Lee Hood #2

Synthesizers and sequencencers have developed oncogenes, the prion, epo proteins, neuroreceptors among many others.

The old systems cannot give birth to the new paradigms that are coming. The infrastructure must change first. The hostility that Cal Tech had/has to his entrepreneurship was no isolated arrogance and restricts the academic world in a way that must change.

The digital information of the genome combines with the environmental influences to create the phenotype. This is one of the many remarkable revelations of the Genome Project. There are no race genes, all the information is now accessible and proteonomics is a direct result of this technology. He loves the accessibility of this technology.

His analogy of the genotype to phenotype process is the radio. The radio receives electromagnetic waves, processes them and creates sound waves. Where does the researcher focus and what collaboration does he need?

Organ specific blood proteins are being identified that are active in only one organ (liver, brain, etc.) and these proteins change with the evolution of individual diseases. 50 have been identified so far using nanotechnology developed by James Heath from Cal Tech (a guy who might have been the prototype for the scientist from "Independence Day"). This identifying technology uses peptide protein capturing agents, not antigens.

Stem cells have been generated in the lab and have been guided into myocardial cells, heart muscle cells. Function may--or may not--follow histology.

The university must change. Historically it saw its function as education and research. It must expand to include bringing knowledge to the community and improving people's lives. This is a strong and recurring concept in his talk.

Medicine's focus will change because it should be more health and community oriented but also because the direction of research will guide it there. These new technologies will allow family evaluation, the changes small groups like families undergo and the basic norm from which it starts--the healthy individual--will lead to wellness, not illness, oriented medical care. He thinks this will require a union of multiple disciplines, an reorientation of medical thinking, a decrease in medical costs and a democratization of medical care throughout the world.

Entrepreneurship is a democratizing process, allows for more transparency of knowledge and is a logical outgrowth of the academic world. The academic world must learn this.