Posted on: 14 April 2009, source: Times Online
After almost two decades, gene therapies have recently started to deliver on their immense promise. Gene therapies have been a part of medicine for almost two decades. Only recently have they started to deliver on their immense promise after a string of setbacks raised doubts about the safety of manipulating human DNA, centre, to treat disease.
The idea behind gene therapy is that by inserting new copies of a particular gene into human cells, it should be possible to correct defects, or to enhance beneficial biological processes. This can be done with viruses, which introduce their own genetic material into the cells they infect, and can be engineered to carry a human gene.