| 創新研發 |
|
| |
|
 |
 |  Leave it to a structural biologist who thought about becoming a pastry chef to write an industrial-scale recipe for accelerating drug discovery. In 1999, with a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, Nathaniel David cofounded Syrrx, the world's first auto- mated factory devoted to analyzing proteins and their interactions with drugs using struc-tural biology.The three-dimensional shape of aprotein determines how well a particular drug will bind to it, but the structures of many critical human proteins remain unexplored. It can take researchers in a traditional lab months to produce, purify and crystallize a single protein and confirm its shape. Under David,San Diego-based Syrrx adapted robot arms from auto-motive assembly lines to crystallize proteins with far greater speed:the company can reveal 11 to 15 structures a month. Some scientists doubted the feasibility of automating an intricate lab process, but David—who claims his best quality as an innovator is stubbornness—prevailed.
As sole employee for 16 months, he raised $25 million. Syrrx now has 131 employees, $100 million in capital and has analyzed 90 potential drug targets for three pharmaceutical makers.
| | DAVID | | NATHANIEL | | AGE 33 | | BIOTECHNOLOGY | | SYRRX |
|
| | |  Paul Debevec's rise to computer graphics stardom sounds like a fairy tale. In 1996 Debevec presented a paper on facade, a system he developed as a student that digitally generates 3-D scenes from 2-D photographs. Soon after, he was flown to Hollywood to present his technology to John Dykstra,the visual-effects supervisor on Botman and Robin. Effects companies have since used Debevec's techniques in several films,including The Matrix. Debevec now directs the graphics laboratory at the University of Southern California, where he is perfecting the Light Stage. Inside this three-meter-wide spherical structure,actors and objects are illuminated by 156 light-emitting diodes that duplicate light from any environment. For example, an actress can be illuminated with light recorded inside the Sistine Chapel, and her image can be simultaneously superimposed on a scene set there.The technique yields far more realistic results in less time than the standard method of adjusting concocted lighting frame by frame. "The idea is to use the light from the actual scene, rather than
manually try to approximate it," says Debevec, who admits to being under Hollywood's spell.
| | DEBEVEC | | PAUL | | AGE 30 | | ENTERTAINMENT | | UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA |
|
| | |  Derek Hansford's unobtrusive bearing is just what you'd expect from someone who designs ways to sneak drugs past the immune system. Hansford has been fabricating tiny polymer particles that can hold drugs and be injected into a patient's bloodstream. Once there, they could hunt down tumors and release their drugs, without affecting
healthy cells. Along the way, the particles would shield the drugs from degrading
enzymes and would not elicit attacks from the immune system—a connnnon problem for cancer drugs—because they do not attract immune cells. Although other bioengineers are making polymer drug-delivery devices, none has made large numbers of uniform particles small enough to travel in the blood-stream; each of Hansford's particles is about the size of a red blood cell.The scientist has adapted a technique called soft lithography to make the particles.casting hundreds of millions of them in varied shapes out of reusable molds. Startup company iMedd plans to license his technology. Hansford will now try to make particles for inhalable drugs—an alternative to injections.
| | DEREK | | HANSFORD | | AGE 29 | | MATERIALS | | OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY |
|
| |
|
Source From: TECHNOLOGY REVIEW
June 2002
|
|
|
產業智庫 
|