GM Blood Kills Human Cancer Cells

adri writes "New Scientist has an article which outlines an interesting method of combating cancer: genetically modifying T-cells in human blood to seek and destroy bowel cancer cells."

Comments

What else?

[Anonymous Coward]

genetically modifying T-cells in human blood to seek and destroy bowel cancer cells.

And what else does it kill, I wonder?

cool

[capnjack41]

Wow, I just realized that GM isn't General Motors, and that the April Fools' jokes are over!

But since cancer cells are (as I understand it, I'm not all that knowledgeable about this) caused by "genetic modifications" in themselves, how do we know (as someone said) that these don't have adverse effects in themselves?

However I suppose that if I did have this condition, I'd be willing to try...

Another bullet in the treatment arsenal?

[geekwench]

Good lord, I hope so.

This is exciting research, and just the sort of thing that GM should be used for. If the researchers can add the necessary information to white blood cells so that they recognize cancer cells as "foreign", and respond accordingly, then we might see a future in which the cure isn't worse than the disease. Chemo and radiation are both damned indiscriminate, and there's an upper limit to how much of either can be administered to a person. Tweaking white blood cells so that they do their job more effectively would be a far better answer, since they wouldn't attack healthy tissue.

Not only does this show promise for cancer (it's being used on bowel cancers, but I can see more widespread applications), the findings could prove useful in the future treatment of autoimmune disorders. I'm very much looking forward to the developments that are going to come out of this line of research.

But should we?

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one am disturbed by such developments :(

Blood is the essence of our life, so tampering with it is to tamper with life itself. This is more evil from those scientists who seek to replace god.