Benefits of Immunotherapy from advances in immunology and recombinant DNA technology.
Immunotherapy is a form of medical treatment intended to stimulate or restore the ability of the immune system to fight infection and disease. This can be by inducing, enhancing, or suppressing an immune response. Immunotherapies designed to elicit or amplify an immune response are classified as activation immunotherapies, while those that reduce or suppress immune response are suppression immunotherapies. Active immunotherapy has been effective against agents that normally cause acute self-limiting infectious disease. However, a more effective immunotherapy for chronic infectious diseases or cancer requires the use of appropriate target antigens; the…show more content… One of the most exciting applications of immunotherapy has come from identifying certain tumor targets, called antigens, and aiming an antibody at these targets. This method was first used to find tumors and diagnose cancer and more recently has been used to attack cancer cells. Refinements to these methods, using recombinant DNA technology, have improved the effectiveness and decreased the side effects of these treatments. The first therapeutic monoclonal antibodies, rituximab and trastuzumab were approved during the late 1990s to treat lymphoma and breast cancer respectively.
The diagnostic laboratory in 2020
In the past decades, clinical diagnostic laboratories have undergone important changes with the introduction of molecular biology techniques and laboratory automation. These changes have evolved in response to clinical needs. One of the greatest challenges in modern medicine is the ability to provide accurate diagnostic laboratory tests in developing countries and in remote areas where conventional analytical laboratories are even lacking. This is due to the fact that science and technology typically require large amounts of investment in terms of both capital and personnel training of which government of such areas are unwilling to invest in.
However, this is not the case in the developed world. Current trends in the growth of diagnostic laboratories in various areas including bacteriology, mycology,
