Gene Therapy
By Arya Goel
What is Gene Therapy?
Gene therapy is an experimental technique that uses genes to treat or prevent disease. In the future, this technique may allow doctors to treat a disorder by inserting a gene into a patient’s cells instead of using drugs or surgery. Gene Therapy would the be safer, more efficient, and cheaper than drugs.
How it works
Researchers can use a variety of treatments such as injecting genes to create certain proteins to help combat the diseases. They can also remove damaged genes and use gene therapy to create a healthy version of the gene to insert back into the host.
The human gene
This is what gene therapy manipulates.
What we plan to do
We plan to edit genes to cure diseases
Gene
Where the gene is located.
Why is it important
Gene therapy is an important area of research because in the future when gene therapy is approved for mass treatments it will be cheaper, more efficient, and much safer than drugs that are used to treat the same problem. Another reason is that it can be used to treat problems that are not curable by drugs such as cancer and HIV.
Who made this and when will we have this?
The idea of this has been around from the 1990's but no one officially made this, however this was first successfully operated in NIH Clinical Center on September 14,1990. This does not mean that this is safe and there are many years before this becomes an official treatment. However this is closer than ever because of new technologies such as the Crispr-cas9 which allows to edit the genome.
Bibliography
Scheller, E.L., and P.H. Krebsbach. "Gene Therapy: Design and Prospects for Craniofacial Regeneration." Journal of Dental Research. SAGE Publications, n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2015.
"What Is Gene Therapy?" Genetics Home Reference. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2015.