What is the current situation of genetic engineering now?

Genetic engineering is still in a test stage now, but there are a lot of successful examples that we have already known. In this topic, I would like to focus on the current situation of medical therapists of genetic engineering. Here are some current situations on three currently incurable diseases about their process, challenge and the summary of how they work to cure the disease.

Genetic engineering of stem cells can express specific enzymes to convert inactive forms of anti-cancer drugs into their active forms only at the tumor site. Stem cells as delivery vehicles for oncolytic viruses(a virus that preferentially infects and kills cancer cells)(wikipedia). Oncolytic viruses confer selectivity to tumors since they replicate within cancer cells only. This strategy is known as stem cell-mediated suicide gene therapy.

2.Stem cells against neurodegenerative disorders

Parkinson’s disease(PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease, that affects 2–3% of the elder population. Clinical trials with stem cell neurons have witnessed a new and an exciting era of stem cell-based therapy for Parkinson’s disease.

3.Stem cell therapy for Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder, affecting more than 46.8 million elders above the age of 65 worldwide.AD is considered the main cause of dementia.Owing to the promising results manifested in the pre-clinical trials executed on AD animal models using MSCs, they were sufficient to approve the initiation of clinical trials in patients with AD.

4.Challenges facing stem cell therapy

As Dalia Fleifel wirtes, ‘Although stem cells hold great promise in therapeutics, it is necessary to provide scientific evidence on the safety and effectiveness of their usage.’ (2018).In other words, we need to test this treatment before apply it.

Finally, treatment of complicated diseases such as cancer or neurodegenerative disorders requires targeting multiple defective pathways simultaneously which hints at the necessity to search for combinatorial therapies. Selection of the right therapies is still a big challenge that remains to be addressed.

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