Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

xconomy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 101 posts

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

#61

Post by wiz21c »

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.

but it's a bit sad that it can't intentionally help it to handle cancer.

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

#62

Post by ImaCake »

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…

I think this is obvious to anyone familiar with bacteria and immunity. The headlines will go for the 'CRISPR is dead" angle, but the work arounds are simple and relatively easy to implement. I think the article is still extremely valuable. It shows that, yes, we target CRISPR just like any other microbiome protein hanging out in a mucus membrane. But it also shows that it's not a threat (or an indicator of a threat).

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

#63

Post by dotancohen »

wiz21c wrote: post #61
meowface wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

but it's a bit sad that it can't intentionally help it to handle cancer.

Yet.

By the way, "cancer" is a class of diseases, not a single disease to treat, and many of them currently have CRISPR-derived treatments being actively developed.

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

#64

Post by amelius »

User23 wrote: post #56
dogma1138 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With desktop gene sequencers becoming a near commodity product I’m not so sure. There are a companies that currently focus on this area specifically by leveraging the ever dropping costs and capabilities of gene sequencing by developing targeted immunotherapy solutions that can target the specific genetic makeup of a tumor from a biopsy.

This is all based on the assumption that our understanding of in vivo processes is as good as our understanding of in silico processes. It isn't. Not even close.

But that's also true for mainstream/existing therapies.

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

#65

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

jamesrcole wrote: post #58
chongli wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CRISPR holds way more promise than silly fantasies of human genetic enhancement. The most exciting and practical uses for it apply to challenging everyday problems: food, energy, invasive species, biodiversity. Besides, the ethical problems with experimenting on human beings are extremely intractable.

> CRISPR holds way more promise than silly fantasies of human genetic enhancement I really dislike pandering, dismissive statements like this. What's so inherently wrong with the entire category of genetic "enhancements" (changes for a perceived positive benefit)? You can't respond to this by just pointing out some proposed enhancements or motivations that are silly. I'm asking why you object to the very idea of any…

> address some of the more egregious cognitive biases that cause so many problems in the world

I'm not sure how to interpret this - are you saying we should use CRISPR to make people think a certain way? If so this seems like a pretty horrific suggestion.

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

#66

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

nserrino wrote: post #28
chongli wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CRISPR holds way more promise than silly fantasies of human genetic enhancement. The most exciting and practical uses for it apply to challenging everyday problems: food, energy, invasive species, biodiversity. Besides, the ethical problems with experimenting on human beings are extremely intractable.

How is a CRISPR trial on a terminal patient any different than another experimental medical trial on that same terminal patient?

I agree. My father has terminal cancer and has been practically banging down doors to try to get onto medical trials for new experimental treatments. If other people in his position want to do the same thing then who are we to judge?

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

#67

Post by jamesrcole »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #65
jamesrcole wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CRISPR holds way more promise than silly fantasies of human genetic enhancement I really dislike pandering, dismissive statements like this. What's so inherently wrong with the entire category of genetic "enhancements" (changes for a perceived positive benefit)? You can't respond to this by just pointing out some proposed enhancements or motivations that are silly. I'm asking why you object to the very idea of any…

> address some of the more egregious cognitive biases that cause so many problems in the world I'm not sure how to interpret this - are you saying we should use CRISPR to make people think a certain way? If so this seems like a pretty horrific suggestion.

Humans are, for example, very poor at making risk assessments. Evolution has "programmed" our brains to focus too much on certain things and not enough on others. These heuristics might have made sense in ancestral environments bit are quite harmful in today's world. Evolution has already "made us think a certain way". Why would it be so horrific to, for example, lessen certain of those tendancies, if they are harmful?

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

#68

Post by klmr »

User23 wrote: post #52
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…

What the layman thinks of genetic engineering magic is going to have to happen in the germline. That means it's not going to help you or me or anyone else already alive.

This is true for most genetic engineering applications but not all. Somatic gene therapy has been successfully performed in a few cases. There will almost certainly be more applications in the future, and it’s reasonable to expect that they will be able to handle some prevalent diseases (such as all types of diabetes).

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

#69

Post by klmr »

mtgx wrote: post #26
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…

Anything as powerful as CRISPR will most likely be misused and have a very high error rate/unexpected consequences initially anyway: https://labiotech.eu/medical/crispr-therapy-cancer-risk/ CRISPR is definitely going to go through the "hype cycle" - as in the hype will die out long before we can prove it can be safely used in humans, and these achievements will likely happen in the background over several decades tim…

The difference between CRISPR and many other overhyped technologies is that CRISPR has already proven its mettle. It’s being used productively daily in labs across the world and has lowered the cost of performing many experiments, or even made new experiments possible in the first place.

You’re right that there’s a certain amount of hype surrounding CRISPR, especially when it comes to potential medical application (whether this works remains to be seen, although I and most people in the field remain optimistic). But until something even better comes along I don’t think interest in CRISPR will die down soon.

Post reply on HN