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Doctors Will Test Gene Editing On HIV Patients

Posted by kdawson on from the importing-mercenaries dept.

Soychemist writes "Some people have a mutation that makes them highly resistant to HIV, and scientists think that they can give that immunity to anyone with a new type of gene therapy. The first human trials will start at the University of Pennsylvania this week. Researchers will draw blood from people with drug-resistant HIV, clip the CCR5 gene out of their T-cells with a nuclease enzyme, grow the modified cells in a dish, and then return 10 billion of them to the patient's bloodstream. Those cells will be immune to the virus, and they will keep the patient's T-cell count up even if the rest are destroyed. 'We will see if it is safe and if those cells inhibit HIV replication in vivo,' said the lead researcher. 'We know they do in the test tube.'"

5 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. Re:might as well guinea pig at that point by lee1026 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    The worst that can happen is that they screw up and you die much sooner then you otherwise would.

  2. Gene editing? by TFer_Atvar · · Score: 1, Redundant

    I'm (pretty) sure it's not like it sounds, but the idea of gene editing immediately conjures up something like a gene Wikipedia in 50 years or something, and that's terrifying and hilarious at the same time.

  3. Re:Potential Failure RIsks: by caitsith01 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Tyrell: The facts of life: To make an alteration in the evolvement of an organic life system is fatal. A coding sequence cannot be revised once its been established.

    Roy: Why not?

    Tyrell: Because by the second day of incubation, any cells that have undergone reversion mutations give rise to revertant colonies like rats leaving a sinking ship; then the ship sinks.

    Roy: What about EMS recombination?

    Tyrell: We've already tried it. Ethyl methane sulfonate is an alkylating agent and a potent mutagen. It created a virus so lethal the subject was dead before he left the table.

    Roy: Then a repressor protein that blocks the operating cells.

    Tyrell: Wouldn't obstruct replication, but it does give rise to an error in replication so that the newly formed DNA strand carries a mutation and you've got a virus again. But this - all of this is academic. You were made as well as we could make you.

    Roy: But not to last.

    --
    Read Pynchon.
  4. Re:might as well guinea pig at that point by CarpetShark · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Fuck you, my friend died from AIDS you insensitive clod.

    Which is precisely why you should encourage this, since he died anyway, but this sort of thing might have saved him.

  5. Re:might as well guinea pig at that point by feronti · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Wow. It seems to really work. Amazing, since the root of this thread is now modded Redundant. Which way will I go?