The methodology for identifying “foundational principles” appears to rely exclusively on:
– Retrospective Analysis: Mining existing textbooks, which by their nature codify well-accepted, often decades-old knowledge.
– Current Educator Consensus: Surveying current educators, whose expertise and perspectives are inherently shaped by their training in these established paradigms.
This approach risks enshrining the pharmacology of yesterday and today while failing to adequately incorporate the emerging paradigms that will define the pharmacology of tomorrow. For a field as dynamic as pharmacology, this is a non-trivial issue. Key areas of transformative growth, such as RNA therapeutics, cellular therapies (e.g., CAR-T), gene editing (e.g., CRISPR-based therapeutics), and the central role of the microbiome in drug response, are fundamentally reshaping what constitutes a “drug,” a “target,” and a “mechanism of action.” A process based on textbook mining and current educator consensus is structurally slow to identify and elevate such nascent, yet foundational, shifts.