Write an essay depicting how you'll be able to utilize the obtained

knowledge from this course.

The field of biotechnology has always dealt with the biological knowledge and techniques
for developing products and services for solving hard-hitting problems faced by people in all
sectors around the world. Our course Medical Biotechnology is one of the is the major thrust area
of biotechnology that hold the tool to bringing revolution in the field of healthcare and medicine.
Medical Biotechnology gave rise to quick methods for diagnosing diseases, generation of new
drugs and vaccines, completely novel approach of treatments and many more. Also developed
countries like USA, JAPAN, UK has already shown significant progress in bringing the theoretical
knowledge of the medical biotechnology to real life application, Asian countries like mine, ie,
Bangladesh still lag a lot behind when it comes to practically stepping beyond the literature.
Nevertheless, the knowledge we acquired in this course, provided a foundational understanding of
the key steps leading to the vast ocean of medical Biotechnology and if further harnessed, it can
lead to us sowing the seeds to the future revolution in our country and even leading ways to new
advances in internal fields as well.
In our course we brushed upon the fundamentals of the human genome and genetic
diseases. This is crucial as many of the medical biotechnology deals with solving diseases related
to genetic mutation. Thus learning about the Genetic basis of diseases, be it chromosomal or
Mendelian Diseases or Mitochondrial genome and associated disorders or even epigenetics related
issues, a understanding of how and why they occur will help us delve more into coming up with
solutions related to it.
But only the theoretical knowledge of how genetic associated diseases would have been
insufficient if we had no peak into how we can actually diagnose any such or similar disease. This
is where the understanding of the Molecular Diagnostic tests comes into play. Molecular
diagnosis is rapidly becoming an inseparable part of disease diagnosis. This cutting edge
technology can be used to diagnose both infectious and malignant diseases as well as to help in
determining drug dosage, tissue types for organ transplant and risk of inherent disorders. Thus
knowledge of the basics like PCR, karyotyping to the more developed FISH and Microarray lays
a good foundation for us that can be used in any disease related research we might want to endive
into the near future.

Along with the general overview, we also delved into specific examples of genetic disorder,
like Cystic Fibrosis. The details of the different types of the disease developing from different
variation of mutation of the CFTR gene gives us insight and appreciation of the intricacy of any
disease on a molecular level. The chapter even elaborated on the previous knowledge of the
molecular diagnostic techniques that can be used for identifying infectious diseases, once again
focusing on the highly used technique of PCR and Microarray. We can use this knowledge to have
better approach when we get the opportunity of conducting research level study on such diseases
and their development.

Being a well-balanced course, this didn’t leave out on of the most hyped disease when it
comes to research or even public eye, i.e. Cancer. It talked in detail about the breast cancer and
the role of BRCA gene in its development, but most importantly, it focused on the biomarkers that
are crucial for cancer diagnosis. Learning about the prognostic biomarkers and its level of variation
can help us inspire to delve into researching into developing various ways to identify these
biomarkers on an early stage that would be both patient friendly and economical. Also the
understanding of the predictive biomarkers is a huge insight in learning the outcomes of any
therapeutics treatment for certain diseases, thus those of us show interest in furthering into
therapeutics and pharmacology will highly benefit.

Next we stepped foot into one of the most fascinating topic in cellular biology, in my view,
Stem cell therapy. Stem cell studies have been growing at high rate since the past few years and
it shows great potential and bright rays of hope in developing cell replacement based therapy for
diseases deficient in effective treatment by conventional ways. Also knowledge of the induced
pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) has been a huge bonus, as it is of great interest for cell therapy
research because of their unrestricted self-renewal and differentiation potentials and this shows
huge potential, possibly a field for our future research, in regenerated-organ transplantation. iPSCs
technology would substantially benefit clinical studies in various areas, including neurological
disorders, hematologic diseases, cardiac diseases, liver diseases and etc.
 Although not completely a unique topic by itself, Gene therapy is another major
technological advancement that supplied strong means to undertake human gene therapy to great
heights in the near future. The reason I said not unique is because it is intertwined with the
knowledge of stem cells as well as there are and would be further technological advancement in
developing techniques for the efficient introduction of gene sequences into the pluripotent stem
cells. Our increased understanding of gene-regulatory mechanisms, the use of different vectors and
the techniques should allow us to further our curiosity of gene therapy and the level of efficacy
that can be obtained from therapeutic gene expression.

From gene therapy we shifted to Vaccine study, one of the most hyped up topics nowadays
given the global pandemic situation, and rightly so, as vaccination represents the most successful
form of disease prevention available today. In the past 20 years, vaccine technology has improved,
resulting in production of vaccines against a broad range of infectious diseases. The knowledge of
the different types of vaccines, i.e., attenuated vaccine, conjugate vaccine, DNA vaccine,
Recombinant vaccine, etc. along with their potentials and drawbacks, especially tickled our interest
as a result of the current hype. We might want to further our study into endeavoring to develop
vaccine for deadly disease and especially those that would only needs to be given once, a powerful,
and well packaged one that will have its contents released intermittently once it has been
administered thus having lasting effect. We might even want to tap into the potential of vaccines
to be used to treat rather than prevent infectious and noninfectious diseases and the paths are
endless for us, only waiting to be walked upon.

Then we even explored the powerful tool of Genome sequencing for pathogen analysis.
This too is a highly important topic given the recent predictions of the worldwide burden of
diseases under a variety of scenarios that suggest that infectious diseases will continue to
negatively impact the health of human populations well into the future. Therefore, it is clear that a
comprehensively sequencing of an entire pathogen genome can provide vastly more information
about any infectious agent as compared with conventional methods of pathogen identification.
This information can be used to develop new therapeutic targets as well as to track the evolution
of resistance within a population. Furthermore, inexpensive DNA sequencing might also be used
to sequence pathogens that cannot be cultured and hence are currently understudied. It is now
realistic to expect that soon even relatively small clinical diagnostic laboratories can use next-
generation technologies to sequence pathogen genomes with the throughput only previously seen
in large genome-sequencing centers. By identifying novel variation and adaptations within
pathogen populations as they occur, humans can stay one step ahead of microbes in this
evolutionary arms race.

Finally, with all this knowledge of advance technological tools, there is a necessity to have
a leash that will keep overzealous scientists or immature like us under control and prevent us from
crossing the line when it comes to ethical, moral and hazardous concerns. This is where our last
topic of Safety and ethics regarding the medical biotechnology comes into play. Here, our
knowledge of developing a safe bio therapeutics and the challenges faces along it will give us a
grasp over what to expect when we do decide to embark on such journeys in the future. Learning
about the clinical trials and the phases it has to go through also gives us a sense of appreciation
towards what goes behind what seems to be a simple drug. Also the ethical concerns when it comes
to protecting human subjects, privacy, thinking about the affordability, all gives us a whole view
behind and scientific product development, which will surely give us a calm start, in terms of
expectation, in our personal work field. Lastly, the dangers of bioterrorism are also an eye catching
point that raises our concern and also the ethical point regarding the stem cell research should keep
our wild dreams in check.

All in all, this medical biotechnology course has been one of the most fruitful course for
me, personally, given the fact I hold a special interest in this field and such comprehensive
understanding has surely rejuvenated my love for this field and it will also surely benefit me in the
near future in terms of specifying my interest for further studies and to decide on what specific
boat to ride on to take the journey in this vast ocean of Medical Biotechnology.