Talking of leaving the old ideas behind, here’s a great blog post by Hilary Sutcliffe asking whether ‘nutters’ or those with extreme views have too much influence on policy.
While many take the view that we are living in a golden age of science, or second industrial revolution, progress towards a sustainable future is at risk from the twin threats of the anti science movement and knee jerk anti technology movements. Given that levels of scientific ignorance are as high as they have ever been, most technology is viewed as working as much by magic as much as through physics, chemistry or materials science.
As the Guardian points out, many scientists are terrified of the anti science lobby, and unfortunately there are plenty of political and commercial reasons why it could be advantageous to deny the science of evolution, or climate change, or modern medicine. But this behaviour is not limited to right-wing nutcases, left leaning pressure groups are equally well versed in promoting one study which fits their agenda and denying the rest of the science, as we saw with the MMR vaccine or GMO’s.
While the Chinese government is composed of engineers and technologist, many western governments are composed of politicians with little or no understanding of technology (as we see with every email or twitter based scandal) and as a result are far more susceptible to anti science arguments from both sides.
The current convergence of nanoscience with life sciences represents a real opportunity to address major global issues, from heath to food to energy. Fortunately the Internet is somewhat more robust than the Great Library of Alexandria so fears of a new dark age are rather exaggerated, but it would be a shame not to take advantage of the new opportunities. As an illustration of the consequences, China at the end of the Ming dynasty took a decision that internal trade was sufficient, and left the new global maritime trade to be dominated by Europe. Will we do the same with technology?
It’s nice to see some constructive criticism of the plethora of technology roadmaps which governments commission and then ignore. One of the latest comes from the Australian Enabling Technologies Roadmap – or at least the consultation stage for it. The roadmap is focused on new forms of nanotechnology and biotechnology (including synthetic biology).
Matthew Kearnes, of the University of New South Wales, describes the roadmap as a “reactive document”, a criticism than can be levelled at most similar exercises. Kearnes also notes that “the implicit assumption is that new technologies develop of their own accord and people just have to adapt to them.”
It’s probably worse than that, as governments also assume that technologies develop of their own accord, something Andrew Maynard and I have highlighted via the World Economic Forum. Kearnes suggests that ‘we should first ask what challenges we face as a nation and then ask what role different innovations can play in addressing these,” something that is sadly lacking in most policy thinking.
Andrew Hagan of the World Economic Form hits the nail on the head in a recent press release covering Important technologies that will impact on the state of the world in the near future identified by the Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies, World Economic Forum. ”The challenge will not just be the new ideas but leaving the old ones behind.”
I had a meeting this week with one of the first VC firms I ever worked for. At the fag end of the dot.com era they made a bit of money, then lost it all and more chasing those elusive short-term returns. 15 years later an incarnation of the fund is still in business, looking for deals where £250k can generate a few million within 2 to 3 years, which I suppose is why they are still limping along rather than roaring. A VC who won’t take a risk is like a dog that won’t bark.
After 20 years in this game I can usually look an investor in the eye and tell within a few minutes whether a deal is possible. The ones who get it will always try to find a way to make a deal work, even if we can’t agree terms in the end, whereas those who don’t get it will always try to pick holes in things to find an excuse to turn a deal down. Sometime you are really unlucky and get one of these folks on a company board, and in contrast to great investors who pour all their accumulated wisdom and experience into the enterprise, they just produce negative comments which create masses of unproductive work. Still, with experience comes wisdom, and every investor who says no gets you a little closer to the one who will say yes.
So if it’s tough enough to get a company with solid IP and products funded, what about the funding of longer-term technologies such as those we identified via the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council for Emerging Technologies?
I suspect that the venture capital industry will be of little help for most of the technologies we identify as being significant. A quarter of a million dollars goes a long way if your business plan involves a couple of laptops and some social media marketing, but not very far at all if your business requires lab space, consumable or analytical equipment.
Governments aren’t much more help. With the exception of the Technology Strategy Board which limps along with one hand tied behind its back getting kicked from all sides and still manages to generate a 700% ROI, the best idea the current government has come up with to stimulate economic growth is to spend the next twenty years building a railway that will allow people to get from London to Birmingham 20 minutes quicker than at present. This would have been laughed out as daft idea in 1912, never mind the 21st Century. It’s a horrible example of linear thinking, incrementally improving things in a way that results in no impact in return for a little cash. A much cheaper option of supplying high-speed broadband to the entire population would have a clearer economic impact, and, if the government is fixated on railways, a maglev line cutting the journey from London to Edinburgh to 90 minutes would have been a better use of £32 billion.
So while we can compile lists of transformative technologies, the challenge, as always, is in persuading decision makers to ‘get it.’ While the magnitude and timing of their impact may be in question, there is one fact that we can be fairly certain of. If we continue with the present short-term attitudes to technology development, and this applies as much to governments and corporations as the investor community, then 99% of the technologies currently under development will have no economic impact at all, as they will be starved of everything they need to grow.
As my colleague on the WEF Emerging Technologies Council Javier Garcia Martinez rightly points out in ‘Science’
Many of society’s most urgent problems cannot be solved by improving technologies we have today. We need bolder solutions and radically new ideas. These won’t be found in crowded ponds but in unexplored blue oceans. We need a new generation of disruptive scientists, the kind of really creative people who can imagine such new places and transport themselves — and us — to those places.
Given the golden age of science in which we find ourselves, from the engineering marvel of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to the daily breakthroughs in graphene research, we don’t have to worry about having enough science. From California to China and back we have universities stuffed full of bright people, more than we have ever had in human history. Where we do need some blue sky thinking is how we translate that science into something that has an economic and responsible social impact, because at the moment the instant gratification or ‘get rich quick’ attitude is squandering our future.
While there is a growing sector dedicated to responsible and ethical investing (meaning integrating the consideration of environmental, social and governance issues into investment decision-making and ownership practices), it is also both responsible and ethical to invest in longer term technologies, such as those we identified, in order to address governance and deployment issues at an early stage, and enable technology to be used to the maximum social, rather than merely financial benefit.
Some forecasts have predicted the nanotechnology market to reach close to a trillion dollars by 2015, presenting investors with unique opportunities. However, the market for applications of nanotechnology is complex, multidisciplinary and highly segmented – to put it mildly!
The healthcare market is poised to see some of the earliest benefits of nanotechnology. While early ideas about the impact on nanotechnology on healthcare focussed on fanciful ideas involving small submarines and cancer zapping robots, much of the current advances have been enabled by advances in imaging, control over materials and an increased understanding of how biology works at the nanoscale.
Over the next decade, healthcare will be one of nanotech’s highest growth sectors with drug delivery in the vanguard, but to date specific and rational information about markets has been lacking. We’ve been working over the past year to understand what the impact of nanotechnologies will be on healthcare, and also to understand where that impact will be felt. At the same time we have had to temper the “cure for cancer” hyperbole that accompanies every new breakthrough with the reality of the long and expensive slog to get new drugs and delivery systems through the regulatory process.
The white paper “Market Opportunities In Nanotechnology Drug Delivery” highlights some of our recent findings.
We forecast the total market size in 2021 to be US$ 136Bn,with a 60/40 split in favour of drug nanocrystals although developing new delivery mechanisms may allow more value to be created for companies and entrepreneurs. The combination of social need coupled with willingness to pay will also see the introduction of highly targeted therapies in some areas being much quicker than in others. To some extent the findings mirror the global economy and demographics, but some of the areas of highest produced growth are surprising.
You can download ”Market Opportunities In Nanotechnology Drug Delivery” from the link, or for more detailed a comprehensive information, Nanotechnology for Drug Delivery 2021, gives a comprehensive analysis and geographic breakdown of the current nanotechnology drug delivery market and its key technologies.
The news that Iran and Venezuela have signed a nanotechnology cooperation agreement seems to have raised a few eyebrows, which is probably what was intended. Or to put it in the evil dictator language beloved by the press “This news is a thorn in the eye of our enemies. Ha!”
Far from being the creation of a new ‘axis of evil,’ formed with the intention of flooding the United States with malevolent nanobots, it is more a reflection of the lack of options that Iran has when it comes to choosing cooperation partners.
One of the topics debated heavily during my last visit to Tehran was the effect of sanctions on Iranian science. While it access to advanced equipment is embargoes, many Iranian universities have responded by building their own equipment. While this means that advanced semiconductor fabrication tools cannot be used, there are sufficient national suppliers of research tools such as SEMs and AFMs that are perfectly adequate for Iranian nanotech.
An interview with Dr. Abdolreza Simchi of Sharif University published in Scientific American sees a benefit to the sanctions. In much of the world the best researchers pack their bags and head for the top universities, primarily in the US and Europe, which results in a brain drain fir most of the rest of the world. However as this route is not open to Iranian scientists, the talent can be harnessed at home to boost the local economy, or perhaps now Venezuela’s.
While Iranian, and Venezuelan researchers would love to be able to replicate some of the cutting edge work performed at IBM or MIT, much of the nanotechnology work is application focused, and more importantly appropriate for the local economy. It’s easy to get sniffy about levels of science in Iran if you compare it with the US, but most of the world is in a different league, looking to use nanotechnology to boost fairly basic extractive industries or reduce food spoilage, and in that respect Iran is doing pretty well.
Much of the past decade has been spent worrying about the potential toxicity of nanomaterials. We have had numerous government-funded projects, scores of publications by environmental groups, intense lobbying demanding the labelling of nanomaterials, and even a law suit. But while the developed world agonises over the use of nanomaterials, much of the rest of the world is simply getting on with using them.
As I’ve travelled the world over the last year I’ve seen numerous applications of nanomaterials that would allow them to come into direct contact with the environment – whether through ingestion or release into watercourses – with applications ranging from coatings on fruit to building materials and textiles. In addition there are numerous catalytic applications, such as removing ethylene in fruit storage facilities in order to prevent ripening. Nobody I spoke to had any idea of what would happen to these materials over the course of their lifetime, and probably didn’t much care either. Many of these applications would and could never be used in Europe or the US, but in other parts of the world where economic need takes precedence over human or environmental issues, they are being increasingly applied.
So while much of the ire of environmental groups has been directed at the potential use of nanomaterials by large corporations, Kraft, L’Oreal and the like, their use by small companies in the developing world has gone largely unnoticed. And the use of nanomaterials is virtually undetectable, the technologies to screen large amounts of fruit and vegetables for traces of nanomaterials doesn’t exist.
The real threat to the environment doesn’t come from “greedy multinationals trying to ram untested materials with unknown effects” down people’s throats, but from small companies from Africa to China trying to make an extra shilling, rupee or yuan.
A fascinating statistic is contained in a Guardian piece about investment in science,
“The UK’s own Technology Strategy Board helps the commercialisation of everything from low-carbon energy to more efficient ways of producing drugs, and already generates a return nearly £7 for every £1 invested from the public purse – but it receives just £300m of funding per year.”
It makes it even more strange that in these straightened economic times, the best that politicians can come up with is spending on infrastructure projects that create no long term economic benefit, instead of investing in something which gives a 700% return on investment with the potential to enable new industries. There is no guarantee that increasing funding to the TSB would scale the economic benefits – it may be that UK innovators can only absorb £300 million and the rest would be squandered on Herman Miller chairs – but compared with the billions wasted on health service IT systems and identity cards it would be worth a punt.
However, anyone who has had dealings with governments knows all about the inherent inertia in the system, and the fear of political fall out from the slightest bit of bad news – opponents will seize upon the wasted million rather than hundreds of millions generated in the same way that staying in a five-star hotel on government business provokes popular outrage that drowns out the economic benefit of the deals done.
‘Survival time for all cancer types 40 years ago was just one year, now it is predicted to be nearly six years. This improvement is testament to the improvements in surgery, diagnosis, radiotherapy, and new drugs.’
- Ciarán Devane, – Chief Executive of Macmillan Cancer Support
The healthcare market is poised to see some of the earliest benefits of nanotechnology. Over the next decade, it will be one of nanotech’s highest growth sectors. Targeted drug delivery therapies for the treatment of cancer is one the most commonly cited healthcare benefits on nanotechnologies.
A new study by Macmillan Cancer Support shows a dramatic increase in the median cancer survival times over the past 40 years. Coupling nanotechnology drug delivery (NDD) methods with improvements in diagnostics, we can expect that much more progress will be made in the next 10 years than in the previous 40.
Although nanotechnology is revolutionizing the diagnosis and treatment of a number of cancers, it is only six years since the first nanoparticulate drug delivery product for the treatment of breast cancer, Abraxane, was launched by Abraxis Oncology, a division of American Pharmaceutical Partners, Inc. The initial announcement saw the company’s share prices rise by 50% and required the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to create a new class of therapeutic products. But this was only the opening shot in the war against cancer, and there are now hundreds of new nanotech based treatments under development ranging from reformulation of existing drugs to enhance their effectiveness to radical new “magic bullet” therapies.
Cientifica’s study, Nanotechnology in Drug Delivery 2011-2021, gives a comprehensive analysis and geographical breakdown of the current nanotechnology drug delivery market and its most relevant technologies and also provides a forecast for the size of total addressable markets and percent share of those key technologies to 2021.
Companies mentioned in the report include:
Accelrys, Amgen, Inc., Angiotech Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Celgene Corporation, Cephalon, Inc., Cerulean Pharma, Inc., Cytokine PharmaSciences, Inc., Debiotech SA, Elan Corporation, plc, Enzon Pharmaceuticals, Inc., F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd, Flexible Medical Systems, Genencor, Gilead, GlaxoSmithKline, IOTA NanoSolutions Ltd., Izon Science Ltd, Kiadis Pharma, Kuecept Ltd, Lena Nanoceutics Ltd, Life Technologies, Lypro Biosciences, Makefield Therapeutics, Inc., Medical Nanotechnologies, Inc., Merck & Co., Inc., Merck Serono, Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp., Nanobiotix, NanoCarrier Co. Ltd., Nemucore Medical Innovations, nLife Therapeutics, S.L., Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR), Novartis Pharmaceuticals, NUCRYST Pharmaceuticals Corp., PAR Pharmaceutical, Inc., Particle Sciences, Inc., Pfizer, PharmaNova Inc, Pharmidex, Sigma-Tau Pharmaceuticals, Inc., SoluBest Ltd., Spectrum Pharmaceuticals, Inc., The Dow Chemical Company (“Dow”), VYOME Biosciences
There has been plenty of discussion from all quarters about how the UK failed to grasp the significance of nanotechnology, and instead spent years fretting over heath and safety implications. Without any real nanotechnology related activity in UK industry, worrying about the potential downside is like spending all your time planning what you will do if you win the lottery. But you have to be in it to win it.
The UKs Nanotechnology knowledge Transfer Network, the body charged with”accelerating innovation in nanoscale technologies” has contributed an article to Nanotechnology Nowlooking at responsible nanotechnology. There’s nothing wrong with it per se, it’s a good round up, but after ten years of dealing with every part of the UK government that touches on nanotechnology, from the Treasury to DEFRA (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) I can’t remember anyone extolling the potential economic benefits of nanotechnology, and it’s a real tragedy.
The UK has thousands of word class scientists beavering away on everything from graphene to cancer treatment and instead of being encouraged and aided to spin out their research into world-class companies, the government attitude is solely concerned with what might happen if someone “accidentally” inhaled a kilo of carbon nanotubes or managed to munch their way through a family sized bucket of fried chicken laced with quantum dots. It is probably why our rankings indicate that there is not too much difference between India and the UK as a place to commercialise nanotech.
Iran has always been a source of fascination, a place of ancient culture and history and now a country making a lot of noise about science and technology, so I was pleased to be invited by the Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council to attend the Iran Nano 2011 exhibition in Tehran.
As I’d spent the previous few days in Taiwan at the Taiwan Nano 2011 exhibition, it was a good opportunity to contrast the two events and try to judge whether there was any truth to the claims that Iran is becoming a world-class player in nanotechnology.
The unique aspect of Iranian nanotechnology is that because of the various international sanctions over the past thirty years it’s not the kind of place where you can just order an AFM or an electron microscope from a major US or Japanese supplier. As a result there was lots of home made kit on display, from sputtering systems, through surface analysis to atomic force microscopes. Looking at the results, the home grown kit was certainly more than adequate, with the main difference being the red LED displays and 20 turn potentiometers, things that have been long since replaced by digital control in the rest of the world. Does that stop an AFM from producing decent results though? Probably not. There was also a lot of discussion about selling this very low cost instrumentation outside Iran, although I suspect that IP issues may then become a concern.
So, Iranian scientists have engineered their way around the embargo on selling high tech equipment of Iran – and there was no shortage of high-end laptops on display either – but so often science is not about how much stuff you have in your lab, but what you can do with it.
The human resource development programs in Iran were also impressive. Iran has no shortage of universities, and it is also a big country with a significant population. There was mention of the country producing over 800 nanotechnology PhDs a year which is a huge number when compared with the rest of the region. A major part of one of the ceremonies I attended was the award of cash prizes to research students and small businesses, and that is always a great motivator.
There is plenty going on, much more than one would expect, so how has Iran managed to achieve this? It’s a combination of political support (and well done to the various scientists who managed to achieve this) and coordination. INIC runs the whole show, something describes as “Supreme supervision in realization of goals and programs.” This ranges from involving school children in nanotechnology to commercialisation and international development of technologies, and having a single coordinated and focussed vision rather than a set of squabbling and overlapping agencies seems to be something we all can learn from.
One of the other impressive parts of the program is the creation of the Tech-Market Services Institute, which specifically focuses on commercialisation of nanotechnologies and shows what good coordination can achieve. Not so much an incubator as a collection of third party experts whose services are subsidised by INIC, the goal is to make the transition from basic research to commercial products as smooth and painless as possible, leaving academics to worry about the technology rather than legal or financial issues. This provides a pathway from assessing the level of technology readiness through assistance with patenting, documentation, market surveys, business plan writing, standards & certification, financial aid and venture capital and finally international marketing. Nice touches such as paying 80% of patenting costs seem to really encourage commercial development, with the remaining 20% paid for through the program if the patent application proves successful.
So what of the claims that Iran is becoming a world player in nanotechnology, ranking fourth in the world in terms of publications? Certainly the amount of papers published in international journals is rapidly increasing, and using this as raw data to justify being a world power is no more than many academics departments do. Discussing this with senior editors at some of the higher impact journals indicates that although the volume is high the quality is not, but it is improving. One would not expect Iran to be at the level of Germany, but it is among the best of the developing economies.
In terms of commercial products there were many on display. Agriculture was well represented, with fertilisers, pesticides, coatings to reduce fruit spoilage and even catalytic systems to remove ethylene from fruit storage facilities. Construction materials were another large area, with a wide range of building materials on display. Absent were areas such as semiconductors and medical devices, but once again their absence illustrates that INIC is focussing much more on the solutions demanded by Iranian industry rather than trying to compete with more advanced economies. There is also substantial work going n the the field of renewable energy with some large investments taking place.
Simon Brown, who also attended the exhibition, was similarly impressed, and raises questions about the proliferation of nanomaterials and whether adequate safety testing is being performed before they are deployed.
So Iranian nanotechnology seems to be in rude health. It has plenty of funding, political support at high level and most importantly, plenty of smart people involved. It is also developing stronger international links, hosting the meeting of the Asia Nano Forum and attracting exhibitors from companies and organisations based in Europe and Asia. I don’t think that Iran will be challenging the US and Germany as the best places to commercialise nanotechnologies anytime soon, but I suspect that the aim is more to support domestic industry and in that respect things seem to be working out rather well.
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