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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.
XKCD
You mean China is ahead of us in medical research?
I guess that's par for the course since we live in a country controlled by anti-science Bible thumping morons.
Yeah, I'm sure it has nothing to do with researchers in China not having any inconvenient laws and regulations against doing medical testing on prisoners, criminals, requiring years of testing before human trials would be allowed, etc etc.
It's nice though that you got to air your religious bigotry in the public square, and so brave doing it as AC, too.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Could this also lead to autoimmune diseases, since the immune system is being enhanced to more effectively target the body's own cells. While it's true that the immune system does target cancer cells, this seems like something that could lead to side effects.
I would hazard a guess that these folks are almost certainly going to die from the cancer anyway... Sometimes, you take any risk you can.
There was not a ban on embryonic stem cell research, just on harvesting new strains while getting federal grants.
That ban was an attempt to reduce the profit motive of facilities encouraging abortions.
To be honest he is right tho - having moral and ethical standards and a conscience has screwed us in many sciences (remember embryonic stem cell science, sex education).
FTFY
Science without a moral framework and ethical standards gets you Dr. Mengele's, the "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male", etc etc etc.
Not all is up for sacrifice at the altar of Science!(TM).
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Agreed, but there is a middle point between Dr. Mengele and "God will punish you, dirty sinners!". And for now, God is winning.
You are absolutely right that there should be a moral, ethical framework. That framework doesnâ(TM)t need to come from religion.
That's why they are doing very small scale trials .. 14 patients, typically on people with short life expectancy and/or that have not responded to more common protocols.
No one can really address all of the potential interactions, hence the need to do trials.
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...