the year of bold pharma/biotech experiments using the tools of social media as part of our efforts to help improve the lives of patients.
San Diego Xconomist Razelle Kurzrock, Director of the Center for Personalized Cancer Therapy at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center:
I would designate “click chemistry” as my prediction for future innovation. Click chemistry implies a time when we will be able to analyze a sick patient’s abnormality based on the aberrant protein structure of the relevant gene products. From that analysis, we will be able to create a chemical compound that modifies the function or action of that abnormal protein. Because this modeling will be done by computers in real time, the chemical compounds also will be created in real time in an extension of 3-D printing.
This might sound like science fiction but I believe this will be doable in the foreseeable future.
Texas Xconomist Kirk Coburn, founder and executive director at Surge Accelerator in Houston:
This year we lost one of the great innovators in energy, George Mitchell, who is considered the father of fracking and shale gas. His contributions have left a legacy of economic growth and innovation in the energy industry. The question remains, for innovation in upstream visualization (geophysics and geological innovation): Who will be the next George Mitchell?
(With thanks to Xconomy Texas Editor Angela Shah and Xconomy Wisconsin Editor Jeff Engel)
Author: Bruce V. Bigelow
In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here.
Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.
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