send the results to a nurse. Patients can also type in their symptoms so nurses can respond immediately to a patient’s reports of breathlessness, for example.
Similar technology could be used to send a diabetic’s blood-sugar results for the week to a doctor, or let you track your caloric intake and exercise logs, and send them to a dietitian. It’ll all make playing phone tag with your doctor’s office feel like ancient history.

The future of medicine: 10 innovations to know aboutBy Wendy Glauser

The Future of Medicine: Super Drugs

Breakthroughs are coming every day, offering new hope against old diseases. here are three potential game changers:

Autism Spray Could autism one day be treated with nasal spray? Canadian researchers have been testing a nasal spray created with oxytocin, a.k.a. the trust hormone. Adults with high functioning autism who used the spray were able to better recognize emotions on faces and saw a decrease in their repetitive behaviour.
Most reported an improved quality of life. “It’s exciting,” says Evdokia Anagnostou, a clinician scientist at the Bloorview Research Institute in Toronto, who has studied the effects of the hormone for half a decade.
“We’ve never had a treatment that improves social function like this before.”

COMING 2026

Alzheimer’s Antibody Researchers from across Canada, the United States and Europe may have found an important treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. The new drug, called bapineuzumab, is an antibody that is delivered intravenously and has been shown to target the buildup of amyloid proteins, which scientists believe is one of the causes of the disease. It’s currently being tested in late-stage human trials on more than 1,000 patients, with the results expected sometime next year. According to Jack Diamon, scientific director for the Alzheimer’s Society of Canada, if the drug is approved by the FDA, it could be available within the next 10 years.

COMING 2021

Aids Barrier A major advancement in the quest to stop the spread of HIV may already exist — in two drugs that researchers recently proved can also help prevent transmission. University of Washington researchers did a study with couples in Kenya and Uganda of whom one partner was HIV positive and the other person wasn’t. They found that Viread, which is used to manage the virus, reduced the risk of transmission by 62 percent, and a similar drug, Truvada, reduced the risk of infection by 73 percent. According to the United Nations, it’s a significant development in the battle against the disease.

COMING 2012

The future of medicine: 10 innovations to know aboutBy Lora Grady

Advertisement

The Future of Medicine: A healing space

DIGITAL PHOTOFRAMES, loaded wirelessly by patients or guests, make the room feel homey.

FLOOR-TO-CEILING WINDOWS, let in natural light, which boosts serotonin and fights depression. According to one study, daylight also reduces the amount of pain medication patients take by 22 percent.

DESIGNER HOSPITAL GOWNS, with flattering V-necks and drawstring waists, and matching shawls replace those drafty, pale ones. Sound far-fetched? It’s not; similar styles already exist in the U.K.

A FLAT SCREEN, lets doctors pull up X-rays and videos to explain diagnoses and procedures to patients, and specialists weigh in via webcam. Patients can also video chat with family and friends — or just watch reruns.

PLANTS, help clean the air, and some studies suggest seeing nature helps reduce pain, nausea and even fever, and shortens hospital stays.

MURPHY BEDS, encourage visitors, who offer valuable emotional support, to stay overnight.

THERAPY DOGS, provide a dose of puppy love, comforting patients and helping ward off depression.

SMART BEDS, have built-in scales to weigh patients, monitor vital signs wirelessly and contain an alarm that goes off if someone leaves the bed when they’re not supposed to.

The future of medicine: 10 innovations to know about

The Future of Medicine: Alzheimer’s blood test

A simple, effective test for Alzheimer’s has long eluded researchers. “We’ve been searching for this for 15 years,” says professor of medicine Vassilios Papadopoulos at McGill University in Montreal. He may have finally found it with a blood test that looks for a brain chemical healthy people produce and those with Alzheimer’s don’t. In the 86 patients he tested, it predicted who had the disease and who didn’t every single time. Papadopoulos says it may be available in as little as two to three years.

The future of medicine: 10 innovations to know aboutBy Lora Grady

GET CHATELAINE IN YOUR INBOX!

Subscribe to our newsletters for our very best stories, recipes, style and shopping tips, horoscopes and special offers.

By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy. You may unsubscribe at any time.

Advertisement
Advertisement