Up to 1000 years to live without old age?

The problems of biomedicine were discussed at MEPhI

Elizaveta Ponarina, "Search"

– On this stage I received a physics degree, and now my message opens the II International Symposium "Engineering and Physical Technologies of Biomedicine", - said Roman Zubarev, professor of medical proteomics at the Karolinska Institute (Sweden). He spoke English, and cheerfully and pugnaciously - no wonder he called his report "Towards 1000 years long human lifetime – fighting the isoaspartate". The very assumption that a person can live for ten centuries if he understands the derivatives of a certain enzyme "working" in his body has already intrigued listeners. Although not everyone was carried away: scientists are more realists than dreamers. But they took the exit into practice very seriously: Zubarev's story about research aimed at combating Alzheimer's disease, which affects, as you know, both rich and poor, and wise men, and simpletons, and very elderly, and not old at all...

Paras Prasad, a professor from the American University of Buffalo, after listening to the key report, called it fantastic. I think it's worth a lot to hear this from a person who has a H-index of 105. With such a comparison, he stressed that he considers the work of the speaker, who has passed a difficult path from a physicist to a researcher of proteomics, to be breakthrough. It is significant that the moderator of the first plenary session of the symposium, Professor Hans Gutbrod (Darmstadt, Germany), very briefly introduced Roman Alexandrovich – experts are aware that Zubarev is one of the most famous developers of mass spectrometric equipment, who used ion-electron reactions for sequencing peptides. And the young people, who had several dozen people in the hall, looked at the smiling speaker as an idol who had passed a path in science that could be taken as an example. After all, they were mostly graduate students, masters, bachelors of the Institute of Engineering and Physical Biomedicine (in the version of the working language of the symposium PhysBio of MEPhI), created at the nuclear university a little over a year ago. For them, the days of the symposium turned out to be memorable: almost 250 leading specialists in various fields of bionanotechnology, nanoteranostics, nanomedicine, biophotonics from Great Britain, Germany, India, China, USA, France, Sweden, CIS countries came to their native university. Everyone agreed to meet in Moscow to help researchers working in the life sciences "check their watches" and understand whether the PhysBio of MEPhI team is developing a biomedical research strategy correctly.

It is significant that out of 32 foreign speakers, a good dozen at the same time turned out to be professors of the National Research University (the university's work on the 5-100 Project). And on the eve of the symposium, the Second International Youth School "Engineering and Physical Technologies of Biomedicine" was held. At the request of the organizers, compatriots on Sunday read review lectures for future colleagues – for now students, postgraduates. Due to the fact that 60 schoolchildren from medical and biological classes of the capital were asked to come to them, they communicated in Russian. It can be seen that something is changing for the better in this life, if teenagers are so actively drawn to science that later they even wondered if the university has any projects in which high school students can participate?

I was also impressed that practitioners from different clinics of the country and specialists of the Kaluga Pharmaceutical cluster attended, spoke, and asked questions at the plenary session. Where does the interest of doctors and industrialists in the nuclear university come from? It's just that attention to the life sciences is growing stronger in it from year to year, and this area of research is the most in demand by humanity today. The university, where the professorship is passionate about developing a strategy for personalized, digital and translational medicine using the capabilities of exact sciences and high technologies, strongly attracts, where, in fact, the model of the clinic of the future is beginning to form, is attractive to doctors and pharmacists. They want to participate in this case. And they are already participating.

For example, the co-chairman of the program committee of the symposium, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Oleg Laurent, Professor of the Russian Medical Academy of Postgraduate Education, gave a lecture "Diagnosis and therapy of prostate cancer: from genomics and proteomics to artificial intelligence." Moreover, he spoke specifically: using the example of the only modern positron tomograph in Russia, working on gallium-68, where a membrane antigen acts as a tracer (deliverer of a therapeutic drug to the affected area). He warned that even after receiving such equipment, it is too early to rejoice: there is almost no one to work on it. "Surgery, though translated as needlework, is a serious science,– Oleg Borisovich reflected. – And it will not move forward without fundamental knowledge in various non-medical disciplines." 

– Doctors suffer from the lack of deep exploratory research, – he told the correspondent of "Search". – Visualization methods are developing, high technologies are growing, they are concentrated in perfect devices, but they need to be controlled. We are interested in early and accurate diagnosis, especially of oncological diseases, in monitoring treatment processes, in evaluating its effectiveness and predicting results. And forecasting is mathematics, chemistry, and all kinds of physics... MEPhI has this knowledge, he is working on it all the time – and we need to work together. We are very interested in developing laser technologies and nanotechnology – after all, they should make a breakthrough in the targeted delivery of the drug to the affected area without injuring everything around. It is also important to solve the problem of clearly defining the irradiation zone. Sometimes on a tomogram we see a focus in one place, and on a sonogram (ultrasound) – in another. It is very good that people from clinics came to the conference – it is important for engineers and physicists to correctly understand the problems that bother doctors. That is why Professor Paras Prasad congratulated Rector Mikhail Strikhanov on the fact that there are so many doctors in the hall. And these are not advances. Thanks to real cooperation with MEPhI in Obninsk, we have come closer to solving the most difficult tasks in radiation nuclear medicine, we have excellent cooperation with the Radiological Center. But this is not enough for the country - it's time to open new training programs. MEPhI is actively doing this. But its graduates are not enough, more and more are needed. Actually, for the sake of increasing the training of modern specialists of the right orientation, universities conduct such scientific symposiums. The professional composition of the symposium participants is beyond praise. 

– The merit of Professor Sergey Suchkov, deputy director of PhysBio of MEPhI, – Irina Zavestovskaya, director of PhysBio of MEPhI, joined the conversation, – is that he interested prominent foreign colleagues in what is already being done for medicine here. For example, being himself the most famous recognized specialist in the field of translational medicine in the world, Suchkov invited outstanding people to see the competence of MEPhI in the field of nanoparticle production, their various applications for biomedical purposes – Professor Roger Kamm, director of the Center for Mechanobiology and Microfluidics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), Professor Anderson, former president of the Anderson Cancer Center (USA), Professor Vladimir Lazar from France... These are all people who can evaluate the prospects of our work in the field of translational medicine. It is not for nothing that the program of the symposium included excursions for experts to three international university laboratories: nanobioengineering, headed by Professor Igor Nabiev; hybrid photonics under the leadership of Professor Yuri Rakovich and bionanophotonics, headed by Andrey Kabashin. 

– Andrey Viktorovich was so nervous today before the performance that I didn't even manage to talk to him.

– It is clear that every scientist, no matter how many lectures and reports he has done, is nervous on the eve of the upcoming one. This is a professional report to colleagues gathered from all over the world. And our heads of laboratories and departments are all prominent scientists, the list of regalia of each occupies more than one paragraph. They combine their work in the leading research centers of the world with our activities because they see a prospect: to train specialists, which have not yet been.

– So loud?

– In accordance with reality. Kabashin gave a lecture about the biodegradable silicon nanoparticles that we produce and which, having performed their function in the body, are safely removed from it for a living being. They are well used in diagnostics, as enhancers of the treatment process, as markers for tumor visualization or simply containers for targeted drug delivery. We call this new direction "silicon nanoteranostics". 

– Remind me what theranostics is.

– This term means therapy plus diagnosis. It was invented by Professor Viktor Timoshenko (Moscow State University, Lebedev Physical Institute and PhysBio of MEPhI). Unfortunately, he didn't patent it, and now go prove that it's his. So, silicon nanoparticles, in order to be useful in medicine, must have different properties (optical, electrical). You can't create such things without physicists.

– When will you gather all this knowledge into training programs?

– We are already collecting. We have departments of industrial pharmacy, a laboratory of molecular diagnostics, which transfer these developments to the cadets of the Center for Practical Training of Pharmaceutical Industry Workers in Obninsk.

– The scientific secretary of the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry told me about him. Academicians M.M.Shemyakin and Yu.A.Ovchinnikov, Vladimir Oleinikov, noted that the center is built on the principle of theory plus practice at specific enterprises.

– And Vladimir Alexandrovich is the head of the laboratory at our institute. During the year in Obninsk, we launched the leaning factory, a training center of the Kaluga Pharmaceutical cluster. A complex of clean rooms has been created there, in which it is completely possible to simulate the process of creating medicines, and we have started training undergraduates there – employees whom the cluster sends to us to study. And plus those bachelor students who will go to work for them after graduation from MEPhI. There are about 100 people in total. But every step into medicine-related production, into medicine itself, is not easy. It is required to verify all movements... Because you are being introduced into the sphere of people's health. Doctors are rightly conservative for a reason – we all want to be treated properly. And this means giving doctors proven knowledge, which means that patients and doctors should be protected by law. That is, you will not fit into classical education with untested programs – they will first try out the new one through additional courses. This is the ninth year we have a medical faculty at MEPhI. We know how difficult it is to teach doctors. Today it is already impossible to engage in fundamental research just because you are interested in it. Interest should lead to new frontiers that society needs. For example, I am a laser physicist, and I have anatomy, biophotonics, books on translational medicine on my desk... 

– Is such reading included in the official duties of the head of the Institute of Biomedicine?

– It's just that without this knowledge today, even physics makes no sense to engage in the production of nanoparticles. It is necessary to understand where and for what you are moving. The time when you gave technologies, and others were looking for their use, studied for a long time in a vivarium, then in a clinic, is over. Now, if you want to have time to do something worthwhile, you need to work in the architecture and pace of translational medicine. That is, to organize the case in such a way as to reach the result as quickly as possible. But how to do it better, we discussed at the symposium, which gave all participants food for the mind and thirst for new achievements. 

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