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> Car-T is at the cutting edge of biology: it involves extracting a patient’s blood cells, re-engineering them in a lab so they can identify and destroy cancer
by smaili 9y ago
> Car-T is at the cutting edge of biology: it involves extracting a patient’s blood cells, re-engineering them in a lab so they can identify and destroy cancer and then re-inserting them into the body.
It would be interesting to see if we could one day make this more optimal by reducing the extra step. Changing the above to:
> Car-T is at the cutting edge of biology: it involves re-engineering a patient's blood cells in a lab so they can identify and destroy cancer in the body.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoRe-engineering a patient's blood cells means first having a patient's blood cells. At some point, some cells have to be extracted for the cells to be available.
- yborg 9y agoThat would be cool, but also creepy if my blood cells can destroy cancer in my body while they're still in a lab. What if they start destroying cells in other people's bodies?
- ShabbosGoy 9y agoThat’s not how antigens work.
- jfarlow 9y agoThis is the end-goal. The delivery of synthetic genetic payloads in a live organism is still a bit tricky. Certain therapies do do this by injecting a synthetic 'virus' directly into your bloodstream. However, since it's so easy to extract T-cells, the risk of withdrawing blood, engineering it, & replacing it, it is worth the extra time to guarantee the delivery of the genetic payload is correct and thorough. As the sophistication of genetic delivery improves, direct delivery will absolutely become more common - and in fact will likely be a required technological step to curing harder-to-reach cancer and genetic abnormalities. That's why the first gene therapies are for the immunologically privileged, and easily accessible sites of the blood and the eye.