It is also a more efficient delivery method since the medication enters along many tiny microchannels through the skin's pores. The automated process would take just a few minutes, and has applications in hospital emergency rooms and in the home. Blood tests can be performed simply by sticking the device on drawn blood and can also detect the existence of any air-borne viruses by swiping the device through the air. One more development gaining ground is viral vectors. Viral vectors use actual viruses, like HIV, to combat genetic illnesses.
Viruses are essentially complex yet efficient delivery systems.
Under normal circumstances, they deliver information that disrupts cells, but viral vector processes extract the bad information and replace it with new information that can be delivered to affected cells and tissues. The government's Human Genome Project is facing stiff competition from VC-financed biotech companies like Celera Genomics Group, a separately traded subsidiary of the PE Corporation, which claims it will complete the sequencing of the human genome in 2001, years ahead of government labs. Though private companies would love to patent their discovered gene sequences, Patent Office rules regarding such practices have yet to be solidified. In the meantime, companies have decided to make an end run by offering to sell their information to pharmaceutical companies. Designing genetically adhering drug therapies is one of the immediate benefits of sequencing the human genome.