Knowing the controls of making and inhibiting the formation of blood vessels has many potential applications. Stopping the blood vessels from forming may be beneficial to controlling the inflammatory process. This has direct application in allergic and arthritic conditions, in transplants, brain and eye diseases. Finding the keys to turn on the DNA templates, and start-up production of the proteins and enzymes to make new blood vessels, and to turn them off again will be one system that has a extremely wide range of potential uses. This application is a somatic therapy.
Hypertension is another condition that is ripe for genetic somatic therapy.
The changes are happening everywhere. The field of Genetics is going from a somewhat poorly defined group of oddball doctors and pundits spouting jargon with day dreaming lab researchers to encompass the whole of medicine. We will continue to see the emergence of International Genetic Conferences for every organ system in the body. While some geneticists will sit and make grammatical corrections, the doctors of the world that embrace genetics will be racing ahead with new found mechanisms and therapies for each of their respective organ systems. The future of genetics and the Human Genome Project does have great promise.