161–170 of 267 posts
As exciting as this is, we already know how people have used the decreased danger of HIV infection to become careless about other types of STIs. Given that our antibiotics are losing their ability to treat many common STIs, an HIV cure without some advancement in antibiotics will be swapping one epidemic for a series of others. Edit: I wanted to add a couple sources for my claims above. Once people stopped believing…
Back in 2011, there was an announcement from MIT about a new approach to a broad-spectrum antiviral that appeared to work.[1] This goes way beyond an AIDS-specific cure. But it was at MIT Lincoln Labs, which doesn't usually do bio. So the researcher moved to Draper Labs, but didn't get much funding. Then that funding ran out. Now the guy behind this is trying to get funding on Indiegogo.[3] The problem seems to be th…
Given billionaires running their own space programs it makes me wonder why there aren't more billionaires running biologic research companies. Between life extension and immunity to (or protection from) really pathological conditions it seems like their interests would be aligned with folks like this.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/silicon-valleys...
In 2013 a very highly-placed Goldman Sachs exec, a friend of a friend, told me his AMFAR contacts predicted a 'genetics-based cure' in a 3-4 years instead of the 10 years they publicly projected. The rationale was donations would stop if people knew how close they were to a cure.
Even if AIDS is defeated, there's always other medical maladies that affect people. MRSA, for one.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, as CRISPR was originally found as a kind of immune system, there do exist a number of anti-anti-Cas9 systems against that evolved alongside it. There are a number of small inhibitors of Cas9 [1] (which themselves could be used to tune Cas9 in therapeutics). However up-taking such a defense is admittedly an unlike route for a virus like HIV to take to evolve resistance to a CRISPR-based therapy. More practically…
"More practically, HIV has such a high mutation rate, that it's likely very difficult to target every HIV sequence with a sequence-specific Cas9 therapy. If the Cas9 guide sequence is too generic it'll take out stuff besides HIV (stuff you need). " Unless I'm grossly misunderstanding how CRISPR works, there's no conceptual reason why you couldn't target multiple sequences at the same time , with a cocktail method. Th…
Back in 2011, there was an announcement from MIT about a new approach to a broad-spectrum antiviral that appeared to work.[1] This goes way beyond an AIDS-specific cure. But it was at MIT Lincoln Labs, which doesn't usually do bio. So the researcher moved to Draper Labs, but didn't get much funding. Then that funding ran out. Now the guy behind this is trying to get funding on Indiegogo.[3] The problem seems to be th…
Gene therapy (and CRISPR) is ultimately going to eliminate most if not every ailment/issue/genetic problem that we have, including aging and eye problems. Very thankful we are reaching the point where we can go into our cells and fix ourselves.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't the only way to mutate to avoid CRISPR to change your genes enough that CRISPR can't identify you? If so, doesn't that mean we just find the new genetic signature and generate a variation that targets it? I see CRISPR as grepping through memory for running instruction code. Sure, the code can change, but if you see the behavior, then it's a matter of finding the new code signature manually and generating a new…
Well, as CRISPR was originally found as a kind of immune system, there do exist a number of anti-anti-Cas9 systems against that evolved alongside it. There are a number of small inhibitors of Cas9 [1] (which themselves could be used to tune Cas9 in therapeutics). However up-taking such a defense is admittedly an unlike route for a virus like HIV to take to evolve resistance to a CRISPR-based therapy. More practically…
I wonder if several narrow CRISPR payloads simultaneously would achieve the same effect since any survivors would need n many mutations simultaneously.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if AIDS is defeated, there's always other medical maladies that affect people. MRSA, for one.
Didn't they already cure it? Magic Johnson had it, but now he doesn't. Or do you mean "cure it for non-basketball-millionaires"?
The goal of a lot of researchers is basically an HIV antimicrobial that kills the virus in the same way you might treat pneumonia, so that maintenance therapy is not needed.