The Cutting Edge
Training in science, medicine, technology and business can, and rightly should, produce leaders and followers although each person is always the leader with respect to their own behavior and private goals.
Many people serve as a leader and a follower for different aspects of the same job. This is why it is so important to identify, not only cutting edges called out by mass communication and social media, but also the ones that will make your day’s work most efficient and effective.
Where is your current “cutting edge?”
The photograph at left shows freshly-harvested amaranth seeds. The cutting edge in my garden's technology is improving efficiency of the gravity separation used to separate amaranth seeds from the chaff and stems.
Thirty years ago producing a human blood protein in the milk of transgenic goats, and establishing its pharmaceutical safety and efficacy, was the cutting edge of drug discovery and development.
Drug Discovery and Development Cutting Edges
improving translational science
making genetically-modified people whose successfully-treated cells start or stop making a specific macromolecule. This is removes needs to provide that macromolecule as a medicine or counteracted, with a different medicine, faulty operation of the endogenous macromolecule which is an agent of disease
making "well characterized" protein biopharmaceuticals by validated and robust processes which ensure their safety, identity, strength, quality and potency.
making rationally designed drugs and matching them to patients whose cancer genotypes match the susceptibility profile necessary for each to be effective
understanding and modifying immune responses so that a treated person's lymphatic system can more appropriately alter homeostasis when it encounters agents at risk for the potential to cause illness.
improving patient experience in the health care system