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It seems like one thing that CRISPR brings to the table is find and replace, or find and delete. As a layman, this would seem ideal for treating any sort of ca

by ericb 11y ago

It seems like one thing that CRISPR brings to the table is find and replace, or find and delete. As a layman, this would seem ideal for treating any sort of cancer... Just find the distinct sequences and delete? What bad news do I not (yet) know that makes it much tougher than I'm hoping?

Q6T46nT668w6i3m 11y ago
Re: bad news --- a "find and replace" feature where unmatched tokens were replaced with unusual values.
a_bonobo 11y ago
Sadly, cancer goes way beyond some broken DNA, in cancer cells you have polyploidy = several chromosome copies, these copies break up in weird ways so that some chromosomes are joined to others and other random mixing, you can't fix that using CRISPR You could, however, identify regions of DNA which make your cells more susceptible to the transformation, but CRISPR is still more unstable than the OP makes you think - in the highly debated human CRISPR experiment (using an older protocol) the scientists started with 86 embryos, of which 71 survived, of which only "a fraction" was successfully transformed, and in another fraction of that the proper target was hit but only in mosaics (with non-transformed cells remaining), in the remaining successful transformed cells the new DNA was inserted in the wrong position (potentially creating a new disease). See Carl Zimmer's take here: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/22/editing-human-embryos-so-this-happened/ http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/22/editing-h... There's a lot of hype which IMHO damages the technology, it's much more finicky than it's usually presented
- jamescostian 11y ago
  Another thing to consider is that one could use CRISPR to make lives worse. What if someone gave Michelle Obama a very high chance of breast or ovarian cancer by giving her BRCA1 or BRCA2[0]? What if a dictator's competition got sickle-cell anemia all of a sudden, or lost their sickle-cell anemia before their trip to a malaria zone (which is also bad[1])? [0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12677558 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12677558 [1] http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/biology/sickle_cell.html http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/biology/sickle_cell.html
  - icegreentea 11y ago
    If you could manage to give someone gene therapy, they're already screwed. Consider that the only reasonable mechanisms for gene therapy on grown animals is to infect them with a virus (or something similar). If you can infect someone with a virus, they're already dead.
    - Ultimatt 11y ago
      Sure but altering their genome subtly so that it appears natural it becomes impossible to police as the murderer is very far removed from the murder.

by ericb 11y ago

Q6T46nT668w6i3m 11y ago

Re: bad news --- a "find and replace" feature where unmatched tokens were replaced with unusual values.

a_bonobo 11y ago

Sadly, cancer goes way beyond some broken DNA, in cancer cells you have polyploidy = several chromosome copies, these copies break up in weird ways so that some chromosomes are joined to others and other random mixing, you can't fix that using CRISPR You could, however, identify regions of DNA which make your cells more susceptible to the transformation, but CRISPR is still more unstable than the OP makes you think - in the highly debated human CRISPR experiment (using an older protocol) the scientists started with 86 embryos, of which 71 survived, of which only "a fraction" was successfully transformed, and in another fraction of that the proper target was hit but only in mosaics (with non-transformed cells remaining), in the remaining successful transformed cells the new DNA was inserted in the wrong position (potentially creating a new disease). See Carl Zimmer's take here: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/22/editing-human-embryos-so-this-happened/ http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/04/22/editing-h... There's a lot of hype which IMHO damages the technology, it's much more finicky than it's usually presented

jamescostian 11y ago
Another thing to consider is that one could use CRISPR to make lives worse. What if someone gave Michelle Obama a very high chance of breast or ovarian cancer by giving her BRCA1 or BRCA2[0]? What if a dictator's competition got sickle-cell anemia all of a sudden, or lost their sickle-cell anemia before their trip to a malaria zone (which is also bad[1])? [0] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12677558 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12677558 [1] http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/biology/sickle_cell.html http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/biology/sickle_cell.html
- icegreentea 11y ago
  If you could manage to give someone gene therapy, they're already screwed. Consider that the only reasonable mechanisms for gene therapy on grown animals is to infect them with a virus (or something similar). If you can infect someone with a virus, they're already dead.
  - Ultimatt 11y ago
    Sure but altering their genome subtly so that it appears natural it becomes impossible to police as the murderer is very far removed from the murder.