Next-Generation Vaccines
When the human race needed a vaccine to solve the COVID-19 pandemic, the outlook was grim. After all, previously, the fastest vaccine ever created, mumps, took four years to create in the 1960s. With at least 3 million deaths in 2020, that wasn’t going to be fast enough. Luckily, breakthroughs in RNA-based vaccines, which synthesize this building block of life to jump-start the body’s natural protein factory and train the body to fight disease, took less than a year. Now, some believe the technology could help combat other previously unsolvable health care problems, such as cystic fibrosis, HIV or even cancer.
Psychedelic Psych
Psychedelics have taken a long, strange trip in Western culture from the center of the counterculture to a potential mental health panacea. As states like Colorado legalize psilocybin mushrooms and other cities decriminalize them, researchers from the Cleveland Clinic and Ohio State University are testing popular recreational drugs like LSD, ketamine and MDMA as potential salves for anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorder. Meanwhile, University Hospital is applying ketamine, an anesthetic that’s also popular as a rave culture drug, intravenously with therapeutic guidance as a treatment for depression.
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Special Prescription Delivery
What if you never had to go to the pharmacy again? The Cleveland Clinic is working to make that dream a reality with plans to launch a prescription drone delivery service by 2025. Using drone company Zipline’s Platform 2 system, the hospital system hopes to start by delivering specialty medication from about a dozen Northeast Ohio locations before expanding to medical supplies, prescription meals and other services. While government regulation remains a hurdle, the airborne vehicles would fly at 300 feet and can complete 10-mile deliveries in about 10 minutes.
Equitable Cancer Care
In March, the MetroHealth System completed its 1,300-square-foot Good Manufacturing Practice facility. This state-of-the-art vector and cellular facility produces cellular immunotherapies that fight cancer, such as chimeric antigen receptor T-cell and lymphocyte cancer therapies, which fight tumors. The facility is just the second of its type to be offered at a public hospital and the first in the nation at a safety-net hospital, which can hopefully ensure that the expensive treatment is available to those who previously couldn’t afford it.
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