Commercial Potential

Commercial Potential
• Biotechnology is considered the commercialization of life sciences.
• It has a significant impact on various applied sciences, manufacturing
processes, on medicine and health, and agriculture and environmental
sciences.
• With monitoring and diagnostic systems, it made giant strides in the field of
health and medicine.
• Biotechnology plays an important role in monitoring the use of both
traditional and non-conventional energy resources.
1. Biotechnological Products

• Commercial biotechnology products are already available and include, new

diagnostics, recombinant vaccines and therapeutic proteins, and biochips or
DNA chips.
• The biochips or the DNA microarrays currently being produced are
revolutionizing the design and output of gene analysis in the field of
molecular medicine.
1. Bioremediation technologies

• for the elimination of

toxic factory effluents
with the help of
genetically-altered
microorganisms,
• purification of rivers,
freshwater
ecosystems, and
drinking water are
now carried out
commercially.
 2. Biotechnology and Computer Industry
• In its economic potential, biotechnology runs parallel with the computer
industry. The biotech industry is waiting to explode in the consumer market.
• Consumers are going to see scores of new biotech products, such as foods
that contain vaccines or super-nutritious foods that will change the way
people view agriculture.
• In addition to the similarities in their economical potential, there is also a
resemblance in the technical side also.
• There’s a parallel between genetic code and computer code. Computers and
living organisms both organize their essential information in a similar
fashion.
• Computers are directed by a series of ones and zeros, known as the binary
code. All living organisms use a code made up of four parts, a quaternary
code.
• Instead of ones and zeros, the information is conveyed by a series of four
chemicals—adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine—which geneticists simply
call A, T, G, and C.
• Like computer code, the arrangement of these four chemicals strung together
form genes, which contain the information that tells the cells whether you are to
be a linebacker-sized human or a lemming!
• Scientists first learned that they could manipulate these four chemicals to form
new genes in the mid-1970s.
• The recombinant DNA technique was first developed in 1974, and today even high
school kids can cut and stitch genes together.
• The development of this science has been mind-boggling and so has been the rise
of biotech industries all over the world.
3. Pharmaceutical production
• creating drugs for the treatment of human health conditions
• More than 65 percent of biotechnology companies in the US are involved in
pharmaceutical production.
• In 1982, the California biotechnology company Genetech, widely regarded as
the world’s first biotech company, received approval for recombinant
insulin, used for the treatment of diabetes, as the first biotechnology
product for human benefits.
 Product of Modern Biotechnology
• There are now several hundred
drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics
on the market with more than
300 biotechnology medicines in
development targeting over 200
diseases.
• Drug development by the
biotechnology industry is
focused on combating major
diseases that affect humans, and
over half of the new drugs in the
development “pipeline” are
designed to treat cancer.
Top 10 Biotechnology
Drugs (With Sales Over $1
Billion)
• This table provides a brief list of some
of the top selling biotechnology drugs
and the companies that developed
them.
• Diagnosis and/or treatment of a
variety of human disease and
disorders- including- acquired
immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS),
stroke, diabetes, and cancer- make up
the bulk of biotechnology products on
the market.
Examples of Proteins Manufactured From Cloned Genes

• Many of the most widely used products of biotechnology are proteins created by gene cloning.
These proteins are called recombinant proteins.
• Many of these proteins are produced from human genes inserted into bacteria to make the
recombinant proteins used to treat human disease conditions.
Importance of Biotechnology for Human Health

• In future, genes may be routinely introduced into human cells as gene therapy -to treat and
cure human disease conditions.
• Genetics and tissue engineering- to the ability to grow organs for transplantation that would
only rarely be rejected by their recipients.
• New biotechnology products from marine organisms - to treat cancers, strokes, and
arthritis.
• Specialized proteins needed in quantity, will continue to come from additional gene transfer to
animals (like ATryn from transgenic goats).
• Modern advantages in medicines, driven by new knowledge from Human Genome Project, will
result in healthier lives and potentially increase the human life span