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Re-Engineering the Immune System
destinyland notes a microbiology professor describing "Immunity on Demand" (or "Immunity 2.0") and wonders whether we could genetically engineer all the antibodies we need. "...there's a good chance this system, or something like it, will actually be in place within decades. Caltech scientists have already engineered stem cells into B cells that produce HIV-fighting antibodies — and an NIH researcher engineered T cells that recognize tumors which has already had promising clinical trials again skin cancer. Our best hope may be to cut out the middleman. Rather than merely hoping that the vaccine will indirectly lead to the antibody an individual needs, imagine if we could genetically engineer these antibodies and make them available as needed?"
From TFA:
"We are not sure when this will all happen, but there’s a good chance it will, and perhaps the only question is when."
Hmmmmm . . .
For most diseases the antibodies are easier to see because they are more widespread. It only takes a few virally infected cells to set off a massive immune response. The difficulty in engineering an antibody is the same difficulty as engineering any protein. Our knowledge of protein folding is still in it's infancy. So far, we have used evolutionary methods to find new antibodies. Perhaps someday we will be able to build them from the ground up, but not now.
I'm a Biologist, and you're somewhat mistaken. Antibodies are so infinitesimally tiny that no light microscope can possibly see them, even compared to virii which are also fairly invisible under a microscope. Antibodies are easy to detect, however, because they have a constant region on their tail end, which we know how to identify. We have compounds that bind to that constant tail end and as a result tag the antibody and what it is binding to. It's like the antibody is a flag pole, and biologists can run a colorful flag up that pole when we want to see what piece of the ground the flag pole is attached to.
... which is good if we know what the antibody gene sequence is already, but difficult to figure out on our own. Nature is much more efficient (and cost effective) at that kind of thing. Once we let nature figure out what's best, we can just figure out the gene sequence from there to mass produce the antibody.
Engineering antibodies is a simple matter, it's the basis of immunization/vaccination. Traditionally, we give chopped up bacteria and virii to a patient and their immune system detects those and creates more antibodies to put into the blood stream to stave off future infection. With this approach, instead we feed immune cells in a Petri dish an antigen, and they produce antibodies specific to that antigen. We can separate out these antibodies and purify them because they have that constant tail region that we can detect. We can then inject these into a person and these antibodies will cling to whatever thing they've been engineered to detect and attract the native immune system to it.
We can also use genetic engineering tricks to produce en masse a single specific kind of antibody. The technology has been there for research labs for decades. Either method will work fairly similarly, but in my opinion the former seems "easier", because we let the cells sort out what specific antibody to make. If we genetically engineer immune cells, we have to know exactly what gene sequence will produce an antibody targetting exactly what we want targetted
... for 20 years. They were called "Navy doctors". They had all the latest technology, were extremely skilled, and... free. Of course, taxpayer dollars were paying them, but 1) total costs per person in the military are a hell of a lot less than the mess we have going on in the world of private health insurance, and 2) for the cost of something like the Iraq war, we could have provided health coverage for the entire country for like 15 years. So it's not like we can't afford it.
People who bitch about "socialized medicine" should try it some time.
Lets cure all natural causes of death through the miracle of modern science. Then starve to death as the world becomes grossly overpopulated.
Problem: All evidence suggests the opposite. Eliminate all the most egregious morality concerns from a population, and they stop reproducing like rabbits. In the healthiest parts of the first word, population growth is going negative.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."