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Corogue t1_iw6athk wrote

Reply to comment by SemogAziul in How do medical researchers obtain lab animals with diseases like specific forms of cancer which arise spontaneously? Do they raise thousands of apes and hope some eventually develop the disease? by userbrn1

Genuinely curious. If scientists can alter the DNA of an animal to produce cancer cells, can a similar genetic alteration cause the body's immune system to stop cancer cells from multiplying or attack cancer cells?

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robcal35 t1_iw6b5xc wrote

Immune cells require "training". Genetic alterations may be able to increase the number, but does nothing to affect their training to target cancer cells.

If you're curious, check out CAR-T (chimeric antigen receptor) cell therapy. This is literally where you are reprogramming and training immune cells to go specifically after cancer cells.

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LachoooDaOriginl t1_iw6zw62 wrote

i like to think of the car t thing as a lil terminator hunting cancer… am i the only one?

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robcal35 t1_iw7fvrd wrote

Hahaha just like the Terminator, sometimes there's some collateral damage

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123frogman246 t1_ix0w78z wrote

If you're in the UK, see if you can watch "War in the blood" - goes behind the scenes of CAR T cell therapy in a couple of patients and one of the academic labs behind developing the therapy

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NotDolledUpForYou t1_iw6elet wrote

Ive done a lot of work on CAR T-cells so in that regard technically yes you can alter the bodies immune system to attack cancer cells, but we do it by taking those white blood cells out the body, altering them and then putting them back, not by changing the bodies genetic makeup itself

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Tlaloc_Temporal t1_iw6usyh wrote

The M-RNA vaccines famously used for CoVID-19 were actually developed to fight cancer like this! The downside is you have to sequence the DNA of each case of cancer, but as sequencing labs get cheaper and more common, there might be a broad-spectrum cure!

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[deleted] t1_iw6dt62 wrote

[removed]

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NotDolledUpForYou t1_iw6enyy wrote

CAR T-cells don't work on the next generation they actually die out in the body so I don't know what you're on about there

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Alpacaofvengeance t1_iw6sr11 wrote

CAR-T cells do proliferate but I agree I don't know what elephants means there

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