We often read that certain health products, like some supplements, or real medicines, are obtained by recombinant technology .
The so-called recombinant DNA technology aims to modify the genome of a living organism so that it synthesizes molecules useful for a specific purpose. For example, specific genes can be introduced into a bacterium to synthesize specific proteins that are difficult to obtain or purify.
Drugs obtained by recombinant technologies include: insulin, growth hormone (GH), erythropoietin (EPO), oxytocin, some plasma proteins (Plasminogen tissue activator and coagulation factor VIII) and several interferons. Also the hyaluronic acid used in aesthetic medicine and in the field of food supplementation is obtained by means of recombinant DNA technology.
In the near future the recombinant technology will allow to cure a disease by replacing a mutant gene "defective" with a normal (recombinant) introduced from the outside.
