Article

L’évolution des biotechnologies pharmaceutiques : faire parler le génome pour développer, améliorer et personnaliser les thérapies et la prise en charge des patients

Pharmaceutical biotechnologies: drawing out the genome to develop, improve and personalize therapies and patient care

¹ Faculté de Pharmacie de Strasbourg, Université de Strasbourg, 74 route du Rhin, CS 60024, 67400 Illkirch-Graffenstaden, France
² École Supérieure de Biotechnologie de Strasbourg (ESBS), Université de Strasbourg, 300 boulevard Sébastien Brant, CS 10413, 67412 Illkirch, France

^* Auteur correspondant : damien.freytag@gmail.com

Reçu : 7 Septembre 2020

Résumé

Grâce à l’accroissement des connaissances associées aux génomes permis par le séquençage à haut débit, à la multiplication des outils d’ingénierie génétique ainsi qu’aux autres technologies « omiques », les biotechnologies pharmaceutiques ont favorisé l’identification et la validation de nombreuses cibles diagnostiques et thérapeutiques et ont ainsi conduit au développement de nombreuses thérapies ciblées. Bien que leur histoire soit récente, les biotechnologies pharmaceutiques évoluent rapidement et offrent des perspectives réjouissantes à l’aube de la médecine de précision.

Abstract

Thanks to high-throughput sequencing with technologies, which allow the reading of more than 100 million bases in one day with reduced cost, our knowledge about prokaryotic, eukaryotic and viral genomes has significantly increased since the 2000s. The multiplication of genetic engineering tools including DNA polymerases, restriction enzymes and genome editing enzymes and the development of other “omic” technologies such as transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, have allowed pharmaceutical biotechnologies to favor the identification and validation of various diagnostic and therapeutic targets underlying the development of targeted therapies. Indeed, these advances have supported a better understanding of pathologies as well as an improvement in their diagnosis, through the identification of biomarkers, considerably favoring more personalized and more efficient patients’ care. The orientation towards more targeted treatments was initiated by the development of recombinant proteins, and more recently monoclonal antibodies, which can block protein functions and/or modulate immune responses. Gene therapy is also promising, by inserting a gene into patients’ cells to overcome rare diseases and autologous or heterologous cell-based therapies are also under development. Although their history is recent, pharmaceutical biotechnologies are evolving rapidly and offer exciting prospects at the dawn of precision medicine.