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Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study

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Re: Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study

#41

Post by meowface »

nickles wrote: post #18

This will likely not be an impediment to treatments based on CRISPR. The study has been available in preprint form for ~6 months on biorxiv [0]. At least some of the companies researching CRISPR were aware of this issue at the time the paper was released. It has since been mitigated, as specified at the bottom of the article. From Gaetan Burgio's tweets: "Published now in @NatureMedicine on #CRISPR & Immunity to SpCa…

It's really amazing that humanity is at the stage where we're intentionally evading our own immunity to bacterial components so we can repurpose the components to help ourselves.

Re: Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study

#42

Post by [deleted] »

nickelcitymario wrote: post #14

So to the non-geneticist noobs (like me), is it correct to interpret this finding as suggesting that the promises of CRISPR may be dead in the water? Does this mean all the hype was nothing more than hype? Should anyone with investments in CRISPR be seriously looking at dumping their stock? Should anyone who was holding out on CRISPR to give us super powers / cure disease / etc start drinking copious amounts of alcoh…

[deleted]

Re: Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study

#43

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #42
nickelcitymario wrote: post #14

So to the non-geneticist noobs (like me), is it correct to interpret this finding as suggesting that the promises of CRISPR may be dead in the water? Does this mean all the hype was nothing more than hype? Should anyone with investments in CRISPR be seriously looking at dumping their stock? Should anyone who was holding out on CRISPR to give us super powers / cure disease / etc start drinking copious amounts of alcoh…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study

#44

Post by Izkata »

amelius wrote: post #24
virusduck wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a way, sure. A major roll of the immune system (especially T cells) is to monitor for unusual cells. Some pre-cancerous cells display unusual markers that are recognized and killed by T cells. Those that evade T cell recognition go on to be a problem. The major problem is still how do you target cancer cells? If you can find something that makes them unique, say a cell surface receptor, or an unusual metabolic pro…

> It's just hard to uniquely identify cancer cells. How about performing whole-genome sequencing on a tumor, and then targeting the differences with the patient's natural genome?

Wouldn't work reliably due to cases of genetic chimerism, though that could possibly be tested for. Though, in several cases I've read about, there was no consistent place to get samples to test for mismatched DNA.

Re: Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study

#46

Post by 88e282102ae2e5b »

nickelcitymario wrote: post #14

So to the non-geneticist noobs (like me), is it correct to interpret this finding as suggesting that the promises of CRISPR may be dead in the water? Does this mean all the hype was nothing more than hype? Should anyone with investments in CRISPR be seriously looking at dumping their stock? Should anyone who was holding out on CRISPR to give us super powers / cure disease / etc start drinking copious amounts of alcoh…

No. Working around this takes some effort but is straightforward and uses well-known, existing techniques. There's a lab I know of that considered trying to modify the protein so it could evade the immune system, but they decided against it since they figured the group that published this paper would have too much of a head start and there's no way they'd be able to compete. I'd give it a year or so, and that's assuming none of the other Cas9 or Cas12a variants are already usable.

Re: Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study

#48

Post by plaidfuji »

I see this as more of a reminder of the strength of our immune system than a failure of any particular technology. As a recent post on HN said, fall in love with the problem, not the solution. Whether or not CRISPR works, there’s an enormous community of people who devote their lives to treating genetic disease, which is the underlying problem. At the same time, I’m glad my body has the ability to stop some random bacteria from editing my genome with minimal effort.

Re: Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study

#49

Post by tomrod »

criddell wrote: post #27
nvahalik wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could be wrong, but this seems like a blessing in disguise. Maybe I'm just totally ignorant about CRISPR but from what I have read, it seems like this is totally wild-west/uncharted territory. This seems like one of those technologies that could have massive unintended consequences. Perhaps this is a _good_ thing rather than a bad thing.

When you see a hammer lying around, do you think of the things that could be built or the things that could be destroyed?

Depends on how old I am/mature I'm feeling. Presently? Build. 6 years old? Bottle and rock smash time.

Re: Pre-Existing Immunity to CRISPR Found in 96% of People in Study

#50

Post by naravara »

meowface wrote: post #41
nickles wrote: post #18

This will likely not be an impediment to treatments based on CRISPR. The study has been available in preprint form for ~6 months on biorxiv [0]. At least some of the companies researching CRISPR were aware of this issue at the time the paper was released. It has since been mitigated, as specified at the bottom of the article. From Gaetan Burgio's tweets: "Published now in @NatureMedicine on #CRISPR & Immunity to SpCa…

It's really amazing that humanity is at the stage where we're intentionally evading our own immunity to bacterial components so we can repurpose the components to help ourselves.

What if it’s actually just time travelers coming back to code the immunity into us to protect us from the unintended consequences of gene hacking?

(This is a joke, in case that needs clarifying)

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