ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
One of the most important ingredients for long-term economic growth is better technology, and one area where growth is happening fast right now is medical technology. Our colleagues from The Indicator, Wailin Wong and Darian Woods, explain.
WAILIN WONG, BYLINE: Elias Sayour is a pediatric oncologist and a physician scientist at the University of Florida. He and his team just released a paper on a cancer vaccine.
ELIAS SAYOUR: If you can educate the immune system to fight someone's cancer, that immune system's always there. Just like when it protects us against a virus and remembers it, it's - it can do the same thing for cancer.
DARIAN WOODS, BYLINE: His team made an mRNA vaccine that could fight a tumor. But unlike other vaccines, they didn't have to formulate it to attack a specific tumor. They made kind of a universal generic vaccine that could be a first treatment in the future for all kinds of cancers.
SAYOUR: I'm hoping in the next three to five years we've created a new paradigm for care.
WOODS: We turn now to a Japanese biotech company called Fujirebio Diagnostics. From concept to approval, Fujirebio Diagnostics spent a little less than two years working on a blood test for Alzheimer's disease.
WONG: Diana Dickson is the vice president for clinical and regulatory sciences at the company.
DIANA DICKSON: So it's been several years of research with blood biomarkers to really see, can we do this? Can we get a blood test to, you know, replace or add to some of these tests that are hard to get to? And the answer is yes.
WOODS: So now that they have approval, Fujirebio Diagnostics is onto the commercialization phase. They're getting the blood tests out into the world.
WONG: And just because someone makes a breakthrough and it's approved doesn't mean that the medical solution is widely available or affordable. Take our third health innovation - exoskeletons. These are basically wearable robot suits that can make you stronger or walk faster.
WOODS: Matt Forde lives in the U.K., where he has the autoimmune disease rheumatoid arthritis, which damaged his joints and is now eroding his muscles. He didn't want to do a spoken conversation because of the way it affects his lungs, so we interviewed him over email.
WONG: Matt says that on his worst days, he's mostly confined to his bed. On good days, he can walk, but not without pain and exhaustion.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: It's time to seize the...
WONG: Earlier this year, he saw an ad on social media showing an exoskeleton from a Chinese startup called Hypershell.
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: The world's first multiscenario outdoor power suit.
WOODS: The Hypershell looks kind of like bionic bike shorts. It's these battery-powered braces that help lift your thighs while you're walking.
WONG: Matt says it was about a thousand dollars - a lot of money for him. He decided to take the plunge and ordered one straight from their website. Two weeks later, it arrived. We had a colleague read out how he described first using it.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Reading) It feels a little like being a puppet, though you're in control at all times.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS THUDDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Reading) The motor emits a whir with each step. I then proceeded to walk round my house and garden, testing the settings with a huge grin on my face.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS THUDDING)
WOODS: That sound you're hearing is Matt using the Hypershell. He says it's replaced his wheelchair, which is now gathering dust in his garage. The type of innovation seen in exoskeletons is quite different to the mRNA cancer vaccine tests in a lab or the blood test for Alzheimer's.
WONG: Yeah, and this reveals a pattern with innovation. All along the chain of innovation, you have different institutions involved with different incentives.
WOODS: Each of those players have a role in improving living standards and our economy.
WONG: Wailin Wong.
WOODS: Darian Woods, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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