- #1
gravenewworld
- 1,132
- 26
Over the past 20 years, academia and industry has moved heavily towards research focused upon gene therapy. One of the problems with this research is that it only seems to study diseases that are based off of a single malfunctioning gene. Many of the biggest health problems like cardiovascular disease, arthritis, etc. are believed to be related to multiple gene failures. So my question is this. How exactly could we ever come up with a technology to transfect a cell with multiple genes? Even if you get your little snippet of DNA or other type of nucleic acid into the cell, how could you ever control each gene you are delivering so that it gets directed to the proper chromosome if you are trying to treat a multigene related disease that are associated with genes across multiple chromosomes? It seems like gene therapy is severely limited based off the complex and multifactorial aspects of many diseases. Does anyone know of any research out there currently being done that addresses the issue of trying to treat multigene related disease with gene therapy? I mean it is nice to be able to treat a disease related to a single gene like sickle-cell anemia, but many other major disorders are much more complex at the chromosomal/dna level.