Cell and gene therapy: catching up – taking advantage of opportunities

12.05.2022 10:57

At the public theme evening of the general meeting of the Association of the Diagnostic Industry (VDGH) on May 11, 22, VDGH chairman Ulrich Schmid initially praised the companies' achievements in the ongoing corona pandemic in his opening speech. The focus of the event was a look into the future: cell and gene therapy.

In front of almost 150 guests from politics, local government and business, Schmid called for greater use of the opportunities offered by these new therapies. He emphasized that the new therapies are accompanied by the hope of making diseases that are currently untreatable or only insufficiently treatable perhaps even curable in the future.

The director of the Freiburg Institute for Transfusion Medicine and Gene Therapy, Prof. Dr. Toni Cathomen explained in his guest lecture what the status quo and the prospects of these modern methods are in Germany. He particularly pointed out the possibilities of genome editing, which have been brought into the spotlight not least by the Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to the discoverers. Cathomen also emphasized the importance of diagnostics: “The earlier we can diagnose an illness, the earlier therapy can begin. The two go hand in hand.”

In the subsequent discussion, Schmid continued: “Whether the therapy is suitable, whether it works, all of this can only be said with certainty through comprehensive diagnostics. Our industry opens the door for the medicine of the future.” What is worrying is the fact that Germany is now falling further and further behind in international competition, even though it initially played a pioneering role. That is why an innovation-friendly environment is necessary to better promote research, development and production capacities for gene and cell therapy.