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Engineering Cancer Killers!                                                                                               

Today, millions of people are dying from the complex disease, cancer. Although treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation are used to cure the disease, immunotherapy has emerged as a potential cure for cancer. Professor Oliver Ottmann, Head of Haematology at Cardiff University and co-lead of the Cardiff Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre (ECMC), acknowledged the importance of immunotherapy and considers it a huge breakthrough in cancer research and treatment. This lead his team to further discover the key to genetically engineering T-cells to recognize and kill cancer cells. 

How Does It Work?

T-cells are an important part of our immune systems. They contain receptors that can recognize bacterial infections or viruses and help fight them off, and potentially kill cancer cells. Scientists have developed a way to genetically engineer T-cells using CRISPR genome editing. Normally, the genetically engineered T-cells, that are created to fight cancer, contain two types of receptors. One type is called therapeutic, and is created and added on to the cell in a lab, and the other types of receptors are natural and originated from the T-cell.

The Problem 

The team acknowledged that since both kinds of receptors occupy the cell, there is minimal space for all receptors to fit on the cell; therefore certain receptors must challenge other receptors in order to perform their own function. Since there are more natural receptors on a T-cell than the therapeutic receptors,the natural receptors perform superior than the therapeutic receptors. This means the genetically engineered T-cells are not able to work at their full potential; they are unable to kill cancer cells efficiently.

The Solution

After recognizing the problem, Professor Oliver Ottmann and his team genetically engineered T-cells, by genome editing, that only contain the therapeutic receptors they intended on adding. By eliminating all of the natural receptors that T-cells normally have, the therapeutic receptors will increase in efficiency.

The Future

Since scientists have figured out a way to maximize the efficiency of genetically engineered cancer fighting T-cells, finding a cure to cancer could be closer than we thought. Could this cutting edge research be the start of a solution for cancer treatment?  Do you think scientists and society will pursue this theory? This article sparked my interest because finding a reliable cure for cancer has been a problem for many years, every discovery we make brings us closer to finding the best cure.

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