posted on Jun, 22 2016 @ 12:01 PM
Scientific American
On June 21, an advisory committee at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) approved a proposal to use CRISPR–Cas9 to help augment cancer
therapies that rely on enlisting a patient’s T cells, a type of immune cell.
This is very exciting news, I love that the pace of research and trial has accelerated so much. I pray that it gets even faster, moving CRISPR to
human trials should do that.
While it's highly likely that cancer will never be cured, it doesn't have to remain a horrendous, too often deadly disease. Treatment also doesn't
have to remain horrific though it has gotten better.
The goal of this first trial is to see whether it is safe for use with people who have cancer.
This first trial is small and designed to test whether CRISPR is safe for use in people, rather than whether it cures cancer or not. It will be
funded by a US$250-million immunotherapy foundation formed in April by former Facebook president Sean Parker. The trial itself does not yet have a
budget. The University of Pennsylvania will manufacture the edited cells, and will recruit and treat patients alongside centres in California and
Texas.
The reason people die from cancer even with the best medical care is that one, cancer is an adaptive asshole and becomes immune to chemo and two, the
human body can only withstand so much chemotherapy before your kidneys and liver just shut down as well as too much radiation building up in your bone
marrow or causing scar tissue buildup that will interrupt organ function the same as a tumor would.
I know that people have reservations about gene editing and fear that this is a step toward eugenics. But there's other types of fear too like the
fear of dying and leaving your child motherless.