Therapeutic Proteins

Therapeutic proteins were first developed and employed clinically in the last century with the use of insulin to make up for the lack of the natural peptide. In the late 1970s, large-scale protein production was possible because of the introduction of recombinant DNA technology, which also greatly sparked systematic clinical research employing novel therapeutic strategies. This chapter provides an overview of some therapeutic proteins, both in their natural form and as structurally modified analogs, which are used as drugs.