Cystic fibrosis is an example of a disease where you just have a bad ingredient and you have a disease, and we can actually make a direct correspondence between the ingredient and the disease.

Over the last 40 years, recombinant DNA technology has revolutionized numerous industrial sectors, including agriculture and pharmaceuticals. It has enabled the development of vaccines against infectious diseases and drugs that treat non infectious illnesses like diabetes, cancer, cystic fibrosis, psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and some genetic disorders.

But it is widely known that certain mutations can run in families, increasing dramatically the risks of certain diseases for example, breast cancer, sickle cell anemia, and cystic fibrosis. Unfortunately, many human molecular geneticists have abdicated any responsibility for trying to decrease the overall burden of such diseases.

Moreover, biomedical research firms are abandoning certain diseases in order to avoid the large scale trials that they require, focusing instead on orphan diseases like cystic fibrosis, which demand smaller clinical trials that have a higher probability of success, leading to drugs that can cost more than 100,000 annually per patient. But, with insurers and payers worldwide becoming increasingly vigilant about controlling costs, this business model s long term prospects are unclear.