[ExI] Surprise! Our Bodies Have Been Hiding a Trojan Horse for Gene Therapy

[Will Steinberg]

Yes, being in the first wave of gene therapy patients will probably be bad,
humans tend to fuck things up

On Wed, Aug 25, 2021, 12:37 AM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> That's really cool, but discovering the mechanism is one thing. Building a
> working therapy to use it is another thing entirely. And then convincing
> the population at large that it's safe and reliable - that'll be the
> hardest trick of all. Popular trust in the institution of public health
> policy is at an all-time low, and they've no one to blame but themselves.
>
> The politicization of the discourse around the known side-effects of the
> mRNA vaccines being currently marketed has probably set genetic therapy as
> a field back 30 years or more.
>
> On Tue, Aug 24, 2021 at 6:42 PM John Grigg via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> "Enter SEND. The new delivery platform, described in
>> <https://science.sciencemag.org/content/373/6557/882> *Science*, dazzles
>> with its sheer ingenuity. Rather than relying on foreign carriers, SEND (
>> *s*elective *e*ndogenous e*n*capsidation for cellular *d*elivery)
>> commandeers human proteins to make delivery vehicles that shuttle in new
>> genetic elements. In a series of tests, the team embedded RNA cargo and
>> CRISPR components inside cultured cells in a dish. The cells, acting as
>> packing factories, used human proteins to encapsulate the genetic material,
>> forming tiny balloon-like vessels that can be collected as a treatment.
>>
>> Even weirder, the source of these proteins relies on viral genes
>> domesticated eons ago by our own genome through evolution. Because the
>> proteins are essentially human, they’re unlikely to trigger our immune
>> system.
>>
>> Although the authors only tried one packaging system, far more are hidden
>> in our genomes. “That’s what’s so exciting,” said study author Dr. Michael
>> Segel, adding that the system they used isn’t unique; “There are probably
>> other RNA transfer systems in the human body that can also be harnessed for
>> therapeutic purposes.”
>>
>> https://singularityhub.com/2021/08/24/surprise-our-bodies-have-been-hiding-a-trojan-horse-for-gene-therapy/
>> _______________________________________________
>> extropy-chat mailing list
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20210825/f860e04c/attachment.htm>