Nanomedicines: the Swiss Army knife to fix heart disease | Hélder A. Santos | TEDxHelsinkiUniversity
[Applause] the heart according to some studies it's the first organ to react to events in our life how many of you have suffer from heart pain due to love issues how many of you have recovered from heartbreak good so yes certainly we have recovered from from its over time right but there is another heart pain called cardiovascular disease that cannot be cured or healed over time but it's all by its own but I believe I have the solution for this problem nano medicines amen to give to the heart and drugs and all new life but what are nanomedicines so nanomedicines are tiny particles of such a small size that we cannot see them with our naked eyes we need a special microscope to see them they are 1000 times smaller than thickness of our hair or even smaller the typical size of the nanos medicines is 2 a football as the football is to the planet Earth very small when these tiny particles are combining with medicines they form so called nano medicine the great advantage of these nano medicines is that they can carry and deliver drugs to the right places in the body and treat disease such as such as the heart disease so according to the World Health Organization cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide with more than 17 million deaths every year that is about more than three times the population of Finland but let me tell you first how did I become inspired and very interested in research so it all goes back to my childhood and one particular movie and TV show TV show was about a guy call MacGyver you probably will remember him so he used a Swiss Army knife and science to fix all the problems encountered at my early age I was also very interested in science fiction movies the science fiction movie that inspired me the most was the Fantastic Voyage here a bunch of doctors tried to help a friend by embarking on an amazing trip inside human body they did this by fitting themselves into a ship that was then reduced to such a small size that could be ejected inside of the blood vessels of a person so these both examples give me the inspiration to became a scientist to find innovative ways to fix the problems on on a nano micro scale inside of the body so at first I was very interested to understand how nanomedicines were target to cancer cells then I treated a personal tragedy took place when my father passed away from a heart attack as a scientist I started to think that we could use nano medicines to treat the patients suffering from carrier Sklar disease currently there is treatments but no cure for cardiovascular disease the existing therapies that are still insufficient to treat the carrier vascular disease also the annual costs of cardiovascular disease treatments are very expensive so what are the challenge that reduce the success of these current treatments well after a heart muscle damage the heart tissue cannot be regenerated on its own we also have a very limited time to treat disease early the better and then also barriers that the medicines have to follow to overcome in order to reach the damaged side in the heart so why are there no medicines so special first they can be tailored to the disease and the needs of the patient second they can carry and target hearts to the right place inside of the body overcoming barriers third they can be administered to patients orally or even injected intravenously fourth because Nana medicines can be targeted to the right cells they can significantly lower the side effects of traditional medicines and still be more efficient so we can reduce the doses ten times hundred times more than the normal medicines finally nanomedicines can be made by a compatible and biodegradable so harmless to the human body that they break down into pieces and disappear from the body after the job is done just like a sugar cube inside of your cup of tea or coffee nanomedicines can also increase the survival rate of the patients in the future moving towards personalized medicine and treatments because we are treating disease not the symptoms but how actually the Nano medicines work so imagine our bloodstream it's like a motorway the Nano medicines are like cars driving the drugs from different places inside of the body but how do they actually reach the right places in the body so we can program the nanomedicines with a GPS like system so that they can find the right receptors in damaged heart and deliver the drugs specifically to that damaged site just like the right key on the right lock so what can we do we can take advantage of these smart materials or nano medicines and use them to revolutionize the healthcare and fight against disease by inducing the regeneration of the heart tissue with this tiny to the naked eye particles and treat the heart disease such as for example the myocardial infarction by delivering the drugs that will treat such a regeneration this will certainly increase the survival rate of the patients and give them hope and a healthy life for the future because we are treating the disease not the symptoms this treatment it's not a live treatment like in many other therapies it is finished as soon as the heart regeneration takes place so as a scientist I believe we can change the way we treat the patients in the future but this is not the this is not a work - there is a need to work together with the scientists clinicians chemists and so on together we can design the best and most powerful nano medicines to treat the heart disease overcoming barriers this will certainly increases the probability to treat patients in the future it's obviously a very challenging task but there is hope in the future that we can say that not only we can recover from heartbreak from emotional damage but also from cardiovascular disease and the heart damage from a heart attack so as a scientist I want to use nano medicines and develop nanomedicines as my Swiss Army knife this will make us the next MacGyver's with right tools to fight against disease driving the medicines on a fantastic voyage to treat the right disease and to target the right cells inside of the body so the reality is now no more science fiction nanomedicines are here and now to treat the patients thank you very much you