7. Advanced therapy medicinal products
Conventional medicine depend on molecules (pharmaceuticals) to treat diseases and injuries. New therapies, called advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs) or simply ‘advanced therapies’, are promising. They are made from genes, cells or tissues and reseachers develop them for the treatment of a range of diseases and injuries.
The therapies aim to address the ‘root cause’ of diseases or injuries. In other words, they try to overcome problems with faulty genes, cells or tissues and they may have great potential for patients. As they are highly targeted therapies, they should help to move toward personalised medicine.
There are four main groups of advanced therapies:
- Gene therapy medicines
- Somatic-cell therapy medicines
- Tissue engineered medicines
- Combined advanced-therapy medicinal products.
The four groups will be explained below on the following subchapters.