<story><title>Base editing: Revolutionary therapy clears girl&apos;s incurable cancer</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/health-63859184</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DoreenMichele</author><text>In layman&amp;#x27;s terms: She had a particularly vicious form of cancer where the very cells that are supposed to protect your health -- your T-cells -- are the enemy. So they made three edits to donor cells and wiped out her compromised cells. Then gave her a bone marrow transplant afterwards to replenish her immune system with new cells.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m squeamish about genetic research, but this looks really good to me. I hope she recovers fully and there are no further complications, though I imagine it&amp;#x27;s too early to guess what her prognosis might be.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;So there are already trials of base editing under way in sickle-cell disease, as well as high cholesterol that runs in families and the blood disorder beta-thalassemia.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s a big deal for people with those genetic disorders.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sinenomine</author><text>&amp;gt;I&amp;#x27;m squeamish about genetic research&lt;p&gt;And I&amp;#x27;m sad about millions upon millions of mostly well-meaning people, who died of ultimately preventable causes - if only we could push the research from the lab to clinic faster.&lt;p&gt;Everybody is prone to ageing, and very soon it will be our turn.</text></comment>
<story><title>Base editing: Revolutionary therapy clears girl&apos;s incurable cancer</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/health-63859184</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DoreenMichele</author><text>In layman&amp;#x27;s terms: She had a particularly vicious form of cancer where the very cells that are supposed to protect your health -- your T-cells -- are the enemy. So they made three edits to donor cells and wiped out her compromised cells. Then gave her a bone marrow transplant afterwards to replenish her immune system with new cells.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m squeamish about genetic research, but this looks really good to me. I hope she recovers fully and there are no further complications, though I imagine it&amp;#x27;s too early to guess what her prognosis might be.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;So there are already trials of base editing under way in sickle-cell disease, as well as high cholesterol that runs in families and the blood disorder beta-thalassemia.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s a big deal for people with those genetic disorders.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>inglor_cz</author><text>Resetting the immune system can be already done and it seems to help against auto-immune diseases such as lupus, but it is very dangerous. Once you destroy the immune system of the patient, and before it grows back from donor cells, the patient is fatally vulnerable even to normally banal pathogens such as the common cold. Keeping the patient isolated and alive in a hospital full of germs is a major challenge.&lt;p&gt;That is why this kind of therapy is only used when the patient faces death anyway.</text></comment>