Application of molecular biology to medicine

Modern medicine is based on evidence. Despite few years ago, physicians based their diagnosis and therapies on their previous experiences, now clinical trials, approved protocols and worldwide accepted treatment help physicians to make the better choice for their patients. To reach this important goal, molecular medicine gave a big contribution. Molecular medicine is a novel branch of medicine in which molecular biology or biochemistry techniques are usually used to accomplish exams and screening or diagnose the diseases. Molecular biology labs have worked as research and development department to improve protocols or set up novel methodologies at the beginning just to be used for research purposes, then applied to diagnosis. For instance, we could focus our attention on the polymerase chain reaction, namely the PCR.
This techniques has been developed to produce DNA portion in vitro and has quickly revolutionized molecular biology, allowing cloning, sequencing and in general gene manipulation. The improved type of PCR, the real time PCR is now currently used in modern hospital to detect certain diseases, such as recidivate leukemia in patients’ blood or gene signature in familial diseases. Other important tools which have found a good application in diagnosis are the monoclonal/ polyclonal antibodies. Several techniques employed antibodies to detect proteins in cellular lysates through western blotting, or directly in whole cells, through the immuno-chemistry and molecular imaging. As well as, it’s also possible to purify small amount of native protein through immuno-precipitation and so on. Antibodies are really largely used in biochemistry labs and some techniques are applied also in diagnostic labs.
For instance, we can talk about the ELISA assay, normally used to quantify serum proteins or cell sorting analysis, in which some antibodies that specifically recognize surface proteins are used to separate different kind of cells. Finally, also cellular biology gave important results in modern medicine. The capability to culture in vitro cellular populations changes the therapeutic opportunity for a lot of diseases. For instance, now it’s possible to select healthy cellular population in leukemic patient, propagate it in vitro and then draft it, reducing in this way several problems of rejection and immuno-suppressive events. We can continue to talk about other examples of molecular, biochemical or cellular protocols that have found a great application in clinics. This overview strongly confirms how scientific advances are important because they have an immediate benefit on modern medicine and as a consequence on the human life. It’s important to remember that not only good protocols, but also good quality of science and good data management and reporting are two further parameters to improve modern medicine, but this is the topic for another post!!!