Pharmacy and Biotechnology (PBT)
Pharmacy and Biotechnology are integrated fields of science. Biotechnology is the application of scientific and engineering principles to the processing of materials by biological agents to provide goods and services. Pharmacy and Biotechnology are highly multidisciplinary; they have their roots in many fields including biology, especially microbiology, molecular biology and genetics, as well as chemistry, biochemistry, chemical and process engineering. Historically, biotechnology was primarily the art of manufacturing fermented foods in baking, brewing, cheese making and other bio-products. Modern biotechnology not only wishes to understand and improve such processes from a scientific standpoint but also to extend them to problems such as wastewater treatment or pollution control. Moreover, innovations brought about by molecular biology and genetic engineering allow unprecedented changes to be made to bio-components as well as to complete living systems. This includes protein and enzyme engineering or transgenic plants and animals. Last, but not least, our growing understanding of the human genome links biotechnology to pharmacology, medicine and disease control.
