Hacking Humans – The New Genetic Frontiers
Panel Description
There have been groundbreaking advancements in genetic engineering and new medical technologies are poised to disrupt the dialogue on health, ethics, global security, and the future of humanity. This session will explore disruptive technologies, such as the revolutionary CRISPR gene-editing tool, breakthroughs in synthetic biology like Xenobots, and the emergence of exponential medical treatments that demonstrate rapid adoption properties.
Natalie Barrett, Phaedrus Engineering, Biomedical Engineer
Marc Salit, MITRE Fellow, Synthetic Biology
Andre Watson, CEO, Ligandal, Biomaterials Scientist
Panelists Biographies
Natalie Barrett is a Biomedical Engineer at Phaedrus Engineering, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s GeoTech Center, and a Loomis Council Member at The Stimson Center. Natalie is a technologist, servant leader and creative. She has the reputation of a leader who can see the big picture, understand the pain point, and build teams to address the issue. Natalie has managed high-impact portfolios with large teams of scientists and engineers across multiple domains to include human-machine-teams, artificial intelligence, space, advanced communications, cyber, wearables, exoskeletons, biotechnology and climate. Throughout her career, she has served across government and commercial industries. Key projects include wearables, olfaction, novel sensors, isothermal assays (realized in the rapid COVID-19 diagnostic tests), microarray reader systems for the Human Genome Project, and cancer research. Natalie is passionate about taking with organizations of change makers striving to meet critical needs (security, humanitarian, and climate related) through the development and implementation of resilient solutions.
By or featuring Natalie Barrett:
- Detecting Disruption in Closed Systems
- Breaking into the Federal Defense Sector with Emerging Technology
- The Atlantic Council GeoTech Center
- The Loomis Council @ The Stimson Center
Marc Salit, is a MITRE Fellow in Synthetic Biology and an expert in developing standards for biology, chemistry, and physics. He has been working on standards in synthetic biology for more than a decade He leads the development of the MITRE’s Open BioFoundry, which provides tools and applied capabilities in engineering biological systems, including creating standards for synthetic biology to improve collaboration and innovation. Additionally, Marc is the Director of the Joint Initiative for Metrology in Biology, co-founded with Stanford University colleagues to create a new scientific institution devoted to biometrology – the study of measurement science in biology. His research is focused on innovation and development of measurement science, standards, methods, and tools for biology.
Andre Watson is the Founder and CEO of Ligandal, a genetic medicine company that uses nanotechnology to develop targeted and personalized therapies with a broadly applicable technology that can be tailored to a variety of cell gene therapy needs. The company’s mission is to enable precision and personalized medicine on a global scale.
Given that increasingly complex disease states require precise and custom-tailored medicine, much of Ligandal’s technology development has focused on combining gene therapy with targeting peptides to enable completely new paradigms in evolutionary medicine. Ligandal has demonstrated peptide-based delivery of CRISPR, RNA, DNA, siRNA, and a range of genes or proteins to virtually any cell type. Andre’s formal background is in Biomedical Engineering with a focus on Biomaterials Science and gene delivery. Andre is the inventor on 57 issued and pending patents across 14 patent families for next-generation bioengineering techniques, synthetic vaccines, and delivery of nucleic acids and proteins with cell-specific targeting molecules. Andre’s personal mission is to bring about humanity’s prosperity through enabling a world where we can program biological systems at will, and for good.
X: @nanogenomic | LinkedIn
By or featuring Andre Watson:
- Leading innovators in CRISPR nucleases for the pharmaceutical industry
- Top 15 CRISPR Companies in the US that are making the Biggest Impact on Gene Engineering in 2022
- Andre Watson Shares What’s Missing from the Gene Editing Industry — And how to Block the Coronavirus
- Forbes 30 under 30 2021: Healthcare
- Covid-19 vaccines have triggered the next wave of pharmaceuticals
- Meet the Founder and CEO of Ligandal
Additional OODA Loop Resources
The Future Now: The State of the Bioeconomy in 2023: The Bioeconomy in 2023 is showing clear signs of opportunities for advantage created by the exponential disruption of the industrial base (including that of defense), coupled with exponential biotechnological innovation to build the bioeconomy of the future. The State of the Bioeconomy in 2023 includes: Exponential Organizational Ecosystems at Speed and Scale; Blockchain Technologies; Artificial Intelligence in Biotechnology, Genomics, Healthcare and Medical Tech; Biomanufacturing in Cislunar Space; andHealth Security and Cybersecurity Challenges. Details of current breakthroughs and strategic directions for each category can be found here.
Innovative Blockchain Technology Case Studies (by Industry Sector) – Blockchain Technologies in The Bioeconomy, Biotechnology, and Healthcare: Over the course of 2022 and 2023, The OODA Loop Blockchain Series has explored blockchain disruption in the market and new opportunities created by blockchain technologies in both the public and private sectors. Innovative blockchain technology efforts (by industry sector) – with a focus on how the blockchain enables new business models, opportunities for innovative value proposition design, and decentralized governance – are listed here.
Exponential Innovation and Building the Bioeconomy of the Future: Last year, we launched the Opportunities for Advantage Series to explore how exponential disruption and innovation require organizations to focus efforts to gain advantage. In a recent review of the series, we found that there were patterns and groupings which deserved to be highlighted to jumpstart the series for this year. To start, We found that the future of biotechnology was a cluster in the series, pointing to the opportunities for advantage created by the exponential disruption of the industrial base (including that of defense) coupled with exponential biotechnology innovation to build the bioeconomy of the future. The following posts are a primer on the potential of such an effort – including the challenges, threats, risks, and opportunities ahead for your organization in this technology and business ecosystem of the future.
The New Tech Trinity: Artificial Intelligence, BioTech, Quantum Tech: Will make monumental shifts in the world. This new Tech Trinity will redefine our economy, both threaten and fortify our national security, and revolutionize our intelligence community. None of us are ready for this. This convergence requires a deepened commitment to foresight and preparation and planning on a level that is not occurring anywhere. The New Tech Trinity.
The Revolution in Biology: This post provides an overview of key thrusts of the transformation underway in biology and offers seven topics business leaders should consider when updating business strategy to optimize opportunity because of these changes. For more see: The Executive’s Guide To The Revolution in Biology
Materials Science Revolution: Room-temperature ambient pressure superconductors represent a significant innovation. Sustainability gets a boost with reprocessable materials. Energy storage sees innovations in solid-state batteries and advanced supercapacitors. Smart textiles pave the way for health-monitoring and self-healing fabrics. 3D printing materials promise disruptions in various sectors. Perovskites offer versatile applications, from solar power to quantum computing. See: Materials Science
Planning for a Continuous Pandemic Landscape: COVID-19’s geopolitical repercussions are evident, with recent assessments pointing to China’s role in its spread. Regardless of the exact origins, the same conditions that allowed COVID-19 to become a pandemic persist today. Therefore, businesses must be prepared for consistent health disruptions, implying that a substantial portion of the workforce might always operate remotely, even though face-to-face interactions remain vital for critical decisions. See: COVID Sensemaking
“AI for Enterprise”: Lessons Learned from Healthcare, Hugging Face and Clinical Language Models: Healthcare is already in the midst of an AI revolution – with an applied technology market maturity which outpaces most other industry sectors which are in a reactive mode to the AI hype cycle. Explore these AI healthcare use cases and apply them to your organization using design and systems thinking.
The Future of Biosafety and the Global Gain-of-Function Research Ecosystem: Researchers from the the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) recently mapped “the gain- and loss-of-function global research landscape.” We contextualize the CSET findings relative to the biosafety levels in U.S. biomedical laboratories. A looming question: do other countries have the adequate commitment to health security and biosafety measures in their high risk pathogen research?
An OODAcast Conversation – Joe Tranquillo on the Revolution in Biological Science: Joe Tranquillo is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Bucknell University and a provost at the school. He is also and author and speaker with a knack for helping make new and at times complex subjects understandable. In this OODAcast we discuss many aspects of the revolution in biological sciences with Joe including topics like: New ways of delivering medicines that target specific tissues; Discovery of the structure of almost every human protein; Methods to synthesize biomolecules, which can result in ways to manufacture a wide range of materials like therapeutics, flavors, fabrics, food, fuels; and New ways of growing food that are more productive and take fewer pesticides and fertilizers.
AI-powered Genomics: The convergence of machine learning, deep learning and genomics, especially in the area of AI-powered genomic health prediction, while remarkably promising will also present remarkably challenging unintended consequences. A recent report suggests areas which need to be explored – : starting now – as “the issues posed by the…technologies become harder to predict, more complex and more numerous.”
For more OODA Loop News Briefs and Original Analysis, see OODA Loop: Biotechnology | Genetics | Genomics | Healthcare | Medical Tech
