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What is the Future of Biotechnology?

What is the Future of Biotechnology

Biotechnology is still a relatively young industry with extraordinary potential to grow and change the world in various ways. Biotechnology has changed the medical industry and is continuously driving medical progress through different means. While agricultural biotechnology is also a key area of this field, much of the progress is expected to happen in the following fields over the next couple of decades.

Personalized Medicine: Every good Therapeutics Biotech Company, at this juncture is focusing on personalized medicine and personalized medicine delivery mechanism. This pathbreaking treatment paradigm focuses on ensuring that patients get therapies that are ideally suited for their genetic makeups and other health conditions.

Pharmacogenomics is a whole new discipline that seeks to determine how a patient’s genetic profile will affect his response to certain drugs and medical treatments. Over a period of time this discipline will develop tests that will completely predict the genetic profiles that will benefit from a given drug, taking personalized medicine to a new level.

Pharmacogenomics has had several recent breakthroughs and it has already changed the way clinical trials are conducted. Genetic data is regularly collected (with consent) and kept confidential, and this data is used to determine whether different responses to a drug can be explained by genetic makeup.

Advanced Diagnosis: Biotechnology is going to revolutionize the diagnosis of diseases caused by genetic factors. Advances in biotechnology have created new tests that can detect changes in the DNA sequence of genes associated with disease risk. Biotechnology and probabilistic science can predict the likelihood of developing a disease, and thereby suggesting preventive medicine or identifying treatment to slow down disease progress.

Gene Therapy

Gene therapy:  Gene therapy involves inserting specific genes (sometimes engineered) into the cells of patients. This is done to eighter replace defective genes with new or introduce functional genes. While the first clinical trial of gene therapy was done in 1990, this field is still at a nascent stage and offers great promise for the future.

Stem cell treatment: Stem cell treatment is in vogue for a while now, with celebrities like Rafael Nadal using this treatment for his knee issues. However, this field still has a huge potential for growth. This area uses unspecialized cells called as stem cells, that can mature into any type of functional cells to treat certain ailments. These stem cells can be grown in a lab and then surgically implanted into patients as functional cells to achieve desired results. The primary goal is to replace diseased or damaged tissue with new and healthy tissue.

Nanomedicine: As the name suggests, this aims to manipulate molecules or crystals on an atomic scale to treat a highly localized area of our body. Nanoshells or metallic lenses are used to convert light into heat and target specific cells. This is currently used in cancer treatment, but future is quite promising.Advanced drug delivery systems: Microscopic particles called as microspheres with holes just enough to accommodate and dispense drugs to a specific target are used for treatment. These microsphere therapies are being investigated for the treatment of cancers and other diseases. If proven commercially viable, then this can be game changer.

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