This week: gene therapy
It is just phenomenal how far science has come in the past 10 years, especially in the area of biotechnology, and in particular, genetic engineering and molecular biology. I remember that when I first decided to leave my mathematics and physics career to pursue a biology-based one, I was enticed by a new course on offer called 'genetics'. It was a burgeoning science at the time and much of it was in the area of research rather than applications. Coming from a maths and physics background, I'd had enough of the theoretical and wanted more application, so this led me into a career in veterinary science.
There was certainly a small element of genetics taught at vet school, but it didn't have many real life applications at the time, and was mostly limited to how some diseases were genetically inherited and how some were due to mutations of existing viruses or other microbes. We had a firm grounding in the area of how genes replicate and how they operate.
It was announced in 2006 that scientists had for the first time a completely mapped out gene of a boxer and 80 per cent of a poodle. These molecular biologists hope one day this will play a role in the understanding and eventual development of treatments for diseases of dogs. Since many diseases like cancer, epilepsy and diabetes are shared by humans, they hope that by understanding the dog's genome we will have insight into the human genome.
Dogs as a species have many physical and behavioural differences, due to selective breeding since domestication. This selective breeding has caused some breeds of dogs to be more predisposed to certain disorders, such as cancer, heart diseases, blindness, hormonal imbalances and many others. It is easier to identify defective genes in dogs by comparing different breeds. It is much harder to do a primary study in humans, as we don't have many close genetic relatives with which to compare. There are about 19,300 genes in the dog's genome and many of these correspond to similar genes in humans. So knowing the dog's genomic problems will lead to a further understanding of human genomic problems.
In this decade, a new technique in treatment was developed called gene therapy. Previously relegated to the realms of science fiction, this form of treatment uses engineered genes transplanted into living cells in the body to help fix problems. One of the major breakthroughs and useful applications of this procedure was the treatment of haemophilia, an inherited blood disorder that meant the blood of people with it would not clot, even after minor cuts. A defective gene that stopped producing a vital protein in the blood-clotting pathways caused the problem. What scientists did was introduce DNA that contained this protein-making gene into living cells of the patient, so the patient was then able to produce the protein, hence curing a once incurable disease.