2 ms·

"a gene therapy"... I don't think anyone feels that gene therapy delivery mechanisms are going to be plug and play. Until we master the technology, I'm sure t

by crusso 14y ago

"a gene therapy"... I don't think anyone feels that gene therapy delivery mechanisms are going to be plug and play. Until we master the technology, I'm sure that each attempt at gene therapy will be specifically geared to solving a single genetic problem. It's like in software development. Often introduction of new complexities doesn't create a linear amount of work to write and maintain it. Depending upon the coupling of the complexity, the extra effort could be multiplicative or exponential. Seriously, how long have we been hearing about "cures for AIDS". A couple of decades? Now, this particular vapor cure has an extra dependency upon an unspecified gene therapy. It's naive to think that an actual cure based upon this research isn't much further away than the article hints at.

maxerickson 14y ago
There isn't any reason anyone should spend much time listening to what I have to say about it, but I would expect gene therapy delivery to be increasingly plug and play. My reasoning being, the safety issues are concentrated around transmission so insertion strategies that have a robust story there will be copied. Especially if they are effective. Also, the 'obvious' gene therapy targets tend to be similar mechanisms (approximately because they are available at the level of understanding we have right now). I don't actually expect this to be available as a treatment any time soon, but I think confident pessimism is probably at least as naive as confident optimism (simply because estimating what is possible is so hard).