Drug Design

Pharmacogenomics is the science of combining the knowledge of an individual's genetic material with the knowledge of the action of a drug to deliver personalised medicine.For example some breast cancer sufferers have a mutation in the HER2 gene. The drug Herceptin can stop the activity of the gene in affected individuals.Drugs can be produced by synthetic biology. Bacteria such as E. coli can be genetically engineered to produce a number of drugs.Mammals can be genetically engineered to produce therapeutic proteins such as growth hormone in their milk.Nanotechnology is another strand of synthetic biology. Tiny nanoparticles such as gold nanocages can be used to deliver drugs to specific cells.