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US Doctors Plan To Treat Cancer Patients Using CRISPR (technologyreview.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The first human test in the U.S. involving the gene-editing tool CRISPR could begin at any time and will employ the DNA cutting technique in a bid to battle deadly cancers. Doctors at the University of Pennsylvania say they will use CRISPR to modify human immune cells so that they become expert cancer killers, according to plans posted this week to a directory of ongoing clinical trials. The study will enroll up to 18 patients fighting three different types of cancer -- multiple myeloma, sarcoma, and melanoma -- in what could become the first medical use of CRISPR outside China, where similar studies have been under way. An advisory group to the National Institutes of Health initially gave a green light to the Penn researchers in June 2016, but until now it was not known whether the trial would proceed.
It could. But the idea is to look at the cancer cells and the proteins they express. Find what they express that's DIFFERENT than normal cells, then go after that.
Problems are less autoimmunity, more getting all of the cancer and hitting a moving target. Cancer cells don't die naturally in response to mutations, and their replication machinery is somewhat screwed up, making them more prone to mutations. Tumors aren't composed of a single cell type, but many different mutant types, which might express different proteins. Additionally, since they mutate, a cell might express a protein today, but its progeny tomorrow may not.
For another poster -- antibodies don't die. Antibodies aren't living -- they're protein structures designed to "tag" foreign and damaged cells. They're produced by B-cells, which are living organisms.
Source: basic biochem...