Biologics: Is It A New Form of Medical Treatment?
The world of medicine is progressing all the time. New drugs, treatments, and vaccines are often being produced, renewed, and improved. You might hear words like “bioservices”, and “biopharmaceutical” thrown around, but what does this really mean? Bioservices are commonly referred to as the future of pharmaceuticals, but is there any truth in this?
To understand the future of bioservices, we first need to understand what they are – and “bioservices” is a broad term. You may be surprised to learn that biologics – which refers to the broad study of manipulating living tissues for medical treatment – is not as new an idea as you may think.
What Are Biopharmaceutical Products?
A biopharmaceutical product is a biological medical product. This means that it’s a pharmaceutical drug manufactured from biological sources. These sources can include living cells and tissues, sugars, proteins, or a combination of these. Products like vaccines are well-known for being biopharmaceuticals.
Types of Biopharmaceuticals
Biopharmaceutical products are part of a much larger system. Bioservices is an umbrella term for a huge variety of different products, but here, we’ll just focus on biopharmaceuticals – medicines and drugs formed by bioservices. Medical bioservices are also known as biologics and take many different forms, not just drugs.
There are many different branches of biopharmaceuticals, but they can be broken down and categorized into four main sections.
Taken From Living Systems
The oldest and simplest forms of biologics are taken directly from living systems. These products may be taken from the bodies of humans and/or animals.
Examples of biologics taken from living systems include:
- Whole blood and blood components
- Antibodies
- Stem cell therapy
- Organ transplants
- Tissue transplants
Vaccines
Vaccines are usually grown in tissue cultures, meaning that they’re developed and harvested from living tissue. As many people know, vaccines are created by taking a weakened or dead element from the original disease and using it to jump-start the body’s immunity against the disease. Vaccines are one of the earliest forms of biologics and continue to be an essential part of the healthcare system today.
Gene Therapy
Gene therapy works to manipulate the body’s cells, with the aim of producing a medical or therapeutic effect on the body. This is done by engineering existing cells and inserting human DNA into existing cells. Gene therapy may hold the key to treating many genetic disorders. This manipulation means that gene therapy is a form of biologics, as it both adapts existing cells and uses human DNA to achieve its effect.
Recombinant DNA
Recombinant DNA is a treatment in which almost-identical products to another bodily element are introduced. These products are engineered from the existing bodily element. A good example of this is synthetic insulin, produced for diabetes. This insulin is designed to mimic naturally-produced insulin as closely as possible to soothe the side effects of diabetes.
The Bottom Line
Biologics and biopharmaceuticals are complex fields. You may need to look into a biopharmaceutical contract manufacturing company to get extra help with extending this area of your medical practice.
