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What is gene therapy?

2023-08-24 19:38:53

Gene therapy is an experimental method using gene therapy or disease prevention. In the future, this technique will enable doctors to treat disease by inserting genes into patients' cells without medication or surgery. Researchers are testing several gene therapies including:

Gene therapy is a promising treatment option for many diseases, including hereditary diseases, certain types of cancer, certain viral infections, but the technology is still at risk and its safety and efficacy Research is continued to ensure sexuality. . Gene therapy is currently undergoing examination of disease without other treatments

MedlinePlus of the National Library of Medicine provides a list of links to gene and gene therapy information.

The University of Utah Genetic Science Learning Center provides interactive presentation of gene therapy and discussions on several successful treatments for gene therapy.

The Genetics Education Center introduces gene therapy, including discussion of ethical and safety considerations.

The genome of Wellcome Genome Campus introduces gene therapy introduction and some techniques.

Gene therapy By adding gene replacement to the human body, gene therapy enables physicians to use genes to treat or prevent diseases. It first came back to the 1990s with human trials, and unfortunately many problems were not resolved at that time. But now, we are getting closer than ever to prove that gene therapy is a treatment many people dream of. In 2016, Italian scientists used gene therapy to treat 18 children. This is a rare illness called ADA - SCID that is approved in the European market. Although only 15 patients were diagnosed throughout Europe, as these indicators of technology increase, even if treatment is a goal for a small number of patients, the cost will fall to an acceptable level for most patients .

Gene therapy has attracted scientists and non-scientists around the world in 2017, but there is a just good reason: Unlike medicine and surgery, gene therapy changes the patient's DNA. It is responsible for the known treatment for the disease. In an interview with his recent famous geneticist George Church, he predicted "gene therapy will be one of the most accurate and safest mechanisms we have".

The premise of gene therapy is based on correcting abnormal genes, which is the fundamental cause of disease. There are basically two forms of gene therapy, one of which is called somatic cell gene therapy. Somatic gene therapy involves manipulating intracellular gene expression, which corrects the patient but will not do it for the next generation. This is a type of gene therapy currently being investigated in the Human Gene Therapy Institute and other laboratories around the world. Another form of gene therapy is called germline gene therapy, which involves genetic modification of germ cells and inherits changes to the next generation. For technical and ethical reasons, there is currently little (if any) research on germline intervention.