The Medical Miracles of 2010

2010 may be the most incredible year in history for medical technology stocks. A handful of truly amazing technologies-in-development are likely to make headlines this coming year…and these headlines could produce huge gains in the share prices of selected medical technology companies…

You know that our bodies are incredibly complex. All throughout human history, we’ve fought to understand more about how our bodies work. For millennia, progress was slow. We made our breakthroughs in fits and starts.

Complex medical procedures – such as the groundbreaking heart surgery of 1944, was just the beginning. After that, vaccine technology took off with the development of the Polio vaccine in 1952. Soon thereafter, imaging technology began to allow doctors and scientists to take the next step and peer deeper into our bodies.

The trend continues today.

With the benefit of ultra-advanced microscopes and what’s called “molecularly precise” manufacturing, scientists are figuring out how to use our own cells to help repair vital organs like the heart. “Patients will receive injections containing… their own cells… extracted and multiplied,” BBC News explains, “[to] generate new tissue [and] repair damaged regions.”

So rather than relying on some outside treatment, the future of medicine will be in figuring out how to make your body heal itself and rejuvenate itself. No surgery. No invasive procedure of any kind. It’s this kind of promise that makes me believe 2010 will be the dawning of an amazing age of medical marvels.

Here’s another example: Vaccines that cure diseases AFTER infection.

The way doctors treat viruses now is fairly straightforward. If there’s a vaccine available, the doctor gives it to you ahead of time so you don’t get sick. In other words, getting the “cure” ahead of time is the only way to treat a virus.

This model works. Sometimes.

But new flu strains emerge all the time. These strains change, become stronger. So imagine the profit potential of a process that could kill the flu – or nearly any other virus – AFTER you contracted it. Now imagine this virus cure coming in the form of a simple skin patch.

You get the flu. You put on a patch the size of a band-aid. The flu goes away. Voila. It’s that simple. I am monitoring a company that is trying to develop just such a technology. It is one of my “6 Companies Ready to Change the World in 2010.”

Another company I’m monitoring is exploring a revolutionary process for repairing spinal cords. Their work could someday mean precisely this: If someone suffers a spinal cord injury and the paralysis that comes with it, this company’s technology could repair the spinal cord. Just like new.

“Cells from the nose may help spinal injury victims walk again,” Fox News explains. “It’s a relatively simple procedure to take them from the patient, grow more of them in the laboratory and then insert them back into the same person.”

This revolutionary little firm finally gained media and analyst awareness in 2009 due to its ongoing tests. And this company isn’t just interested in spinal repair – it has groundbreaking cancer treatments and life-extension research and tests currently underway as well. Their blueprint is simple: Save the life of the cell and you live longer…or at least better.

Lastly, imagine a simple, fast procedure that gives you a rebuilt heart functionally the same as the clean-beating heart of a 29-year-old person. That’s the full promise here. How big do you think this market could be?

Now here’s some background. In May, the CEO of the company that might offer these cures this year made an announcement about his work at an exclusive conference…

What did he announce? Cells he’s working on show the potential to re-grow cartilage. Just think for a second what that could mean for folks with arthritis. All that pain and suffering, simply going away. Now imagine the same technology applied to heart cells. That’s exactly what this researcher and his team are working on.

2010 will be, I predict, the year it all comes together.

The profits of the past 12 months that some folks have booked are nothing compared to what’s in store for the years ahead. Because it’s not just heart treatments and virus cures that could soon be available.

I’m talking about a Golden Age of Medical Marvels.