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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."
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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.
Doing my level best to piss off the religious right wing...
"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."
:-\
Right, sure, that sounds very good on paper. The problem is, T cells work by recognizing surface antigens present on certain cells and not on others, or the absence of certain key antigens. I think autoimmune issues will be the *first* to occur - we're teaching someone's T cells how to kill cells in his own body, granted, cells that have been mutated in some way, but still.
I'm not so sure this will work in vivo as well as it has in vitro.