A
biopharmaceutical, also known as a
biologic(al) medical product,
biological, or
biologic, is any
pharmaceutical drug product manufactured in, extracted from, or
semisynthesized from
biological sources. Different from
chemically synthesized pharmaceuticals, they include
vaccines,
blood, or blood components,
allergenics,
somatic cells,
gene therapies,
tissues,
recombinant therapeutic protein, and living
cells used in
cell therapy. Biologics can be composed of sugars, proteins, or nucleic acids or complex combinations of these substances, or may be living cells or tissues. They are isolated from natural sources—human, animal, or microorganism.