As medical technology comes on in leaps and bounds, you might have heard of all kinds of new treatments, like stem cell therapy, immunotherapy, and cell therapy.
What do these terms really mean? Is cell therapy the face of tomorrow’s medicine, or is it just a passing fad that doesn’t really work? What should you know about cell therapy?
In this article, we’ll discuss both what cell therapy really means, and where you can get in touch with bioservices manufacturers to help.
What Is Cell Therapy?
Cell therapy is a form of biological medicine. This means that, like biopharmaceuticals, it uses treatments created from living organisms. In this case, those living organisms are live cells.
The point of cell therapy is to transplant living, suitable cells into the body by injection, graft, or transplant. Those cells might work in a way that your cells can’t. For example, stem cells may be grafted to diseased tissue, regenerating the tissue and providing healthy cells to the damaged area.
Another example of cell therapy use is in the treatment of cancers. In leukemia, when patients present low levels of bone marrow, healthy bone marrow cells can be administered to promote healthy cell creation.
In short, the applications of cell therapy are endless. They’re particularly useful in immune disorders, cancers, and other serious illnesses when the body’s natural functions can be dangerously compromised.
Cell therapy samples don’t need to come from strangers. It’s possible to use a patient’s own cells to transplant or graft into another part of the body. Relatives can also be viable donors. It’s also possible to use synthetic biopharmaceuticals.
A good example of synthetic biopharmaceuticals is the insulin injections given to diabetics. This insulin is a biological product as it’s derived from a living organism, but it’s still technically synthetic – this is not the insulin that your body would produce, it’s artificial insulin, designed to keep a diabetic alive and healthy.
Cell Therapy Manufacturing
As you can imagine, cell therapy treatments are becoming more and more popular. However, administering these treatments is a completely different thing from actually creating them.
Your best bet is to look into a commercial biologics manufacturing service. The term “cell therapy” is really only the tip of the iceberg. There are countless different ways of using cell transplants, with newer and more effective methods appearing every day.
Search out a contractor who can handle contract manufacturing of monoclonal antibodies and recombinant proteins. This gives you a good baseline to discuss the development of the most commonly used cell therapy products.
The Bottom Line
There are at least two parts to healthcare – the doctors, nurses, and surgeons who administer the treatment, and the scientists behind the scenes who create the treatments. Both are equally essential to our health, but we often only see one part of the process.
Never forget how your medicines came to be available and effective.
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