The concept of gene therapy can be approached from different definitions as:
It is the introduction of exogenous material (natural or recombinant) in human subjects to correct deficiencies expressing cellular phenotypic level.
It is a therapeutic strategy based on the modification of the genetic range of somatic cells by administration of nucleic acids and therefore intended to cure hereditary diseases and acquired.
The transfer of new genetic material to cells of an individual resulting in a therapeutic benefit for it.
Although these definitions border on the purely descriptive, gene therapy encompasses a wide range of possibilities that cannot be included in a very general description. Today the term gene therapy has been grown over time to include gene transfer of a preventive nature and those that contribute to the advancement of medical research. This touches a lot with confusion about the term that originally was given. One might ask whether gene therapy is far more than the expression of therapeutic interventions strictly in man, as the controversy of the term leads people to believe totally different things. Therefore, this is the overall view of gene therapy (Denna, 2006, 121).
Figure 1: Genome organisation of retroviruses
Mechanism of Gene Therapy
Gene therapy shows promise as a therapeutic utility in all kinds of diseases, which may revolutionize the understanding of medicine. The emergence of gene therapy has been made possible by the confluence of advances in knowledge in fields such as Molecular Biology, Genetics, Virology, Biochemistry, and Biophysics and more. From these simple considerations, it follows that for any application requirements vary greatly and will profoundly influence the choice of a vector to be developed and tested. Factors that will need to be tested include the efficiency of gene transfer, the duration of gene expression, the capacity to deliver the dosage, and the ability to address the appropriate cells and avoid inappropriate (Franklin, 2005, 73).
Confounding factors that might appear, the vector include the inability to enter or integrated into the cellular chromosomes, the closure of transcriptional promoters, the loss of the introduced DNA, destruction of the treated cells and neutralization of the inserted vector or gene product. All these factors strongly depend on the choice of the vector and the host's ability to respond to said vector. Certain discoveries in the field of molecular biology have made possible the development of gene therapy. The first experiments appeared in the introduction of genes in yeast and mammalian cells in tissue culture. The challenge was to what should be done if people wanted to study the genetic control of development of a higher organism where cell interactions play a crucial role. The mechanism of Gene Therapy has been quite extensive in the medical fiend and there is a lot of research taking place in this field. The reason is to acquire additional data behind the overall mechanism of Gene Therapy. In this way, the large amount of data will be gathered for this topic that ...