Somatic cell gene therapy changes/fixes/replaces genes in a person. The targeted cells are the only ones affected, the changes are not passed on to that person's offspring.
Somatic Gene Therapy can be used to treat many genetic diseases, such as ones in the cultured cells (e.g bone marrow), genetic lung diseases, genetic muscle diseases and genetic liver diseases.
Somatic Gene Therapy can be used to treat many genetic diseases, such as ones in the cultured cells (e.g bone marrow), genetic lung diseases, genetic muscle diseases and genetic liver diseases.
The graph above shows where Gene Therapy is most commonly used.
The genes transferred are usually normal alleles that could ‘correct’ the mutant or disease alleles of the recipient.
However, this doesn't affect the chance of the patient's offspring receiving the disease. This form of gene therapy cannot be seen as immoral, as it helps many people enjoy their lives disease free, and it means that these life-threatening diseases will not affect anyone.
Research in somatic gene therapy has expanded in the past few years. As well as curing the genetically inherited diseases shown above, somatic gene therapy approaches are being used to combat acquired diseases such as cancer, AIDS, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and infectious diseases. The scientific community is highly interested in continuing and expanding research on somatic gene therapy as it has had only limited success so far, however the people involved in the successful therapy have seen had full improvement, so it could be researched further to cure diseases that we cannot cure as of yet.
The graph below shows the success rate of gene therapy in different diseases.
The genes transferred are usually normal alleles that could ‘correct’ the mutant or disease alleles of the recipient.
However, this doesn't affect the chance of the patient's offspring receiving the disease. This form of gene therapy cannot be seen as immoral, as it helps many people enjoy their lives disease free, and it means that these life-threatening diseases will not affect anyone.
Research in somatic gene therapy has expanded in the past few years. As well as curing the genetically inherited diseases shown above, somatic gene therapy approaches are being used to combat acquired diseases such as cancer, AIDS, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and infectious diseases. The scientific community is highly interested in continuing and expanding research on somatic gene therapy as it has had only limited success so far, however the people involved in the successful therapy have seen had full improvement, so it could be researched further to cure diseases that we cannot cure as of yet.
The graph below shows the success rate of gene therapy in different diseases.
Click the video below to watch an animated video about gene therapy: