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Gene Therapy 2 - Essay

Gene Therapy 2


In research facilities all around the world scientist are attempting to stop diseases at their very roots. Instead of trying to find drugs to cure illnesses they are trying to change the genes that cause the diseases. The process by which this is done is called gene therapy. Gene therapy is the deliberate alteration of the human genome for alleviation of disease. The studies of gene therapy began in the mid 1980's to early 1990's. The focus then was "treating diseases caused by such single-gene defects as hemophilia, Duchene's muscular dystrophy, and sickle-cell anemia."1 As time passed new technologies, techniques, strategies and ideas for transferring genes have been presented. ...

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gene, children have no way of converting deoxyadenosine (a waste product) into inosine. This leads to the rapid build-up of deoxyadenosine in the system, which becomes phosphorlyzed into a toxic triphosphate, which kills T-cells. The result is an almost complete failure of the immune system and early death.
Previous treatment options included bone marrow transplants, which worked well with matched donors. A major breakthrough occurred with the development of polyethylene glycol coated ADA (PEG-ADA). This treatment introduces coated ADA into the blood stream, although not into the cells. It requires expensive, painful shots on a weekly basis, but it succeeded in giving children with ADA deficiency a new lease on life. While their immune systems were far from normal, PEG-ADA allows some semblance of a normal life and a much-increased life span.
The first patient to undergo federally approved gene therapy was a young girl named Ashanti DeSilva, in 1990. Ashanti's success ...

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sequencing. The first 5-year plan was revised in 1993 due to remarkable technological progress, and the second plan projected goals through 1998. Observers have predicted that the 21st century will be the "biology century." The analytical power arising from the reference DNA sequences of several entire genomes and other genomic resources is anticipated to help jump-start the new millennium.
The HGP's continued emphasis is on obtaining a complete and highly accurate reference sequence (1 error in 10,000 bases) that is largely continuous across each human chromosome. Scientists believe that knowing this sequence is critically important for understanding human biology and for applications ...

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PAPER DETAILS
Added: 6/24/2008 06:44:02 PM
Category: Science & Nature
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 3631
Pages: 14

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