Biotechnology in medicine

Biotechnology has changed medicine in several ways.

Diagnosis and new drugs. Diagnostic kits detect molecules that appear in the body during a disease, so it can be found early. Bioinformatics (using computers on biological data) and modern instruments help scientists design new drugs.

Therapeutic proteins. Some medicines are human proteins. With rDNA technology the human gene is put into another organism, which then makes the protein: a heterologous system (the host is a different species from the protein's owner). Human insulin for diabetes is now made mainly in the bacterium E. coli and the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Human growth hormone is made in microbes. An anti-clotting (anti-coagulant) protein is even made in the milk of transgenic goats, and has been approved by the US FDA.

Gene therapy puts a working copy of a gene into a patient's cells to replace the job of a faulty gene. The idea came in 1972. Martin Cline's attempt in 1980, for beta-thalassemia, failed. The first success came in 1990: a four-year-old girl, Ashanthi De Silva, was treated for ADA-SCID, a disorder in which the immune system does not work. Later gene therapy products include Gendicine for cancer (approved in China, 2003) and Neovasculgen for a disease of the leg arteries (Russia, 2011).

Genetic testing checks a person's genes, chromosomes or proteins for faults. It shows the chance of developing a genetic disorder or passing it on to children. Newborn babies, for example, are tested for phenylketonuria and congenital hypothyroidism, so treatment can begin early.