Biomedical research enters new era amid global shifts

Rapidly ageing populations in countries around the Pacific Rim are causing universities in the region to reorientate what and to whom they teach and are driving their research agendas in public health, diagnostics and development of treatments. But these major shifts are also occurring against the backdrop of research funding uncertainty.

Chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Julio Frenk, told university leaders at the annual meeting of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) held at the University of California, San Diego, last month, that they were meeting “at the moment of greatest challenge to higher education in living memory”.

The sentiment was echoed by several speakers at the 22 to 24 June meeting of 28 university presidents and 110 delegates from 46 universities in Asia and the Pacific, North America and Latin America at the conference on ‘human longevity in a changing world’.



Frenk, a former minister of health in Mexico, said: “What’s being challenged is the compact that was entered into between the federal government and universities after World War II for the conduct of research and the way in which basic research will be translated into technological innovation.”

Philanthropy and business partnerships featured prominently in what APRU’s Chief Executive Thomas Schneider outlined as a new paradigm necessitated by the funding crisis triggered by cuts to federal research funding in the United States – a move that has had ripple effects, undermining global collaboration and slowing progress far beyond US borders.

New ways of funding research will have to be found, university leaders acknowledged.

Frenk said: “We are going to have to develop, in the funding of research and technological innovation, including biotechnology, a model where universities and private investors and philanthropists meet earlier in the process to come in to fund and take the high risk that is entailed by basic research.”

But it also requires greater cross-border collaboration to reduce dependence on any one funding system.

UC San Diego’s Chancellor Pradeep Khosla pointed to the “rapidly evolving role of higher education in an era marked by demographic change, technological acceleration and global uncertainty.

“With higher education systems undergoing significant shifts – especially in the United States – our shared insights are more vital than ever and reinforce our shared commitment to higher education that is responsive, resilient and ready for the future”.

Khosla noted: “Institutions across the Pacific Rim face challenges that demand courageous leadership and bold collaboration.”

UC San Diego’s Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation, Corinne Peek-Asa, said: “With increasing divisions among nations, global partnerships are more crucial than ever for driving innovation and advancing research that addresses the complex challenges we face worldwide.”

Cross-border multidisciplinary approach required

Issues such as ageing and longevity – the theme of the conference – require a cross-border as well as multidisciplinary approach that includes the role of higher education and social and economic policy in dealing with ageing populations and engaging higher education leaders and scholars in ensuring sustainable, resilient and equitable solutions to ageing, the conference heard.

Diego Quiroga, rector, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador, noted: “We need to find ways of using science, social science, humanities, relations between different universities and different sectors to ensure that old people don’t feel as if their existence is a punishment.”

The Sau Po Centre on Ageing (SPCoA) at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) is one example of an institute which combines various specialities to further psychological and social aspects and improve the quality of life of individuals over 60.

HKU President Xiang Zhang explained the centre’s aim is to prepare future engineers, doctors, social workers and others to understand the elderly and help form a social “safety net” to protect them.

The centre brings together students from legal studies, arts, science and engineering to “debate and discuss how this ageing problem now looks from [the point of view] of the younger generation,” he added.

Multidisciplinary studies is also part of what Joy Johnson, President of Simon Fraser University (SFU), British Columbia, Canada, referred to as the “social determinants of health”.

Pointing, for example, to high levels of poverty among Canada’s Indigenous Peoples, Johnson underscored how financial means undergird the social determinant of health: “It is good food. It is our access to a good income,” she said.

Additionally, SFU’s School of Gerontology is working with the city government on how to create cities in which elderly people can more easily find their own way around.

Feeding into public policy

Yet, discussions around quality of life for the elderly could not be divorced from politics and national policy. In Singapore, testing for diseases begins at the age of 40, according to Professor Teck-Hua Ho, President of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

When interviewed a few weeks before the conference, President Teck-Hua Ho told University World News that NTU’s College of Engineering is designing an AI game – to be played on a stationary bicycle with the aim of catching an animal.

The game improves decision-making, steering, navigation and locomotion abilities which can help delay neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and treat dementia.

In South Korea, medical check-ups occur every three years, which, in addition to having an obvious benefit for individuals, produce a “vast amount of data” for public health that the government has made available for researchers, explained Sung-Min Park, vice-president for external affairs at South Korea’s Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH).

What constitutes healthy ageing?

Rob Knight, professor of paediatrics, and affiliate professor of computer science and engineering, UC San Diego, noted the search for the causes of unhealthy ageing, requires an “incredibly complex” multidisciplinary approach.

He pointed to the Human Microbiome Project at the Center for Microbiome Innovation at UCSD that he directs and which has discovered that while 99.99% of each individual human’s genome is identical, the microbial genes in our digestive tract mostly differ from person to person.

Determining how these genes function in a healthy person is important because the microbiome is linked to many typical diseases of the elderly – heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and even certain ADHD behaviours.

Other diseases associated with the microbiome – Crohn’s, multiple sclerosis, one type of diabetes and asthma – have been triggered or cured in animal-based models by changing the microbiome.

“Think about the potential if we could take control of that process [changes in the microbiome] and figure out how to keep these microbial genes healthy for our whole lives,” Knight said.

Dennis Lo, vice-chancellor and president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), spoke about the intersection of biotechnology and healthy ageing with particular emphasis on dead cells and the havoc their DNA wreaks when released into the bloodstream after cell walls disintegrate. At least one type of new cancer is known to be caused by such stray DNA.

However, Lo explained: “A few years ago, we invented a test that has now been commercialised. This test can test for many types of cancer and can tell us where the cancer is.” CUHK is also examining what role, if any, the microbiome plays in other cancers, cognitive function and inflammatory diseases.

Musculoskeletal research

Lo also highlighted research into the musculoskeletal system, which becomes weaker and more dysfunctional as individuals age, resulting in a significant degrading of lifestyles.

“One of the teams at CUHK is looking at how we can help regenerate that [system] and to try to have even better drugs and prostheses,” he said.

John Karl Scholz, president of the University of Oregon, also spoke about musculoskeletal research and the impact of technology. Scientists at the Knight Campus, a research campus in Eugene, Oregon, have shown via miniature sensors implanted in rats that resistance training can significantly improve femur injuries.

The healthier rat population in the labs provides “a window into the mechanical properties of the bone, giving scientists detailed ongoing data about the process of healing.

“If someday applied to humans, these sensors could allow doctors to better tailor a rehabilitation plan to an individual patient, monitor their progress and adjust their exercises along the way”, Scholz said.

New research funding models

Yet funding has become an issue at the forefront of such complex, multidisciplinary research during the current environment of research funding cuts.

Summing up the conference in concluding remarks, Quiroga said: “We also face a funding crisis for many of our scientific goals. In the US, agencies like USAID, NIH (National Institutes of Health), NSF (The National Science Foundation) are seeing cuts that affect all of us.

This may impel us to further increase collaboration with industry and venture capital to build ecosystems. But, as we turn more to industry and get closer to venture capitalists, we must remain attentive to challenges like allocation of (intellectual) property rights,” he warned.

Knight added: the “microbiome teaches us something profound. We are never truly alone; our health, our ageing, even our minds are shaped by trillions of invisible partners.

“In a way the same is true of science. We’re all part of something larger than ourselves. The choices we make now about what we fund, what we regulate, and what we sell will shape how long we live and how well we live together”.