Interview with a biologist about the prospects of genetic engineering
Alexander Panchin: "There are promising approaches for the treatment of HIV.
I think with the help of genetic engineering we will defeat this disease"
Nadezhda Makarenko, "SIA-PRESS"
Recently, an article appeared in the authoritative scientific journal Nature about how genetically modified immune cells in London helped cure a girl dying of leukemia. It is still difficult to generalize conclusions based on one successful experience, but scientists see the uniqueness of this case in the fact that the improvement was achieved precisely through genetic editing.
Correspondent siapress.ru I talked with Alexander Panchin, a senior researcher at the A.A. Harkevich Institute of Information Transmission Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Candidate of Biological Sciences, about promising immune GM cells and the bright future they promise to sick humanity.
– Despite the widespread myth about the harm of GMOs, they are known to consistently benefit humanity. The other day there was news that a one-year-old child was cured of leukemia using genetically modified immune cells. Tell us what these cells are and what is their peculiarity.
– The idea of using gene therapy to treat cancer is as follows. A person takes his own immune system cells, a special gene is embedded in them, forcing them to fight cancer cells, and then they return to the patient.
This approach has already been successful in clinical trials. Back in 2013, several adult patients with leukemia were treated in this way. But it is expensive to do such a procedure for each patient, besides, the girl Leila in question has already undergone chemotherapy, and the number of healthy immune cells in her body was low (there is nothing to modify, according to the doctors who treated her).
Fortunately, some laboratories are working on the creation of special genetically modified immune cells that can be given to different patients. Like medicine! Ordinary cells of the immune system, if injected into another person, will attack his body and cause an autoimmune reaction, but this problem has apparently been overcome with the use of genetic engineering. Also, the resulting cells are less sensitive to the anti-cancer drug for leukemia.
– How were GMOs used in the treatment of people before the case of this girl with leukemia?
– As I said, genetically modified human cells have been used to treat cancer before. Today, clinical trials of gene therapy for the treatment of certain forms of congenital blindness, hemophilia, and muscular dystrophy are being conducted. There are even promising approaches for the treatment of HIV – I think it is with the help of genetic engineering that we will learn how to finally defeat this disease.
So far, it has been possible to create immune cells resistant to HIV, and if they are injected into the patient, they will not die, but will continue to function and protect the body from pathogenic agents, that is, thereby preventing the development of AIDS.
Unfortunately, most of these approaches are still being debugged and have not yet reached mass use.
– What are the prospects for genetically modified immune cells? What can they cure in the future? What does the use of GMOs for medical purposes promise humanity?
– In addition to what I have already described, it is theoretically possible to create a large set of different populations of immune cells, each of which would be aimed at fighting a particular type of cancer or an infectious agent. Then, after making an accurate diagnosis, a person can be injected into the blood with the right cells suitable for his condition. These cells will multiply and defeat the disease, and then they will protect the patient from the recurrence of the disease for a long time. It's like vaccination, only even cooler. This could become a real "individual treatment", eliminating the causes of diseases. I hope that my prediction will be justified, and we will live to see such a medicine of the future.
– Do you think there will be no problems with these technologies in Russia? We usually think that people die from GMOs, and not recover.
– It is curious that people are afraid of genetically modified crops and plants, but there is no hysteria around the terrible GM cells that will be injected, or around GM microorganisms that produce almost all insulin.
I think this is due to the fact that there are instigators who are opponents of the development of genetic engineering in agriculture. These are all kinds of corporations that produce and sell "organic products", manufacturers of insecticides and so on. Due to the activity of such people, the topic of "the harm of GMOs in food" is very much overblown, so everyone has formed an opinion. And few people have heard about genetic engineering in medicine. But in general, all this, of course, is due to a poor understanding of science. New technologies can greatly improve both medicine and agriculture, and in all its aspects.
Reference:A genetically modified organism (GMO) is an organism whose genotype has been artificially altered by genetic engineering. These can be plants, animals and microorganisms. Genetic changes are usually made for scientific or economic purposes. Genetic modification is characterized by a purposeful change in the genotype of the organism, in contrast to the random, characteristic of the natural and artificial mutation process.By the way:Over the past ten years, more than one and a half thousand studies on the safety of GMOs have been published, and no conclusions have been made about their toxicity or other negative properties.
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12.11.2015