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What is "gene therapy"

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
gene therapy
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Because the disorder is specific to B cells, it may be a candidate for somatic gene therapy.
▪ Clearly, until these questions are answered, gene therapy will be reserved for life threatening diseases.
▪ Even if all goes well, it is unlikely that gene therapy treatment will be available for at least 10 years.
▪ Gelsinger died from the treatment in September, in what is believed to be the first death caused directly by gene therapy.
▪ If successful, gene therapy could eventually offer effective treatment for as many as 4,000 hereditary illnesses, including cystic fibrosis.
▪ Is it amenable to psychotherapy or gene therapy?
▪ Male speaker One of the concerns of gene therapy is that other tissue will be affected.
▪ Perhaps gene therapy could prevent the mutation of the prion gene that causes hereditary brain disease.
Wiktionary
gene therapy

n. Any of several therapies involving the insertion of genes into a patient's cells in order to replace defective ones

Wikipedia
Gene therapy

Gene therapy is the therapeutic delivery of nucleic acid polymers into a patient's cells as a drug to treat disease.

The first attempt at modifying human DNA was performed in 1980 by Martin Cline, but the first successful and approved nuclear gene transfer in humans was performed in May 1989. The first therapeutic use of gene transfer as well as the first direct insertion of human DNA into the nuclear genome was performed by French Anderson in a trial starting in September 1990.

Between 1989 and February 2016, over 2,300 clinical trials had been conducted, more than half of them in phase I.

It should be noted that not all medical procedures that introduce alterations to a patient's genetic makeup can be considered gene therapy. Bone marrow transplantation and organ transplants in general have been found to introduce foreign DNA into patients. Gene therapy is defined by the precision of the procedure and the intention of direct therapeutic effects.