Treatment

About Biotechnology

Biotechnology is providing doctors with more tools which are helping to move from the treatment of diseases to prevention and cure. A whole new range of tools are being developed to support the human body to utilize its own capacities to fight infectious or cancerous diseases as well as injuries. Greater understanding of disease and the causes of disease is helping to produce better therapies that can more effectively address medical needs. New insights into the biology of disease and more precise understanding of why some people react differently lie at the heart of biotechnology. The promise of more targeted treatments to individual groups of patients as well as providing treatments for diseases that so far have eluded treatment are providing us with new opportunities to meet challenging but common diseases like heart disease, cancer and Alzheimers as well rare diseases.

Thanks to the unraveling of the human genome, biotechnology is also increasing the number of disease targets for conventional drug therapy. Today conventional drugs target fewer than 500 disease targets, but in the future this is likely to rise to between 5,000 - 10,000 targets. The pharmaceutical industry will be powered more and more by biotechnology. The increased understanding of complex biological processes is opening up vast new areas of possibilities to fight and cure.

Biotechnology in healthcare not only encompasses medicines and diagnostics which are manufactured using a biotechnological process, but also cell and tissue engineered products, and includes the use and the application of key biotechnology tools in the research and development of all innovative medicines. The majority of innovative medicines, whether manufactured using biotechnology or through a traditional process for small molecules, are made available by applying healthcare biotechnology.

From diagnosis to treatment and in terms of medicines manufactured, healthcare biotechnology is already delivering on its promises.

To learn more about Biotechnology and its promises please visit the following websites:
www.europabio.org/bi_index.htm