Regaining Lost Luster
Summary:
New developments in the gene therapy field make scientists believe they can reshape the bad reputation gene has gotten since the early 1990’s. Originally designed to treat hereditary diseases, the ways this treatment can be used has been expanded to tasks such as building new blood vessels and making the immune system resistant to infection. Other developments in the early stages are being tested. For example, a gene therapy that restored sight to 70 dogs that were blind from birth is being tested on humans. There have also been 12 cancer treatments and a heart treatment discovered. None of these have yet been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but in China two cancer treatments have been approved.
Scientists can also modify viruses by stripping them of their genetic material and replacing it with therapeutic genes. So instead of a virus being sent to the cells, the cells are receiving therapy. However, the immune system is developed to reject these virus causing complications with this type of therapy. This immune response to the therapy was what killed 18-year-old Jessie Gelsinger in 1999, not the therapy itself.
A major challenge is also that this therapy can only target the tissues that need it. In some cases the targeted cells can receive injections directly or they can be easily removed and then replaced in the patient after doctors manipulate secluded cells. But this is what makes gene therapy “so promising and extremely challenging.” Even with its negative reputation, scientists hold to the opinion that it’s never been very unsafe. There have been thousands of successfully treated patients and only a few unfavorable cases. Scientists continue to hope that with improvements in the field come improvements in the public’s opinion of it.
Review:
I think it’s truly amazing that scientists can target and treat individual cells and ultimately cure hereditary diseases by injecting genes that the cells lack. This shows how far we’ve come in technological and medical progress. However it also seems to be very risky. If injections do not reach their target, what kind of effect could those genes have on the cells that they do reach? And how could scientists fix these problems without sacrificing lives? This shows that gene therapy still has a long way to go.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=regaining-lost-luster&print=true
4 Comments:
I thought it was very interesting that scientists can acutally "reprogram" viruses in order to get medicene to a desired spot. It's truely amazing at the scientific achievements we already have in the world, and with technology such as gene therapy, it's only going to get better!
I thought that it was amazing that already 70 dogs have been sighted after being blind from birth. I'm also very interested about how scientists may be able to build blood vessels using gene therapy. How does that work?
It is impressive that 70 dogs were given sigh but why not test animals that have other genteic disease and see what the outcome of that will be maybe that could be a next step before testing it on humans.
I thought the fact that scientist believe that gene therapy is capable of “training” immune cells to hunt down cancer, build new blood vessels and make the immune system resistant to infection. If this is true, then gene therapy sounds like a great discovery!
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