00:00On the other hand, while the world's attention is often drawn to artificial intelligence, AI, and quantum computing,
00:06some of the most important scientific breakthroughs could come from the fight against disease.
00:11At the BioFrontiers Institute of University of Colorado Boulder,
00:16researchers are now exploring new ways to understand conditions such as Alzheimer's,
00:22disease memory loss, and heart disease, with the goal of turning fundamental science into future medical solutions.
00:29So, during reporting tour organized by the U.S. Fereng Press Center titled The Next Frontier How American Innovation Powers
00:37Global Commerce,
00:38Astro Awani visited the Institute of Learn How Seemingly Unrelated Research Could Help Address Some of the World's Biggest Health
00:46Challenges.
00:49One area of research led by Professor Roy Parker focuses on neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease.
00:57His work examines how RNA biology and toxic protein aggregations contribute to cellular damage in the brain,
01:05and also scientists believe these processes play a critical role in memory loss, cognitive decline, and progression of Alzheimer's.
01:13By gaining a better understanding of how the tau protein and other toxic proteins damaged cells,
01:18researchers hope to identify new pathways for future treatments.
01:23I think we understand pretty well what's going on, what's going bad in the brain.
01:28I think the challenge, because these diseases, they occur over like 20 years, right?
01:34Someone first starts forgetting things in their 60s, and they get worse and worse, and they really, in their 80s,
01:39get really bad, right?
01:40It takes a really long time, and so there's a lot of ideas which have worked in the lab to
01:46treat this now,
01:47and there's a lot of really interesting clinical trials going on.
01:53I think we're going to have things which work five years from now, ten years from now.
01:59At the same institute, researchers are taking a very different approach to medical discovery.
02:04Professor Leslie Lin Wand and her team have been studying Burmese phythons,
02:08which possesses an extraordinary biological ability to enlarge their heart after feeding and then return to normal without suffering long
02:17-term damage.
02:18For scientists, this natural process could offer important insights into cardiovascular disease.
02:24The python heart, when it eats one of these gigantic meals, because it goes for long periods of time's casting,
02:30their hearts get big too, and it mimics that of chronic exercise.
02:34And the reason that that could be important in humans is that there are people with heart disease who cannot
02:40exercise.
02:41And so if we could discover exactly what it is in the pythons that causes the heart to get big
02:47in a good way,
02:48that might translate to a therapeutic.
02:50The research could help scientists to better understand the difference between healthy heart growth
02:55and the harmful enlargement of the heart often seen in human disease.
03:01Researchers hope that lessons from nature may one day lead to a new strategy for preventing or treating heart conditions
03:08that affect millions of people worldwide.
03:11But for CEO Boulder Chancellor Justin Schwartz, the challenge is not just generating new knowledge,
03:16but creating a pathway for discoveries to become products, companies, and solutions that benefit society.
03:23You're going to have to learn how to identify valuable IP in your faculty's research outcomes.
03:31You're going to need to get your faculty, and this is probably the single most important piece,
03:36you're going to need your faculty to be excited about the idea, right?
03:39And you're going to need faculty who understand that what they do not only has intellectual value,
03:44but then they have commercial value.
03:46You're going to need to have the resources to commit to IP protections,
03:51which frankly can get very expensive given the way global IP is managed at an individual national level in most
04:00countries.
04:01And then you're going to need to also accept the fact that most startups don't make it.
04:07Femproteins linked to Alzheimer's disease to the remarkable biology of phytons,
04:12researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder believe some of tomorrow's medical breakthroughs
04:17may emerge from answering fundamental scientific questions today.
04:21Najib Arof, Astro Awani, Boulder, Colorado.
