Biotech Values

[jellybean]

Gene therapy is a temporary fix intended to deliver a product by the presence of an extrachromosomal entity such as a virus or plasmid. The entity does not integrate into the genome and is diluted during cell division. That means over time the efficacy wanes and so the expectation is that the patient will need further treatment. BLUE uses the AIDS virus to integrate a copy of a gene into the genome. This is a permanent fix as the introduced gene is copied as a part of the chromosome and so is passed into each of the daughter cells. SGMO is also using an alteration to the genome that will be inherited into each daughter cell. This is a fundamental difference between gene therapy and genome editing.