seconding both of these.

psychedelics as medicine are finally starting to gain the traction and serious research which they will need to be utilized therapeutically. while imperfect, they're potentially curative therapies which are likely a quantum leap ahead of much of what psychopharmacology has had in its roster so far.

the gut/microbiome stuff is also starting to come to a head after about 9 years of intense research activity. clinical applications are right around the corner, and there's an entire universe to explore which we've only scratched the surface of so far.

i'd also like to add cannabinoid (CBD) therapeutics as an addendum to psychedelic medicines. while there's a tremendous amount of hype and folk science surrounding CBD, it appears as though the chemical does in fact have a massive impact in domains ranging from immunology to psychiatry to geriatrics. we're just at the very start of the research process, and there are already a cornucopia of compelling and empirically valid leads which need to be followed.

Let's not forget: - non invasive medical imaging, particularly in terms of new approaches to generating or interpreting CT/MRI/ultrasound scans - more ergonomic surgical robots that don't hold their instruments like a 3 year old toddler - AI/expert systems for rapid triage and assessment of patients - more effective ways of drug delivery (both cell based therapy and developing better oral formulations)

Psychedlics will be useful but hard to monetize, but lol @ microbiome.

You realize what this is, right? High throughput sequencing + multiplexing makes it cheap as chips to start doing -omics on anything you can write a grant for. So everyone and their mother starts getting funding for doing the most boring possible experiments that are total fishing expeditions. The results: we see ... stuff! Isn't that great!? We've got correlations coming out of every conceivable orifice, must be something interesting there, right!?

It's great for writing shitty headlines, but piss-poor for doing any sort of science. Seriously, try talking to any 'microbiome' expert about microbiology. It's scary!

Here's what will happen; we'll get some minor insights into diet wrt health, a handful of treatments for some specific niche gut issues (e.g. fecal transplant), and some handwavy BS about inflammation that will only be meaningful with more work on good old-fashioned signalling from cell/mol. biology.

Of all the scam-y biotech startups (which is basically redundant), microbiome stuff is by far the worst.

Agreed, but there is lots of competition on the second one so if I were starting from scratch I would work on the former.