Healthcare Biotechnology

Healthcare biotechnology refers to medicinal or diagnostic products, or vaccines, developed using biotechnology, and it has had a tremendous impact on meeting patient needs. It offers patients unique, targeted and personalised therapeutic and diagnostic solutions -- for organ transplantation, stem-cell technology, genetic counselling, forensic medicine, gene probes, genetic fingerprinting and karyotyping are all outcomes of this branch of biotechnology. Table 12.7 lists a range of human recombinant proteins now produced by rDNA technology specifically to treat disease -- for example, erythropoietin for anaemia, insulin for diabetes, Factor VIII and Factor IX for haemophilia A and B, tissue plasminogen activator for blood clots, interferons for cancer, and the hepatitis B va …