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JackD4wkins t1_jdxkg2x wrote

Reply to comment by r0b0c0p316 in Scientists discover how cancer cells evade immune system by BousWakebo

Once a cell becomes cancerous, the rapid division facilitates further mutation, providing more targets.

Crispr has been shown to have very few off-target indels when coded correctly.

Nevermind other treatments - if we can get this scaled, this may be the silver bullet we stopped believing in

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r0b0c0p316 t1_jdxmclb wrote

> Once a cell becomes cancerous, the rapid division facilitates further mutation, providing more targets.

That's a fair point, but this also means that tumors have significant heterogeneity, so it can be difficult to find sufficient indels to target. I like your enthusiasm, but this research is still a long ways off from being a 'silver bullet'. Even the paper's authors discuss using it in combination with other treatments.

I'm not saying it won't work; I'm just saying it'll take a lot more funding and research to find out and it's not as simple as you might think.

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JackD4wkins t1_jdxt1rw wrote

A man can dream haha. I'm partial to multiple rounds of treatment personally. We ID the mutations to target, rip up those cancer cells, then target the remaining ones with different mutations. No chemo/ radiation side effects. It will not be a one-and-done. Will require multiple rounds to take down all of them. The goal is to avoid other treatment modalities completely to avoid their horrific side effects

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