Estimates published by the American Cancer Society predict that there will be more than 1.7 million new cases of cancer diagnosed this year within the United States.
While advances in medicine including early detection, newer treatment drug agents and advances in immune system augmenting therapies have resulted in better outcomes and prolonged the lives of many, the same publication revealed that more than 600,000 mortalities from the disease will occur in the U.S. during this year.
Medical researchers in China are pushing the limits of technological advancements in the area of biotech with promising new genetic treatment options involving using the person’s own white blood cells.
Using the gene editing tool CRISPR, doctors in China have begun treating patients with a form of esophageal cancer common in the country by extracting the patient’s T cells, modifying them so they can attack the cancer cells and then re-infusing them back into the patient’s body.
While the genetic treatment is still in its early stages, the results so far have been promising.
Concerns over whether medical treatment options using gene modifying therapies are being pursued aggressively enough within the U.S. have sparked debate on both sides of the issue.
Proponents for pursuing more genetic treatment research cite that in the U.S. only one CRISPR cancer study has been approved by the FDA.
While those opposed argue that the technology is too new asserting that enough studies have not been conducted to understand the long term effects of CRISPR-based treatments. Opponents to CRISPR treatments have also cited that there are already drugs available on the market that are approved for treating these diseases.
In one documented case demonstrating the efficacy of the CRISPR treatment, a Chinese cancer patient had already exhausted the available treatment options. After he had been given both chemotherapy and radiation, the cancer still continued to spread to other parts of his body.
It is cases such as these, advocates for CRISPR use on human patients argue, that make ideal candidates for further researching the potential of gene modification as a means to treat cancer.
In the U.S. CRISPR studies have been conducted primarily on mice subjects.
Using an advanced technique for expressing gene modifications on specific sites, CAR-T, U.S. medical researchers have been able to create super white blood cells that have been effective at destroying leukemia cells within mice subjects.
The researchers were encouraged by additional findings that the particular CAR technique, known as CRISPR/Cas9, was to overcome a number of limitations involved in earlier gene modification techniques.
Specifically, the modified T Cells were less susceptible to a decline in effectiveness known as “exhaustion.” While the modified T cells created by using other techniques eventually stopped attacking the cancer cells, the CAR-T continued to be effective and did not experience this exhaustion phenomenon.
