2006 Public Lecture Series
May 24, 2006
MOLECULAR MACHINES and the Future of Medicine
The question about molecular machines for clinician-scientists is how to exploit what has been learned about them to improve patient care. The question for practicing physicians is to define how much they must know about the machines to treat patients effectively and safely. Both require taking advantage of new drugs, of new applications of existing drugs, of hormones and of the body's disease-opposing mechanisms to manipulate molecular machines. An example of the complexities facing investigator and practitioner is thyroid gland failure (hypothyroidism) that over the lifespan affects 12% of the U.S. population. The treatment at face value is artlessly simple, namely, replace thyroid hormone. The complexities are that thyroid hormone affects the molecular machinery of the ribosome, ion pumps in the cell membrane, muscle contraction, the migration of cells in the body and it promotes cell division in cancer cells. Clinically, we can now selectively block these hormone actions or we can amplify them. The latter may be desirable to make the machinery of heart muscle contraction improve in the setting of heart failure.