Researchers Reprogram T Cells to Fight Cancer & Other Diseases
In a breakthrough discovery UC San Francisco researchers who’ve genetically transformed the human immune cells also known as T cells. The important part of this achievement is that they didn’t have to use viruses in order to place a DNA inside.
This left a major impact on medicine, research, and industry.
The researchers claimed they have hope that their technique will be adopted in the booming field of cell therapy, increasing the development of modern and much safer therapy for autoimmunity, cancer and other illnesses, including some rare disorders.
Their modern method offers a strong molecular “cut & paste” system to reprogram genome sequences in the T cells. It depends on a microbiology technique known as electroporation that applies an electrical field to the cells to make their membranes temporarily penetrable.
After a lot of experiments over the past year, researchers discovered that when specific quantities of the T cells are mixed together with the CRISPR “scissors” and DNA, and after, exposed to a suitable electrical field, the cells involve in these elements and merge defined genetic sequences exactly at the site of a CRISPR-coded incision in the genome.
This
flexible yet rapid method might find a place in cancer therapy. It can be used to transform T cells in order to destroy cancer, identify infections or shut out the extreme immune response noticed in autoimmune illness.This new technique is not only fast and easy to use but also prevents T cells from dying, something conventional techniques couldn’t achieve. It’s all about the approach because it makes it manageable to insert DNA into the cells, which may provide the cells with different strength properties.
Before this technique, many believed that DNA affected T cells in a toxic way.
In order to present the power and versatility of the new method, researchers tried to fix a mutation in T cells caused by a disease in children with the rare inherited disorder and also generated modified T cells to search and kill the melanoma cells.
Since 1970, scientists used viruses to inject DNA into the membranes for gene therapy, research, and design the CAR-T cells that are used in immunotherapy against cancer. These cells were approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to fight lymphoma and leukemia. However, using viruses to transport DNA is expensive and doesn’t always give the best results which could lead to dangerous side effects.
This was the main concern of scientists when it came to both gene and cell therapy.
They’ve been trying to enter the membranes and get new genes into these cells for over 30 years. Meaning, this new method made a significant influence and opened new possibilities to explore and experiment with. They’re allowed to copy and paste into a particular spot and rewrite a particular page in the genome order.
Ideas that seemed too difficult, complex or expensive because the viral vectors became history. The method allows rapid creation of templates. And once they have a template, it’s easy to get into the cells and develop them up in no time.
This broke the myth saying that only a small amount of DNA was tolerated by the cells. Also, it proved viral vectors aren’t necessary as they thought. This method’s success is “absolute resolution” with an astonishing result, said researchers.
