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Translation therapy: Is it an alternative to gene therapy?

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Abstract

Modern biology and medicine have been accumulating facts that many human diseases, including the most widespread (cardiovascular, oncological, etc.), are directly or indirectly related to defects of the human genome, and primarily, to defects of the structure of the genes that code vitally important proteins. The repair of genome defects opens the way to a radical cure. This explains the appearance of gene therapy—the introduction of “healthy” genes into the cells of patients. However, the experience of the last decade has demonstrated that progress here is much slower than had been expected. Based on the results of his studies and the generalization of world literature, the author suggests an alternative to gene therapy: correction of gene defects during the synthesis of the gene product—the protein—rather than at the genomic level. The paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the new approach, which the author calls “translation therapy.”

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Original Russian Text © L.L. Kisselev, 2006, published in Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk, 2006, Vol. 76, No. 3, pp. 219–226.

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Kisselev, L.L. Translation therapy: Is it an alternative to gene therapy?. Her. Russ. Acad. Sci. 76, 144–151 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1019331606020067

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