Gene therapy: Are you a believer?

Long-term investment in gene therapy companies holds life-saving and money-making potential

Mother Nature is not perfect, and occasionally she does make mistakes. On a genetic level, her errors include sometimes giving someone a mutant copy of a gene that afflicts him or her with a disease. Scientists hope to be able to fix those mistakes by giving those individuals the correct version of the gene. Sounds almost too good to be true ... so what's the catch?

Looking at biotechnology as an industry, we see a continuing technology maturation. "First generation" therapies involve production of naturally occurring proteins such as erythropoietin or granulocyte colony stimulating …