Re:What can mRNA treat next?
by elcritch on Sunday May 02, 2021 @03:05PM
(#27017930)
An alternative approach would be to learn enough to make mRNA “programs” that once inside a cell could determine cancerous vs healthy cells. There’s been research on computations using DNA, and many natural pathways do similar “calculations”, that it seems feasible to create a “if specific xyz protein/carbohydrate/etc in cell exceeds threshold trigger cell death pathways”. Then injection in a tumor mass should be sufficient. The mRNA program might only need to be partially accurate to be more effective than many chemotherapy’s.
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You could maybe skip the cell death part, and instead trigger some existing telemetry systems that the immune system already watches for?
At least then if something goes wrong, you could still be put on immunosupressants
From what I’ve read both are options. There’s benefits to getting the immune system to target cancerous cells
Such as ongoing protection. Directly killing the cells is a good way to reduce tumor mass by direct injection however. The first t-cell immune treatments almost killed the patients due to liver/kidney overload from cellular debris as the immune system reacted too strongly, so being able to in cull tumor mass in a controlled fashion likely has merit as well. Either way the “detection method” would need to be very well tested and robust I imagine. Though the first treatments could be for “last chance” treatments that’d enable testing the safety of the particular detection method.