Gene Therapy: Cancer update 3

Introduction to the problem: Gene Therapy towards Cancer

Introducing changes into the wrong cells targeting a gene to the correct cells is crucial the success of any gene therapy treatment. Agene therapy treatment is just ad important, though is making sure that the gene is not going to the wrong cells. Delivering gene to the wrong tissue would be inefficient and it could cause health problems for the patient. Like for example, targeting improperly could incorporate the therapeutic gene into. Patients germ line, or reproductive cells which ultimately produce sperm and eggs. The consequences would be depending on the gene.

Some patients who volunteer this treatments may experience some common symptoms from injection after the treatments like chills, fever, nausea, vomiting and headache. These symptoms are temporary win 48 hours for most patients. Controlling it of infection is important because getting negative immune system responses may reduces the efficacy of gene therapy and make it difficult to repeat the treatment. At this stage of development, gene therapy does not offer a permanent cure for mesothelioma, but in some trials it has demos treated noteworthy short term benefits.

The story of Jesse Gelsinger had illustrates this challenges. He had a rare liver disorder in 1999 in gene therapy trials. Then he died of complication from a inflammatory responses shortly after receiving a dose of experimental retrovirus vector. His death stopped all gene therapy trials I the US for a time, sparking a much needed discussion on how best to regulate experimental trial and report health problems in volunteering patients.

Our immune systems are very good at fighting off intruders such as bacteria and viruses. Gene-delivery vectors must be able to avoid the body's natural surveillance system. An unwelcome immune response could cause serious illness or even death.One way researchers avoid triggering an immune response is by delivering viruses to cells outside of the patient's body. Another is to give patients drugs to temporarily suppress the immune system during   treatment. Researchers use the lowest dose of virus that is effective, and whenever possible, they use vectors that are less likely to trigger an immune response.

Figure 1: picture of Jesse Gelsinger                                                                                                            (This picture shows the person of Jesse Gelsinger, the one who have difficulties on a Gene Therapy procedure)                                                                                    http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/genetherapy/gtchallenges/images/jesse.jpg 

Most gene therapies are short lived meaning that a patient need to be under multiple treatments. Therapeutic DNA need to be functional in the long terms and the cell need to be long lived and stable if only if the therapy going to provide a permanent cure. but the difficulties integrating the DNA into the genome combined with the fact that many cells divide so rapidly means a long terms benefits  are a problem to achieve and repeated the treatments that are needed. Disorders arise from on gene mutation are promising candidates fro gene therapy but a lot of the most common disorders like for example  diabetes, heart disease and arthritis are caused by a combination of altered genes making them particularly difficult to treat.


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Gene Therapy treatment offers a great potential alternative to a pacemakers
MLA:

• "Challenges in Gene Therapy?" Challenges in Gene Therapy? N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2014. http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/genetherapy/gtchallenges/
• "Gene Therapy Issues." News-Medical.net. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2014.                                                                                                                                                       http://www.news-medical.net/health/Gene-Therapy-Issues.aspx
• "Gene Therapy." Gene-Therapy. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.                    http://www.asbestos.com/mesothelioma/gene-therapy.php