Douglas Melton: Is Biomedical Research Really Close to Curing Anything? | Big Think

Douglas Melton: Is Biomedical Research Really Close to Curing Anything?
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Professor Douglas Melton begins with a look at the basis for regenerative medicine, the human body’s ability to divide, grow, and specialize cells. With a solid foothold in developmental biology, we see how this knowledge led to the breakthrough cloning experiments we’re all familiar with: Hello, Dolly! Next, we’re introduced to the science of stem cells and their greatest hope: new "man-made" stem cells that could soon be used to reverse incurable degenerative diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s. Lastly, Professor Melton tells how these same stem cells may be the keys that unlock an end to aging as we know it.
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DOUG MELTON:

Dr. Douglas Melton is a leading biologist in cellular research. His ground-breaking work, which focuses on the developmental biology of the pancreas, aims to provide diabetics with insulin-producing beta-cells. Dr. Melton is a founding member of the International Society for Stem Cell Research. He has been spearheading a collaboration between the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard University and the Boston In Vitro Fertilization clinic to develop human embryonic stem lines for research purposes. In addition to serving as the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences at Harvard University, Dr. Melton works as the co-director of Harvard’s Stem Cell Institute and as a lead investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
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TRANSCRIPT:

I’m Doug Melton; I’m the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of Natural Sciences at Harvard University, and the Co-Director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

Well, I’m glad to talk to you today about an exciting new biology in medicine. It’s what I call the biology of regenerative medicine and it’s going to change your life. It’s going to lead to longer and healthier lives for humans in a way that was really unimaginable just a few decades ago.

Let me put this in perspective. In the last century, infectious disease caused enormous suffering and harm to many millions of people. A simple infection like whooping cough or diphtheria or any kind of bacterial infection, led to millions of lost lives and suffering until the discovery of antibiotics. Once antibiotics were discovered, what now, for today is a simple infection would cause death. And now today with an antibiotic, we can eliminate that.

I’m going to talk to you about a biology that will similarly change our lives. It’s a biology based in stem cells and genetics and it has to do with understanding with how our bodies are made, maintained and replenished, and it will also teach us something deeply important about disease. Most interestingly perhaps, it will also open the door to manipulating our bodies in a way that we can change who we are and what our lives are like.

To put this in a little more perspective, let me remind you that in the last century, beginning with Mendel’s discovery of genes and genetic inheritance, we learned about the genes we inherit from our mother and father affect who we are. That was reduced to understand that genes are made of DNA, the chemical stuff of genes is DNA. And we now understand quite a bit about how genes encode the proteins that are found in our body. It however, can be an exaggeration, often appearing in the popular press that all we are is our DNA, and we’re much more than our DNA. Our DNA is merely a language or a code that tells our body or our cells what kind of proteins can be made, but the DNA doesn’t define who we are.

So what has been lost in this discussion up until now, is the idea that the real unit of biology is not DNA, but is instead a cell. Cells are alive, cells make more cells and cells are the units that allow us to harness the future of our bodies and regenerative medicine.
So let me move to this point by saying that I think in the 21st century, biology will usher in advances in regenerative medicine and stem cells will be at the center of discovery and application in that new field. In order to make sense of this, we have to dig into a little bit of a kind of biology called Developmental Biology. That’s the biology as shown here that has to do with answering a question, how does an egg become a human being? How does an egg make a human body?

In the last century there were two important advances in biomedicine. One was the discovery of antibiotics, which made it possible to then cure...

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