Biological Products and their Uses

A biological product is any substance derived from a living organism that is used to prevent or treat disease — the category spans antitoxins, bacterial and viral vaccines, blood products and hormone extracts. Because these products come from living systems (microorganisms, plant cells or animal cells) rather than being synthesised chemically, they are generally harder to characterise precisely than small-molecule drugs, but recombinant DNA technology now makes it possible to manufacture them reliably on demand rather than depending on natural extraction. The approved categories include therapeutic proteins, monoclonal antibodies and vaccines, and biotechnological proteins have genuinely reshaped the health-care and pharmaceutical industries — recombinant hormones (insulin, human growth hormone), recombinant vaccines and recombinant proteins such as human alpha lactalbumin are all now commercially available. Animals themselves are increasingly used as living bioreactors to manufacture these proteins, including antibodies that neutralise disease-causing antigens; monoclonal antibodies produced this way treat cancer, heart disease and transplant rejection. Even non-pharmaceutical biolog …