Posted on 09/12/2019 6:28:46 AM PDT by Red Badger
Chinese researchers safely treated a man with leukemia and HIV using gene-edited stem cells, a step forward in a field that was shaken last year when another Chinese scientist used the same technology to create the world’s first genetically-edited babies.
The man’s medical case, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, is the first detailed report in a major academic journal of how doctors are using the experimental tool Crispr to manipulate the DNA of a living patient in an effort to cure disease. But even before the earlier controversy in China, there’s been a heavy note of caution in the field about how far and fast to proceed with the technology.
The patient’s dual diseases -- HIV and cancer -- gave researchers at the Peking University Stem Cell Research Center in Beijing an opening. The man needed a transplant of stem cells to replace the damaged ones that were causing his blood cancer. That procedure also gave them the opportunity to re-engineer a gene called CCR5 in the donor cells to be resistant to HIV.
“This is a green light for the whole field of gene editing,” Carl June, a pioneer in the use of gene therapy to treat cancer and HIV at the University of Pennsylvania, said in an interview. He published a companion piece in the journal.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
YIKES. I’m not sure I like the future.
The CRISPR/CAS system has been hyped way beyond what it is actually capable of. In this story, stem cells (from an unknown source) were genetically edited using a CRISPR/CAS method, but any number of genetic tools could have been used.
The hurdle with using genetic engineering to fix a genetic defect is regulatory approval. We use such tools all the time, but only in animals, due to the many questions surrounding use of such tools in humans. The Chinese seem to have few qualms about using genetic tools in human medicine—but then, they also execute prisoners for organs and forcefully kill full term preborn babies of women who got pregnant without permission.
The typical diet in China is not conducive to producing those tall players.....
Diets of fish and rice are not high in vitamin D which is one of the reasons why the Vietnamese people were always short.
China is a vicious totalitarian state, your suspicions are warranted.
Hmmm? Plenty of sunshine in Vietnam. Fish oil (particularly cod liver oil) is a rich source of vitamin D.
Check your premises...
Agreed, China also has a greed...
TALEN is actually the preferred tool for critical work such as editing T cells for CAR-T because CRISPR was considered less reliable. At least that was the case a few years back.
The Chinese are enamored with basketball........all the way back to the earlier years.............
Does anyone really believe the Chinese are doing all this gene editing on people just for benevolent healthcare reasons or that the two cases cited are the only ones that have happened there?
Don't have to check anything, if I'm right I'm right, if I'm wrong I'm wrong. Don't matter one way or the other.........
Meant to say vitamin A
“My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”
“What could possibly go wrong?...................... “
You don’t want to do that if/when it becomes generally available, then don’t do it.
Oh, and anyone criticizing this procedure/concept because China is involved are not addressing the actual issue, but just making the national equivalent of an ad hominem argument. I don’t care for or admire China in any significant way, but if they can do this then it offers a lot of relief of pain and saving of lives that otherwise can’t be right now.
I know three tall Chinese people. One’s family is from Szechuan region; I don’t know the other two, who are a father and daughter. He is a basketball coach in a Catholic high school. No genetic monkey business, just naturally tall.
1. Yao Ming - 7'6"
2. Yi Jianlian - 7'0"
3. Zhou Qi - 7'1"
4. Wang Zhelin - 7'0"
All professional basketball players both here and in their native country of China. Unprecedented height years ago..............
Then there's the Chinese women's volleyball team members who are well over six feet tall, with the exception of a couple of setters and liberos.......
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