Changes In Your Medicine Cabinet

A website called Gizmodo looks into the future in many fields. In a recent article “What You’ll Find Inside Medicine Cabinets in 2030,” you might think you are reading a science fiction article – yet a lot of the research is already underway.

We already know that medical research is striving to be more targeted in its treatment using our own genome makeup.

Olivier Elemento, professor of physiology and biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine forecasts that the reduction in costs for genome sequencing will allow more targeted drugs. He foresees the treatments that will be personalized based on your own genes.

J. Ruben Morones-Ramirez, lead scientist of the NanoBiotechnology Research Group, predicts, “In case of an infection, patients will be able to take a test, sequence the probable pathogens causing the infection, and the appropriate therapeutics will be designed, produced and delivered to their door.”

An addition to our medicine cabinet will be living microorganisms. Peter Q. Nguyen, a research scientist and molecular biologist from the Wyss Institute at Harvard, explains microbes can be used to generate therapeutic molecules inside of us.

According to Morones-Ramirez, therapies of the future will be designed to monitor our bodies and detect when some function is abnormal.

Other predictions include:

• Bandages delivering drugs but leave no scars
• Electronic bandages that speed healing
• Smart electronic pills to find early signs of disease

Even pills might change. According to Elemento, “increasingly 3D-printed pills will include many drugs.” There is even speculation that molecular mechanisms may slow down the aging process.

It seems we are entering a new age in medical discovery. The search for a COVID-19 vaccine might have operated as a catalyst.