Genetic Disorders: What´s Gene Therapy?

Gene Therapy What is gene therapy? Gene therapy is an experimental technique that uses genes to treat or prevent diseases or disorders. Using gene therapy you can replace the non-functioning genes with good functioning genes. Although gene therapy is safe there are however side effects afterword which makes it risky. Before we go into depth about gene therapy here is some basic knowledge. So to put it in a simple way all we are doing is replacing a bad gene with a good gene. A bad gene is in other words a defective gene. When a protein is missing or can't be made in a certain gene this can result with a disorder or disease. We use gene therapy to help the defective gene replace and or create the protein. It has some pros and cons to it. One pro of this is that it replaces …show more content…
However this is followed by a con. It increases the risk of other disorders to occurs. It is also possible to die from gene therapy. It is not likely unless something goes wrong when the inject it into you.This also can lead to lifelong effects. There are two different types of gene therapy. One of the most common one is Somatic Gene Therapy. There is also germline gene therapy. We will only talk about somatic gene therapy. So what exactly is somatic gene therapy? In somatic gene therapy you work with somatic genes(non-sex genes). Somatic gene therapy is where you inject a good working gene into a non-functioning gene to correct its disorder. This gene therapy is acceptable for different types of diseases or disorders. Some of which may include: cystic fibers,muscular dystrophy, cancer(etc.). This specific therapy can also be performed on life-threatening diseases.