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A WOMAN has been told she is at high risk of developing breast cancer, and her doctor has asked her to come in for tests. At the surgery, she is handed a mouthwash and told to gargle. In minutes, she is out of the door and on her way back to work. There is no need for a biopsy or mammogram: instead, a single drop of saliva is enough for a laboratory sensor to detect proteins linked to cancer.

This isn鈥檛 possible quite yet, but the 鈥渟pit test鈥� for breast cancer is already being refined for clinical trials. This is just one of thousands of emerging discoveries in the exciting field of medical biotechnology.

聯A 鈥榮pit test鈥� for breast cancer is being refined for clinical trials, just one of many discoveries in biotechnology聰

The dramatic power of biotech to transform medical diagnostics and therapy makes this a rewarding field in which to carve out a career, says John McDonald of the school of biology at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, who is also chief research scientist at the Ovarian Cancer Institute, also in Atlanta. 鈥淚t鈥檚 always fun for scientists to discover something or do something new,鈥� McDonald says. 鈥淚n this case, there is the added satisfaction of feeling like we are doing something that will improve the quality of life of cancer patients and ultimately save lives.鈥�

Cancer is far from the only area in which medical biotech applications are being developed, but it is certainly one of the most challenging. At the Davy-Faraday Research Laboratories in London, Quentin Pankhurst and his team are pursuing one such application, a technique to kill cancer cells using magnetic nanoparticles. These are either injected straight into a tumour or attached to antibodies to guide them to their target so that they can be administered intravenously. The tumour is then subjected to an oscillating magnetic field, which heats the nanoparticles, killing the cancer cells.

The research is very technology-focused, says Mathew Kallumadil, a PhD student working on the project. 鈥淚 started with this strange machine that had a few cables, and I didn鈥檛 know much about it. Then we developed a new one that worked really well, and we started looking at mice to see if [the technique] works, and that鈥檚 very exciting.鈥� Working in a field that has such obvious applications has made for a much more fulfilling PhD than many of his peers experience, he says. What matters, he adds, is 鈥渘ot just the fundamental research but also trying to make it useful for the general population鈥�.

Being a good experimentalist helps in such a cutting-edge field. Hagan Bayley at the University of Oxford says of his prospective PhD students: 鈥淵ou have to be willing to roll up your sleeves, get into the lab and try a lot of different things.鈥� What鈥檚 more, it鈥檚 crucial to have a high tolerance for failure, so he tends to choose people who are going to stick with a problem and not get too frustrated. 鈥淚t鈥檚 only too easy to do research that is derivative or repetitive, but it鈥檚 not going to break new territory,鈥� he says. Bayley himself works on one of the more speculative areas of biotech, trying to build electronic circuits out of living cells. The techniques he is exploring could eventually be used to integrate electronic devices, such as pacemakers or drug dispensers, into the body.

Biotech always requires cross-disciplinary collaboration, whether that involves biologists and physicists coming together to develop nanomagnets to treat cancer, or chemists and engineers trying to integrate electronics into living cells. 鈥淏ecause this is a very multidisciplinary [area] it鈥檚 crucial to keep an open mind and keep reading about other subjects,鈥� says Kallumadil. And being essentially multidisciplinary, biotech offers no single entry route. Dozens of UK universities run biotech courses, but there is no need to specialise too early. Bayley advises choosing a rigorous traditional subject such as chemistry or physics and sticking with it even at postgraduate level. When it comes to doing a PhD, he recommends looking for a lab where you can take on a reasonably difficult scientific problem and see it through, thereby gaining a good grounding in research techniques.

Martyn Amos at Manchester Metropolitan University is a case in point. Having graduated in computer science, he got interested in the interface between computing and biology and became one of the first people to do a PhD in DNA computing. He is now engaged in so-called 鈥渨et computing鈥�, trying to build computers made entirely of cells. 鈥淔rom the perspective of an engineer, cells are incredibly efficient little machines,鈥� Amos explains. 鈥淭he problem is how to persuade those biological systems to do something useful, like producing a drug or detecting a pollutant.鈥�

Amos agrees that networking across disciplines is crucial when trying to tackle these tricky problems. But in such an emerging area of research, the collaborations and structures that exist in more traditional fields aren鈥檛 yet in place. For Amos, that means there are fantastic opportunities for bright young researchers to make a big impact. One of the best ways is to become a facilitator, organising events, workshops or meetings. Such a proactive approach not only helps you develop your own research by learning from other people, it has the added benefit of raising your profile and putting your name at the centre of activity.

Medical practitioners can also contribute to biotech research in ways that benefit the people they treat, says , a consultant orthopaedic surgeon. With a special interest in using stem cells to build hip replacements, Dunlop works closely with stem-cell researchers at the University of Portsmouth and, having already seen positive results from stem-cell therapies in his patients, he is now involved in a multi-centre clinical trial of synthetic bone grafts. Similar collaborations between hospitals and university research groups are worth seeking out. Some universities even offer extra funding to medical students who want to take time out to study relevant areas of biotechnology.

Whatever your background, the medical uses of biotechnology promise some big rewards. 鈥淭he whole area of interdisciplinary science applied to medicine is changing,鈥� explains Bayley. 鈥淚t continues to be very open-ended, so it really is a very exciting area to do research in.鈥� n