Peter Peumans - CTO Health, imec
Veerle Reumers - Business and Strategic Partnership Lead, imec
Charlotte D'Hulst - Portfolio Manager Life Sciences, imec
When bio and tech converge: a Cambrian explosion of healthcare innovations is upon us
For decades, deep technology and fundamental biology were on equally striking, but essentially separate evolutionary paths. One led to advanced materials, hardware and AI. The other to new insights into the basic building blocks of life, and impressive breakthroughs in the Life Sciences.
We’re now witnessing the moment where these scientific lineages intertwine and bring about a cross-fertilization involving the exchange of bits and molecules. This bioconvergence promises to result in a Cambrian explosion of healthcare innovations.
This talk zooms in on two of those innovations currently developed at imec. Human physiology on chip technology enables novel models that mimic actual biology without resorting to animal testing. Key to this concept are so-called micro-electrode arrays with thousands of electrodes that interact with single human cells. They allow the on-chip modeling of diseases, organs, and systems such as the blood-brain-barrier, which can lead to new insights into therapeutic and preventive strategies.
The other innovation presented is gearing towards protein sequencing. While chip technology was able to bring down the cost of mapping the human genome and bringing it to clinical practice, the proteome – vastly more complex – is largely uncharted territory. Breaking this ‘next frontier in biotechnology’ would give us insights into the true fingerprints of health at a cellular level. Crucial for making protein sequencing stable, scalable and reproducible are solid-state nanopore arrays at wafer scale.
What all these innovations have in common is their use of deep-tech hardware to digitize biology. Like an archeologist traveling back in time by carefully removing layer after layer, we’re continually deepening our understanding of the codes that underpin the mechanisms of life. Inevitably, this will result in massive amounts of data, that in turn require hardware and software innovations for storage and processing.
