10 / 40
Chemical Technology • November 2015
8
NANOTECHNOLOGY
want to strengthen ailing muscles, rebuild degraded carti-
lage, and regenerate cardiac cells following heart attacks.
On 27 October this year, the US Food and Drug Admin-
istration approved a genetically engineered virus called
talimogene laherparepvec
(T-VEC) to treat advanced
melanoma. Only four days earlier, the European Medicines
Agency also came out in favour (although has not yet ap-
proved it).
This is the first oncolytic virus which preferentially infects
cancer cells, killing them. Viruses are still highly conten-
tious in terms of debating whether they’re living things
or just highly sophisticated machines. And here we’ve
designed one to fight one of the developed world’s most
terrible scourges. In China, where drug trials are a little less
well-scrutinised, an entire medical tourism industry has
developed with people unable to get this type of therapy at
home heading there for onco-virus treatment.
Used in combination with other therapies, these viruses
improve survival rates and are able to target systemic can-
cer that has spread beyond its main site. It isn’t yet a cure,
but the potential is one of the most exciting things in oncol-
ogy in years. And a virus that escapes its lab and kills cancer
is probably bad for doomsday scenarios since that sounds
like good news for everyone but the pharma companies.
And then there’ll be the stranger things. Stuff that will
make you feel particularly old in 20 years’ time amongst
kids just ‘out of the cradle’ who will grow up with it, just like
the latest generation has with mobile phones.
A video you can watch on Vimeo called ‘Biologic’ by the
Tangible Media Group demonstrates work by MIT on hygro-
morphic transformation. These are ‘devices’ using bacteria
which respond to humidity by expanding. They use this to
create fabric that curls in response to heat and humidity. As
two dancers perform, their clothes automatically respond to
their sweat by opening up baffles to create vents. Later, one
of them drops a teabag into hot water, which automatically
signals once the bag is ready to be removed.
I’m not sure that having automatic vents will improve my
squash, but I’m looking forward to the spider-silk shoes,
heating bands around my knees, and nanomaterials in my
circulation preventing me from going into cardiac arrest.
And maybe, one day, the walls will even bounce – just a
little – when they see me coming.