Translating Nature-based innovations into valuable technologies for Healthcare & Regenerative Medicine
ZooTechWorksTM (NatureWorksTM- The Next Regeneration)
Biomimetic translation requires detailed, highly focused observation and study, but also analysis by numerical models based upon ontologies. Moreover, it is very important to include the principle of trade-offs, which is the single most important operation in nature during evolutionary innovation, adaptations and speciation or the creation of new species (bundle of new integrated adaptations).
Modern medicine is intrinsically biomimetic. It necessitates the copying, substituting and deputising for faulty or damaged biological processes, mechanisms, functions and adaptations. At a molecular level biological analogues have been successful in treating disease. Moreover, there is a case for extending the realm of biological analogues and models into nature for possible innovative solutions to disease, medical conditions and healthcare. The rationale and logic for this is not immediately obvious. In one sense, there are innumerable other solutions existing in nature that can be transferred into biomedicine from biological systems that are different in design, but are simpler than their human counterpart. This transfer is particular useful in the design and fabrication of new devices and healthcare products for the regenerative sciences, which have no analogue in human biology systems. In another sense sourcing solutions from nature and using them to fix human biology can be highly effective, although counterintuitive. One of the most effective analyses that can be applied is the Russian system for inventive problem solving. In it all of the known solutions to problems, throughout nature, are ordered into an ontology, which is a structure for biological knowledge, as in concepts, where there meaning is described together with their inter-relationships with each other. So it links up all the co-associations and co-functions. The ontology database is the foundation for a system that can be queried to root out impressive biological solutions to outstanding problems under investigation from a large mass of data. The largest concept in evolution and the formation of new species is the trade-off. It is an important action since it leads to the resolution of conflicting or antagonistic pairs. For example, speed versus efficiency.
Inventive Problem Solving from Nature- Application of BioTRIZ analyses
BioTRIZ in action for Bioengineering & Regenerative Medicine
One recent important innovation in completing nature to technology transfers is to construct biological ontologies based on trade-offs. Strategically apportioned trade-offs between improving factors and worsening factors lead to optimisation and adaptation to the environment in which an organism is struggling to exist. Understanding the trade-offs that have taken place among organisms and in evolution is a non trivial exercise. Most are not properly known or presumed. We work strenuously on scrutinising these to find the real reasons behind the adaptation or strategy of interest. We then know the true function and be able to apply it technologically. Therefore, with this knowledge we can carry out more accurate and effective transfers of adaptations and strategies into technological replicas.
The BioTRIZ contradiction matrix (see below) is a classic way of resolving trade-offs in biology. However, we must understand the problem biology has solved from the observed function and strategy (see the example below). This requires more detailed and in depth observations of the biological model by high power imaging, natural history behaviour and relationships.
Bridging between natural innovation & technology
