2018年令人振奮的五個生技趨勢
在過去的一年中，我對生物技術和生物技術評論期刊應涵蓋的內容有很多不同的 看法 。 現在我們已經達到了一個有用的定義，那麼熱圖的哪些部分似乎會在明年變得更加熱門？
以下是2018年我將關注的幾個領域。
1.細菌群落
我們都聽說過人類微生物群體以及它如何秘密地控制著我們的一切。 各種微生物群背後的想法是，許多培養在一起的微生物不僅僅是它們的部分總和，無論是在人類腸道，一瓶康普茶，還是工業生物反應器。 幾十年來，我們一直在使用單一微生物（通常是麵包酵母或非感染性大腸桿菌菌株）來生產特種化學品和藥物，儘管生物分子工程師開始利用某些微生物之間的協同關係來更快地處理化學品，更多徹底或在較溫和的條件下。
但是細菌群落可以被利用來做有趣的事情，而不僅僅是工業加工。 例如，碳氫化合物細菌存在於復雜的結構化網絡中，可以策略性地部署以清理溢油 。 微生物相互作用甚至被認為是法醫學中的痕跡證據 ，其基礎是人類皮膚微生物群體組成的變化可以幫助在犯罪發生時在時間和空間中定位嫌疑人。
2.天然產物和植物合成生物學
中國傳統醫藥在過去幾年已成為分析化學世界中不太可能突破的明星。 現在我們擁有快速高效分析生物樣品的工具，對於源自所謂天然產物的傳統療法（通常是歷史上與藥效相關的植物或真菌）的功效有著新的科學支持。 一旦科學家了解天然產物功效的分子基礎 ，在受控和規範的生物過程中合成這些產品變得更容易。
正如現在製造設計微生物以促進化學轉化一樣，合成生物學的下一個前沿可能會合理地設計出更高的真菌和植物。甚至連我在加州大學伯克利分校的舊化學工程係都微妙地從生物燃料轉向“ 仿生植物 ”和天然產物生物合成 。 畢竟，如果我們可以設計酵母來生產蛋白質，為什麼不從生菜或大米中提取抗癌疫苗呢？
3.臨床生物加工
昨晚，一位名叫羅恩的熟人問我是否在做有趣的工作。 是的，我告訴他，我正在研究組織工程的一個特殊問題。 羅恩不是科學家，所以我預計他的興趣會停在那裡。 相反，當我解釋生物製作時，他的眼睛閃爍著光芒 ，我開始在生物打印的器官上進行一次最不可能的五分鐘對話，我記得。 事實證明，他的父親最近被診斷患有腎臟疾病，並想知道我們有多接近能夠製造生物合成腎並將其植入人體。
我不確定羅恩是否知道他問的問題有多好。 “不幸的是，至少幾年之後”是我能想到的最好答案。 這個領域的最新進展是巨大的：在僅僅十年的時間裡，我們已經從三維打印機變成了大學圖書館和玩具企業家的閒暇時光，為快速原型開發出十幾種策略來重述人類器官幾何形狀和功能。 然而，翻譯問題依然牢記在這個領域的每個人的頭腦中：雖然用於藥物篩選的製造肝臟系統 ， 微流體透析芯片和生物打印的胰腺是牢固到達的，但實際上在人類中實施這些技術將會要求批判性地評估免疫相容性，成本效益和製造再現性 - 更不用說管制和公共交流帶來的不可避免的挑戰。
4.更智能的生物電子學和生物傳感器
在生物物理學層面上，大腦只是一個由神經網絡連接的電脈衝集合，所以我們應該能夠理清什麼是什麼並創建我們自己的大腦接口，對嗎？ （ 神經科學雜誌的編輯Moran Furman現在可能會大聲笑出聲來，並且有充分的理由。）這顯然是一種幻想，並且過分簡單化了，但這一領域的一個具體趨勢是向體內傳感器的方向發展 - 具有明顯的超人類觀念的高階認知腦信號處理潛伏在地平線上。
生物傳感器的想法並不是什麼新鮮事物：我們長期以免疫系統的親和力，來自細菌的酶以及來自異國海洋生物的熒光的形式使用生物學，並將它們組合成可以告訴您是否具有與神經退行性疾 病相關的生物標誌物的設備或基孔肯雅。 但隨著計算處理能力繼續呈指數級增長，檢測陣列的尺寸不斷縮小，物聯網包含越來越多的東西，我們可能會想到可穿戴甚至可植入的傳感器 。 這個想法也可以應用於智能繃帶：想想一種能夠實時監測感染風險的傷口敷料，並在太高時釋放額外的防腐劑。
5.生物能源解決方案
生物燃料並沒有去任何地方，但是我已經感覺到從處理陸地植物到燃料的熱情有了一個明確的轉變。 現在什麼令人興奮？ 藻類當然仍然相關，但我們距離每個池塘旁邊的工業規模的藻類煉油廠都很遙遠。 經濟在這裡扮演重要角色：根據一些分析，使藻類生物加工經濟可持續的事物不是燃料，而是顏料。 因此，如果藻類是該領域首選的能源解決方案，利用盡可能多的藻類衍生產品 ，潛在地通過巧妙的基因操作 ，將是非常重要的。
另一個有希望的想法是電發酵，其中微生物（或其群落） 從金屬表面獲取電子並使用電子執行否則不可能的反應 - 如將大氣二氧化碳轉化成有用的化合物，包括返回到燃料中。
台灣生技100強關鍵報告
與往常一樣，我很樂意聽取您的意見：您對2018年及以後最興奮的生物技術趨勢是什麼？
5 biotech trends I'm excited about in 2018
Over the past year, I've thought a lot about what different people mean by biotechnology and what a biotech reviews journal ought to cover. Now that we've reached a useful definition, what parts of that heat map seem poised to get even hotter over the next year?
Here are a few areas I'll be paying attention to in 2018.
1. Bacterial communities
We've all heard about the human microbiome and how it secretly controls everything about us. The idea behind various microbiota is that many microbes cultured together are more than the sum of their parts, whether in the human gut, a bottle of kombucha, or even an industrial bioreactor. We've been using single microorganisms—typically baker's yeast or non-infectious strains of E. coli—to produce specialty
chemicals and pharmaceuticals for decades, though biomolecular engineers are starting to take advantage of synergistic relationships among certain microbes to process chemicals faster, more thoroughly, or under milder conditions.
But bacterial communities can be exploited to do interesting things beyond just industrial processing. For example, hydrocarbon-eating bacteria exist in complex structured networks that can be deployed strategically to clean up oil spills. And microbial interactions have even been pondered as trace evidence in forensics based on the idea that changes in the composition of a person's skin microbial population could help locate a suspect in time and space at the moment when a crime took place.
2. Natural products and plant synthetic biology
Chinese traditional medicine has become an unlikely breakout star of the analytical chemistry world over the past few years. Now that we have the tools to analyze biological samples quickly and efficiently, there is a new wealth of scientific support for the efficacy of traditional therapies derived from so-called natural products, often either plants or fungi that have been historically associated with medicinal effects. Once scientists understand the molecular basis for a natural product's efficacy, it becomes much easier to synthesize these products in a controlled and regulated bioprocess.
And just as it's now routine to create designer microbes to catalyze chemical transformations, the next frontier in synthetic biology might be rationally designed higher fungi and plants. Even my old chemical engineering department at UC Berkeley has subtly shifted away from biofuels and toward "bionic plants" and natural product biosynthesis. After all, if we can engineer yeast to produce proteins, why not anti-cancer vaccines from lettuce or rice?
3. Clinical biofabrication
Last night, an acquaintance of mine named Ron asked me if I was doing anything interesting at work. Yes, I told him, I was working on a special issue on tissue engineering. Ron is not a scientist, so I expected his interest to stop there. Instead, his eyes lit up when I explained biofabrication, and I proceeded to have one of the unlikeliest five-minute conversations on bioprinted organs that I can remember. It turns out that his father was recently diagnosed with kidney disease and wanted to know how close we were to being able to fabricate a biosynthetic kidney and implant it in humans.
I'm not sure if Ron knew how good of a question he asked. "Unfortunately, at least a few years away" was the best answer I could come up with. The recent advances in the field have been enormous: in a span of only ten years, we've gone from 3D printers being idle curiosities in university libraries and toys for entrepreneurs to crank out rapid prototypes to having more than a dozen strategies for recapitulating human organ geometry and function. Yet the translation problem remains firmly in the minds of everyone working in the field: while fabricated liver systems for drug screening, microfluidic dialysis-on-a-chip, and a bioprinted pancreas are firmly within reach, actually implementing these technologies in humans is going to require thinking critically about immunocompatibility, cost-effectiveness, and fabrication reproducibility—not to mention inevitable challenges with regulation and public communication.
4. Smarter bioelectronics and biosensors
On a biophysics level, the brain is just a collection of electrical impulses connected by a neural network, so we should be able to sort out what does what and create our own brain interfaces, right? (Trends in Neuroscienceseditor Moran Furman is probably laughing out loud right now, and for good reason.) This is obviously fanciful and a vast oversimplification, but a concrete trend in this field is a move toward in vivo sensors—with the distinctly transhuman idea of higher-order cognitive brain-signal processing lurking on the horizon.
The idea of biosensors is nothing new: we have long appropriated biology in the form of affinity from the immune system, enzymes from bacteria, and fluorescence from exotic sea creatures and combined them into devices that can tell you if you have biomarkers associated with neurodegenerative disease or chikungunya. But as computational processing power continues to rise exponentially, detection arrays continue to shrink in size, and the internet of things contains more and more things, we might be able to conceive of wearable and even implantable sensors. This idea can apply to smart bandages, too: think of a wound dressing that monitors your infection risk in real time and releases extra antiseptics when it gets too high.
5. Bioenergy solutions
Biofuels aren't going anywhere, but I've sensed a definite shift in enthusiasm away from processing land plants into fuel. What's exciting now? Algae certainly remain relevant, but we're as far as ever from building an industrial-scale algae refinery next to every pond.
Economics play an important role here: according to some analyses, the thing that makes algae bioprocessing economically sustainable isn't fuel, it's pigments. So if algae are the field's preferred energy solution, it will be important to take advantage of as many algae-derived products as possible, potentially through clever genetic manipulation.
Another promising idea is electro-fermentation, in which microbes (or communities thereof!) acquire electrons from metal surfaces and use the electrons to perform otherwise impossible reactions—like converting atmospheric carbon dioxide to useful compounds, including back into fuel.
As always, I'd love to hear your comments: what biotech trends are you most excited about for 2018 and beyond?
2018年令人振奮的五個生技趨勢
在過去的一年中，我對生物技術和生物技術評論期刊應涵蓋的內容有很多不同的 看法 。 現在我們已經達到了一個有用的定義，那麼熱圖的哪些部分似乎會在明年變得更加熱門？以下是2018年我將關注的幾個領域。
1.細菌群落
我們都聽說過人類微生物群體以及它如何秘密地控制著我們的一切。 各種微生物群背後的想法是，許多培養在一起的微生物不僅僅是它們的部分總和，無論是在人類腸道，一瓶康普茶，還是工業生物反應器。 幾十年來，我們一直在使用單一微生物（通常是麵包酵母或非感染性大腸桿菌菌株）來生產特種化學品和藥物，儘管生物分子工程師開始利用某些微生物之間的協同關係來更快地處理化學品，更多徹底或在較溫和的條件下。
但是細菌群落可以被利用來做有趣的事情，而不僅僅是工業加工。 例如，碳氫化合物細菌存在於復雜的結構化網絡中，可以策略性地部署以清理溢油 。 微生物相互作用甚至被認為是法醫學中的痕跡證據 ，其基礎是人類皮膚微生物群體組成的變化可以幫助在犯罪發生時在時間和空間中定位嫌疑人。
2.天然產物和植物合成生物學
中國傳統醫藥在過去幾年已成為分析化學世界中不太可能突破的明星。 現在我們擁有快速高效分析生物樣品的工具，對於源自所謂天然產物的傳統療法（通常是歷史上與藥效相關的植物或真菌）的功效有著新的科學支持。 一旦科學家了解天然產物功效的分子基礎 ，在受控和規範的生物過程中合成這些產品變得更容易。我不確定羅恩是否知道他問的問題有多好。 “不幸的是，至少幾年之後”是我能想到的最好答案。 這個領域的最新進展是巨大的：在僅僅十年的時間裡，我們已經從三維打印機變成了大學圖書館和玩具企業家的閒暇時光，為快速原型開發出十幾種策略來重述人類器官幾何形狀和功能。 然而，翻譯問題依然牢記在這個領域的每個人的頭腦中：雖然用於藥物篩選的製造肝臟系統 ， 微流體透析芯片和生物打印的胰腺是牢固到達的，但實際上在人類中實施這些技術將會要求批判性地評估免疫相容性，成本效益和製造再現性 - 更不用說管制和公共交流帶來的不可避免的挑戰。
在生物物理學層面上，大腦只是一個由神經網絡連接的電脈衝集合，所以我們應該能夠理清什麼是什麼並創建我們自己的大腦接口，對嗎？ （ 神經科學雜誌的編輯Moran Furman現在可能會大聲笑出聲來，並且有充分的理由。）這顯然是一種幻想，並且過分簡單化了，但這一領域的一個具體趨勢是向體內傳感器的方向發展 - 具有明顯的超人類觀念的高階認知腦信號處理潛伏在地平線上。
生物傳感器的想法並不是什麼新鮮事物：我們長期以免疫系統的親和力，來自細菌的酶以及來自異國海洋生物的熒光的形式使用生物學，並將它們組合成可以告訴您是否具有與神經退行性疾 病相關的生物標誌物的設備或基孔肯雅。 但隨著計算處理能力繼續呈指數級增長，檢測陣列的尺寸不斷縮小，物聯網包含越來越多的東西，我們可能會想到可穿戴甚至可植入的傳感器 。 這個想法也可以應用於智能繃帶：想想一種能夠實時監測感染風險的傷口敷料，並在太高時釋放額外的防腐劑。
另一個有希望的想法是電發酵，其中微生物（或其群落） 從金屬表面獲取電子並使用電子執行否則不可能的反應 - 如將大氣二氧化碳轉化成有用的化合物，包括返回到燃料中。
台灣生技100強關鍵報告
與往常一樣，我很樂意聽取您的意見：您對2018年及以後最興奮的生物技術趨勢是什麼？
5 biotech trends I'm excited about in 2018
Over the past year, I've thought a lot about what different people mean by biotechnology and what a biotech reviews journal ought to cover. Now that we've reached a useful definition, what parts of that heat map seem poised to get even hotter over the next year?
Here are a few areas I'll be paying attention to in 2018.
1. Bacterial communities
We've all heard about the human microbiome and how it secretly controls everything about us. The idea behind various microbiota is that many microbes cultured together are more than the sum of their parts, whether in the human gut, a bottle of kombucha, or even an industrial bioreactor. We've been using single microorganisms—typically baker's yeast or non-infectious strains of E. coli—to produce specialtychemicals and pharmaceuticals for decades, though biomolecular engineers are starting to take advantage of synergistic relationships among certain microbes to process chemicals faster, more thoroughly, or under milder conditions.
But bacterial communities can be exploited to do interesting things beyond just industrial processing. For example, hydrocarbon-eating bacteria exist in complex structured networks that can be deployed strategically to clean up oil spills. And microbial interactions have even been pondered as trace evidence in forensics based on the idea that changes in the composition of a person's skin microbial population could help locate a suspect in time and space at the moment when a crime took place.
2. Natural products and plant synthetic biology
Chinese traditional medicine has become an unlikely breakout star of the analytical chemistry world over the past few years. Now that we have the tools to analyze biological samples quickly and efficiently, there is a new wealth of scientific support for the efficacy of traditional therapies derived from so-called natural products, often either plants or fungi that have been historically associated with medicinal effects. Once scientists understand the molecular basis for a natural product's efficacy, it becomes much easier to synthesize these products in a controlled and regulated bioprocess.And just as it's now routine to create designer microbes to catalyze chemical transformations, the next frontier in synthetic biology might be rationally designed higher fungi and plants. Even my old chemical engineering department at UC Berkeley has subtly shifted away from biofuels and toward "bionic plants" and natural product biosynthesis. After all, if we can engineer yeast to produce proteins, why not anti-cancer vaccines from lettuce or rice?
3. Clinical biofabrication
Last night, an acquaintance of mine named Ron asked me if I was doing anything interesting at work. Yes, I told him, I was working on a special issue on tissue engineering. Ron is not a scientist, so I expected his interest to stop there. Instead, his eyes lit up when I explained biofabrication, and I proceeded to have one of the unlikeliest five-minute conversations on bioprinted organs that I can remember. It turns out that his father was recently diagnosed with kidney disease and wanted to know how close we were to being able to fabricate a biosynthetic kidney and implant it in humans.I'm not sure if Ron knew how good of a question he asked. "Unfortunately, at least a few years away" was the best answer I could come up with. The recent advances in the field have been enormous: in a span of only ten years, we've gone from 3D printers being idle curiosities in university libraries and toys for entrepreneurs to crank out rapid prototypes to having more than a dozen strategies for recapitulating human organ geometry and function. Yet the translation problem remains firmly in the minds of everyone working in the field: while fabricated liver systems for drug screening, microfluidic dialysis-on-a-chip, and a bioprinted pancreas are firmly within reach, actually implementing these technologies in humans is going to require thinking critically about immunocompatibility, cost-effectiveness, and fabrication reproducibility—not to mention inevitable challenges with regulation and public communication.
4. Smarter bioelectronics and biosensors
On a biophysics level, the brain is just a collection of electrical impulses connected by a neural network, so we should be able to sort out what does what and create our own brain interfaces, right? (Trends in Neuroscienceseditor Moran Furman is probably laughing out loud right now, and for good reason.) This is obviously fanciful and a vast oversimplification, but a concrete trend in this field is a move toward in vivo sensors—with the distinctly transhuman idea of higher-order cognitive brain-signal processing lurking on the horizon.The idea of biosensors is nothing new: we have long appropriated biology in the form of affinity from the immune system, enzymes from bacteria, and fluorescence from exotic sea creatures and combined them into devices that can tell you if you have biomarkers associated with neurodegenerative disease or chikungunya. But as computational processing power continues to rise exponentially, detection arrays continue to shrink in size, and the internet of things contains more and more things, we might be able to conceive of wearable and even implantable sensors. This idea can apply to smart bandages, too: think of a wound dressing that monitors your infection risk in real time and releases extra antiseptics when it gets too high.
5. Bioenergy solutions
Biofuels aren't going anywhere, but I've sensed a definite shift in enthusiasm away from processing land plants into fuel. What's exciting now? Algae certainly remain relevant, but we're as far as ever from building an industrial-scale algae refinery next to every pond.Economics play an important role here: according to some analyses, the thing that makes algae bioprocessing economically sustainable isn't fuel, it's pigments. So if algae are the field's preferred energy solution, it will be important to take advantage of as many algae-derived products as possible, potentially through clever genetic manipulation.
Another promising idea is electro-fermentation, in which microbes (or communities thereof!) acquire electrons from metal surfaces and use the electrons to perform otherwise impossible reactions—like converting atmospheric carbon dioxide to useful compounds, including back into fuel.
As always, I'd love to hear your comments: what biotech trends are you most excited about for 2018 and beyond?
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