Living medicine

See also: Biological therapy for inflammatory bowel disease and Biologics for immunosuppression

A living medicine is a type of biologic that consists of a living organism that is used to treat a disease. This usually takes the form of a cell (animal, bacterial, or fungal) or a virus that has been genetically engineered to possess therapeutic properties that is injected into a patient.[2][3] Perhaps the oldest use of a living medicine is the use of leeches for bloodletting, though living medicines have advanced tremendously since that time.

Examples of living medicines include cellular therapeutics (including immunotherapeutics), phage therapeutics, and bacterial therapeutics, a subset of the latter being probiotics.

  1. ^  This article incorporates text by Pichet Praveschotinunt, Anna M. Duraj-Thatte, Ilia Gelfat, Franziska Bahl, David B. Chou & Neel S. Joshi available under the CC BY 4.0 license.
  2. ^ Sample, Ian (16 January 2019). "'Living medicine' helps make toxic ammonia breakthrough". The Guardian. Retrieved 5 April 2020.
  3. ^ "Engineering Living Medicines for Chronic Diseases | SBE | Society for Biological Engineering". www.aiche.org.
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