Gene Therapy: Promises, Problems and Prospects

The concept behind gene therapy is simple — by delivering corrective genetic material to the cells of a patient the symptoms of disease can be alleviated. But seven years after the first clinical trials on gene therapy began, how far have we come? Gene therapy has not lived up to many of its promises, but the main problem has been in designing efficient delivery vehicles ('vectors'). Nonetheless, the prospects are good — by the year 2010, gene therapy may be as routine a practice as heart transplants are today.