Novel therapeutics
One of the most exciting applications of information-processing systems is in diagnostics and treatment. This is not surprising, given that disease diagnosis is in its core an information processing task that culminates with a decision. In many diseases, the diagnosis can be performed in individual cells. In cancer, for example, every cell can be classified as "healthy" or "tumor". An ideal anti-tumor therapeutic should be capable of targeting only the tumor cells; to do so, the therapeutic agent shoud be able to run its own "diagnosis" as it encounters patient's cells. Therefore, the selectivity can be achieved not necessarily via the active ingredient that kills tumor cells, but by the upstream mechanism that determines whether the ingredient should be activated at all.
A few years ago we showed a proof-of-concept in vitro, targeting HeLa cancer cells with a diagnostic module that detected a pattern comprising multiple microRNA inputs. Since then, we have been working to establish an animal tumor model and the requisite infrastructure for cancer research, and in parallel refine our diagnostic and therapeutic systems and adapt them to existing therapeutic protocols such as gene and cell therapy.
We are also exploring the application of information-processing diagnostic circuits in cell therapies, in particular in genetic immune disease.
Further reading