biopharmaceutical biopharmaceutical a biopharmaceutical, also known as a biological medical product, or biologic, is any pharmaceutical drug product manufactured in, extracted from, or semisynthesized from biological sources. different from totally synthesized pharmaceuticals, they include vaccines, whole blood, blood components, allergenics, somatic cells, gene therapies, tissues, recombinant therapeutic protein, and living medicines used in cell therapy. biologics can be composed of sugars, proteins, nucleic acids, or complex combinations of these substances, or may be living cells or tissues. they (or their precursors or components) are isolated from living sources—human, animal, plant, fungal, or microbial. they can be used in both human and animal medicine. terminology surrounding biopharmaceuticals varies between groups and entities, with different terms referring to different subsets of therapeutics within the general biopharmaceutical category. some regulatory agencies use the terms biological medicinal products or therapeutic biological product to refer specifically to engineered macromolecular products like protein- and nucleic acid-based drugs, distinguishing them from products like blood, blood components, or vaccines, which are usually extracted directly from a biological source. biopharmaceutics is pharmaceutics that works with biopharmaceuticals. biopharmacology is the branch of pharmacology that studies biopharmaceuticals. specialty drugs, a recent classification of pharmaceuticals, are high-cost drugs that are often biologics. the european medicines agency uses the term advanced therapy medicinal products (atmps) for medicines for human use that are "based on genes, cells, or tissue engineering", including gene therapy medicines, somatic-cell therapy medicines, tissue-engineered medicines, and combinations thereof. within ema contexts, the term advanced therapies refers specifically to atmps, although that term is rather nonspecific outside those contexts. gene-based and cellular biologics, for example, often are at the forefront of biomedicine and biomedical research, and may be used to treat a variety of medical conditions for which no other treatments are available. in some jurisdictions, biologics are regulated via different pathways from other small molecule drugs and medical devices. major classes blood plasma is a type of biopharmaceutical directly extracted from living systems. extracted from living systems some of the oldest forms of biologics are extracted from the bodies of animals, and other humans especially. important biologics include: whole blood and other blood components organ transplantation and tissue transplants stem-cell therapy antibodies for passive immunity (e.g., to treat a virus infection) human reproductive cells human breast milk fecal microbiota some biologics that were previously extracted from animals, such as insulin, are now more commonly produced by recombinant dna. produced by recombinant dna