Drugs for gene therapy: features of usage in geriatrics and pediatrics

Advances in modern medicine and biotechnology allow specialists to adjust the patient’s proteome and metabolome. Gene engineering allows us to create drugs that affect the cause of the disease at the level of gene expression. Thus, not the links of pathogenesis or the symptom of the disease are subjected to correction, but the trigger itself, a defective gene that provokes a cascade of pathological processes. According to the definition of the State Pharmacopoeia, gene therapeutic drugs are drugs whose pharmaceutical substance is a recombinant nucleic acid or includes a recombinant nucleic acid that allows for the regulation, repair, replacement, addition or removal of a genetic sequence. The article reflects all available, developed and used in real clinical practice gene therapy drugs of russian and foreign production. The mechanisms of action, features of the use of these drugs in pediatric and geriatric practice, as well as existing problems and limitations of their use, including deontological issues, are noted.