4. Synthetic biology and healthcare

‘Synthetic biology and healthcare’ explains how synthetic biology can be applied to medicine: it can be used to produce drugs and new vaccines; improve monitoring and diagnosis; and it is just starting to be used to modify human cells with properties designed to help patients. In a research context, it is being applied to building new tissues. For most medical applications, there is no risk of the engineered organisms ‘running wild’ in the general environment; risk is restricted to specific patients who already have a problem that needs to be solved. In general, therefore, medicine is a field in which synthetic biology may make its earliest significant real-world contributions.