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The reason this isn't getting funded is because it's extremely unlikely to work in reality. They've engineered synthetic protein sensors of dsRNA that induce a
by alevskaya 9y ago
The reason this isn't getting funded is because it's extremely unlikely to work in reality. They've engineered synthetic protein sensors of dsRNA that induce apoptosis on detection - this mimics the natural viral detection systems that all cells use to prevent viral infection. The argued benefit is that this artificial protein avoids the common hacks that many viruses use to circumvent the natural detection pathways. For this to work you have to (1) inject a ton of this foreign protein into the blood, (2) have it persist and be taken up by many cells in an organism, (3) not elicit a negative immune reaction against cells expressing this foreign beast on their MHCs (4 - for prophylaxis) have it persist long enough to provide realistic protection against future viral infection events (5) hope that the distribution of protein-transduced cells overlaps enough with the natural viral targets to provide some clinical utility.
The costs of trying to turn a novel therapeutic approach into a real therapy are extremely high - hundreds of millions of dollars. I'm unaware of any approved therapy that utilizes protein transduction of cells - I also suspect existing protein transduction methods aren't very efficient. There is a tiny pile of evidence that this method "works" in vitro in cultured cell models of infection, I can imagine a hundred ways it will fail in bodies.
There's a reason some ideas are left unexplored by industry.
- louithethrid 9y agoYeah, they can only imagine a brute force approach like used in early stage research? How about creating a accepted organism (a synthetic gland - made from body extracted cells) that produces these sCISPoRs in small dosages?
- stouset 9y agoAnd now you've magnified the costs and financial risk a thousandfold. Experimental new treatment not yet feasible? Let's invent a whole new synthetic organ that might not even solve the problem!
- aphextron 9y ago>There's a reason some ideas are left unexplored by industry. But your argument essentially boils down to "We haven't yet discovered an effective delivery method, therefore this technique will never work". Isn't that one of the basic problems facing all clinical genetic modification research? Is it unreasonable to assume that this problem could be solved by some future breakthrough, or does it somehow violate the laws of physics? If so, should we then discard all basic science research in this field because there is no clear route to market?
- johncolanduoni 9y agoIt's more "We haven't yet discovered an effective delivery method, therefore this technique is in the same place as a hundred other techniques that kill things in cell cultures."
- alevskaya 9y agoI fully support basic science pursuing crazy ideas. I think this is a very interesting piece of basic science, it's just at an incredibly speculative stage that's unsuitable for clinical investment. Efficient delivery of novel proteins into a cell by genetic methods, nanoparticles, or direct transduction is -the- challenge for a lot of novel ideas. Massive effort is ongoing to find breakthroughs here. The proteins in this study face this challenge, but there are other serious issues as well: - Introducing a large amount of a foreign protein, esp. some with viral domains in them, potentially carries risk of an adverse immune reaction... especially since these proteins might quickly transduce themselves into antigen presenting cells. - Most importantly, for a viral prophylactic, it's not clear that the short persistence of these proteins in the cell really makes for an effective approach to defend against viruses. - If you administer it acutely to try and slow an ongoing infection in a stimulated immune system, I suspect the body would raise antibodies against the proteins, preventing them from being used again.
- rpawell 9y agoalevskaya. we've got a great direct transduction technology. when are you going to test it out?
- Pyxl101 9y agoThis is fascinating. How in the world does the body "raise antibodies" that are effective against arbitrary proteins it hasn't seen before? How does this get "remembered" and how does the memory get communicated through the body? If there's an ELI5 (or, ELI-college-101) I'd be interested to read it.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- martin1975 9y agoSounds like if it is attempted it will violate, to put it mildly, some ethical barriers...