Molecular Medicine


Molecular medicine involves applying knowledge about the molecular basis of disease and how new clinical practices can be brought to bear. It includes practices, such as interventions on the cellular and/or DNA level including genetic and cellular therapies, and incorporating new understanding, such as those that have grown out of studying the posttranslational modification of proteins. It often makes reference to such specialties as genomics, proteomics, and bioinformatics.

 

The tiny factors that are mostly widely known as being manipulated in the practice of molecular medicine are genes and DNA. There is hope that studying genomic medicine will enable the knowledge gained to be put into practice preventively and personally, providing individually designed solutions to medical issues. Nevertheless, this does not represent the entire breadth of the field. Other factors that are involved in molecular medicine include antibiotics, carbohydrates, enzymes, hormones, inorganic polymers, lipids, metals, synthetic organic polymers, viruses, and vitamins.

 

A recent report on the use of nanoparticles of gold help clarify what molecular medicine is and what it can and may be able to do. The therapy involving the gold turns around the discovery of the capabilities of siRNA (“short interfering” RNA), a ribonucleic acid with the ability to “turn off” specifically targeted genes. They do this, as their name suggests, by interfering with the messenger RNA that is sent by a gene to create a protein.