Synthetic Biology Drugs

November 13, 2015

(Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News) – Just before his death in 1988, Richard Feynman wrote on his blackboard in his Caltech office, “What I cannot create, I do not understand.” This statement has lived on in a way that perhaps not even professor Feynman could have predicted: as a founding tenet of the field of synthetic biology. Synthetic biology is defined as, “the design and engineering of biologically based parts, novel devices and systems as well as the redesign of existing, natural biological systems” and this emerging technology is rapidly changing the way industry and academia are approaching problems within a wide range of applications—particularly medicine and drug development.