Protein Therapeutics Drug Discovery
More on the overview of Protein Therapy
Protein therapy is the process of using living cells to produce proteins to treat some of these diseases. The process delivers protein to the body in specific amounts to help treat the diseases, alleviate pain or rebuild human tissues. In the beginning, natural proteins were extracted from animal, human sources, and in some cases even from plants. More recently, a number of therapeutic recombinant proteins for human use have been discovered. Proteins created by these cells can be used as targeted treatments or replace malfunctioning or missing proteins in the body addressing life threatening diseases. While protein therapy has been used on humans, many trials are still being conducted on animals. The clinical trials have shown to have positive results in treating illnesses such as cancer, diabetes, liver diseases, and brain diseases. Protein-based therapeutics are shown to be very promising with over 22 monoclonal antibodies approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for
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clinical use and trials for treatment of diseases such as cancers, immune disorders, and infections. With today’s technology, a variety of human proteins can be produced with relative ease by means of genetic engineering and recombinant Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) technology. So the challenge with protein therapy is not so much the ability to produce the protein, but rather the successful delivery of protein to the patient’s body. The delivery of protein drugs to the body is limited by their high molecular weight, which prevents the crossing of tissue barriers, and by the protein’s short life span due to the body’s immune response and enzymatic degradation. However, with the recent breakthroughs of nanobiotechnology and nanocarriers, the likelihood of finding cures to diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and brain disease with protein therapy is dramatically increasing.