A revolutionary method of gene change will be able to treat cancer and AIDS

If the technique could be repeated in other laboratories, this could open up various options for treatment of a range of diseases, including cancer and infections such as HIV, and autoimmune diseases such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, New York Times .

A new study, published in Neil "is a major breakthrough," according to Dr. John Verdi, director of the Institute of Immunology at the University of Pennsylvania, who did not participate in the study. But, as this technique is completely new, no patient has so far been treated with white blood cells that have been altered this way.

"We will have evidence that this technology is being used to develop a new method of treatment," said Dr. Marsela Mus, director of cellular immunotherapy at Massachusetts General Hospital.

It may not be that far. Researchers have already used this method in the laboratory to alter the abnormal immune cells of children with rare genetic problems. They plan to return these reprogrammed cells to the children, in order to heal them permanently. At the present time, scientists trying to modify the genome often need to rely on modified viruses to "open" the DNA cells and insert new genes into them. The method is long and difficult and very restrictive with regard to the application.

Despite the disadvantages, the method with the virus has had some success. Patients with a few rare blood carcinomas can be treated by engineering white blood cells – T cells of the immune system – that enter tumors directly and kill them, Nedeljnik .

This method of treatment, the engineering of white blood cells, which we call immunotherapy, has up to now been limited by the difficulty of creating viruses that carry the genetic material and the time that it to produce them. But now, scientists say that they have found a way, using electric fields, not viruses, to insert "tools" that alter genes and new genetic material in the cell. By speeding up this process, in theory, treatment could be available for patients with almost all types of cancer.

"What lasted months or even a year now could take several weeks using this new technology," said Fred Ramsdel, vice director of research at the Parker Institute for Immunotherapy of cancer in San Francisco.

"If you're a cancer patient, weeks and months can make a huge difference, I think it will be a huge change."

The Parker Institute is already working with the authors of the new study led by Dr. Alexander Marson, Scientific Director of Biomedicine at the Institute of Innovative Genomics, a partnership between the University of California at San Francisco and Berkeley on the creation of cells that treat various types of cancer.

In a new study, Dr. Marson and his colleagues changed T cells to recognize human melanoma cells. In mice that carried human cancer cells, the modified T cells attacked the direct cancer. The researchers also managed to "correct" T cells, although in the laboratory, three children with a rare mutation that caused an autoimmune disease. Modified cells are expected to revert to children, where they should function normally and repel defective immune cells, thereby healing children.

This technique is also promising in the treatment of HIV, according to Dr. Veria. The HIV virus infects T cells. If they can be modified so that the virus can not enter T cells, an HIV-infected person will certainly not develop AIDS. These infected T cells would disappear, and those inserted, modified would replace them.

Previous research has shown that it is possible to treat HIV in this way. "But there really is an effective strategy for that," says Dr. Veri.

This idea of ​​modifying cells without the use of viruses is not new, but immune cells are fragile and it is very difficult to keep them alive in the laboratory, so it has always been difficult to insert genes.

Scientists typically inserted modified cells into the T cell with the help of a virus that was harmless, so as not to cause another disease and that could insert new genes into the cell. But when these viruses have inserted genes into cellular DNA, they would do so by accidentally destroying other genes.

"We needed something focused, fast, and effective," says Dr. Marson. "What if we could just put a fraction of the DNA and avoid the viruses?"

The idea is that some kind of molecular "chisel", called "vegetable crisper", would be inserted into cells that would gently open DNA wherever scientists would like to insert the gene exactly . This would prevent the problems caused by the insertion of viruses that insert genes quite by chance.