"Cell-based gene therapy brings hope to help people with anemia that is caused by genes regarding their treatment and life quality improvement," Andalucia stated at the Gene Editing and Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) seminar followed online on Friday.
She noted that not only anemia but other diseases, such as cancer, blindness, and AIDS, can also be treated through gene editing-based therapy.
Based on the data she collected, at least 1,100 types of gene editing-based therapy can be carried out. Some of them have been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
"We heard last December that there was a drug that was approved by the US FDA, namely a drug for blood cancer and blood disorders. These diseases are genetic diseases that many children suffer from, and the mortality rate is high," she remarked.
She noted that in developing countries, such as Indonesia, the mortality rate for those diseases can be higher.
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Andalucia explained that through gene editing, medical personnel will be able to identify genes that cause the disorders as well as modify them, so that several genetic diseases do not progress, and the sufferers can be cured.
She highlighted that currently, there have been more than three thousand studies related to gene editing. Hence, she expressed hope that Indonesia would take part in this, not only knowing about it but also practicing and implementing the same effort.
"Of course, we need to participate and have the ability to develop therapies that are based on cells and genes as well as in accordance with the specific needs of Indonesian people, in accordance with the genomic profile of the Indonesian community," she remarked.
To this end, the Health Ministry has made efforts to set up hospital-based research centers in several areas of Indonesia, so that the treatment of patients can be carried out with technology-based treatment.
Furthermore, efforts to develop health technology are in line with the third and sixth pillars of Indonesia's health transformation, namely the health resilience system and health technology transformation.
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Translator: Sean Muhamad, Raka Adji
Editor: Yuni Arisandy Sinaga
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