Каждому просвещённому человеку известно и очевидно, что ГМО — зло и неизвестно, как модифицированная ДНК может повлиять на наш организм. Оказывается, действительно влияет и убивает некоторые клетки. Исследования экспериментального препарата JX-594 (на основе вакцины от натуральной оспы) начались полтора года назад и показали неплохие результы: модифицированный вирус действительно убивает клетки опухоли печени (
рус/
англ).
Так вот, вчера эти же исследователи
опубликовали в «Nature Medicine» статью, которая подтверждает эффективность и безопасность этого метода. Авторы говорят, что для более полного подтверждения нужен более длительный испытательный период. В данный момент в исследовании участвуют около 140 пациентов. На русском
пока не нашёл. Может, не так всё очевидно и от генной модификации есть польза?
Естественно игры с генами палка о двух концах, но как-то странно представить, что если съесть мандарин с геном ёлки, то настанет крантец.
А Ваша новость чудо как хороша.
Это офигенно. В комплекте с заменой частей тела...
Будущее как-то совсем незаметно наступило.
Кошаков не видел, но встречал людей с разными глазами, сам слегка мутант (по отцовской линии у всех не правильно расположены кровеносные сосуды в шее, ничего особого даже жить не мешает и есть пара неприятных болезней передающихся наследственно). Так что по мне изменение генетического кода это благо, которое может помочь слишком большому количеству людей. К примеру шизофрения передаётся по наследству (хотя это только 50%, остальные являются случайными).
Вишню со сливой или абрикосом теоретически можно скрестить и получить гибрид, они все они из рода слива, но вот яблоню с ними крайне сомнительно, она из рода яблоня. Хотя в вики пишут, что существует даже межродовое скрещивание, толькоо примеров я не нашёл. А вот со смородиной, которая вообще из семейства крыжовниковых — нереально. А вот привить одно к другому действительно легко, практически любое розоцветное можно привить к другому розоцветному, а это почти все наши плодовые деревья. Как и цитрусовое к цитрусовому. У плодов привитых растений будут слегка отличаться свойства, только вот потомству эти свойства они не передадут, вы абсолютно правы. Генетика рулит!
I decided I should go through and read/summarize the paper, seeing as I have access to it, and some understanding of biology. I also wanted to get more practice at reading and understanding a wide range of scientific articles. Please note that while I do mostly understand a lot of what they did here, I am an undergrad, and this is not my exact field of study. As such, I will probably oversimplify some things in here, and get some other things completely wrong. If you spot a mistake, please let me know so I can correct it.
This study was performed using a gene engineered vaccinia virus JX-594, which is one of the pox viruses, so it is related to smallpox. It is fairly widely used for vaccinations, and is a fairly safe virus, and one of its current uses is as a vaccine for smallpox for researchers/health care workers who have a risk of being exposed to the variola virus (smallpox).
JX-594 is a virus that has been modified for increased cancer selectivity (It likes infecting tumors), and for increased immune stimulation (Once in tumors, it starts taunting the immune system until it gets attacked). It is meant two work through two different modes. The first one is that it targets cancerous cells, and then reproduces inside of them, leading to them dying. The second one is that it helps induce immune responses towards the cancerous cells (It teaches the immune system what cancer looks like, and that the immune system should be attacking the cancer.
Previously, a Phase I clinical trial has been performed. The point of this trial is not to see if the treatment works, but to see if the treatment will kill you. That study discovered that JX-594 does not kill you, and in fact, found some very preliminary results indicating that there was a chance that it might help. However, based on study design and the number of enrolled subjects, they can't say anything more than that there is a chance that it might help.
This paper is covering the results of their Phase II clinical trial. The point of this study is to test two different dosages of the virus (High and low), and check how the body responds to these doses. They were performing this in patients it advanced hepatic tumors (liver cancer).
They enrolled 30 subjects between 2008 and 2011, and split them to 16 high dosage subjects, and 14 low dosage subjects. The division was fairly uniform, which is about as good as you get for this type of randomized trial. 29 of the subjects recived 3 doses, with 1 subject only receiving 2 doses due to some unrelated event .
They did find that JX-594 did not appear to cause any health problems at either dose. One of the high dose patients had severe nausea and vomiting, and all of the patients suffered flu like symptoms for ~24 hrs after their injection, with the high dosage patients having slightly worse symptoms. There were a couple other minor complications in subjects, but nothing severe.
Now we get to look at the results. The first thing they looked at was the results of performing MRI scans of the liver. These results were evaluated by independent analysts who were blinded about the treatment (They didn't know if the person they were looking at had been given high dose or low dose). Both dosage levels showed anti-tumor activity.
The next thing they looked at was looking for the presence of JX-594 in the blood. They were doing this because they want it to spread out and get tumors that were not directly injected. They found that high dosage treatments produced higher amounts of JX-594 concentration in the blood stream (Keep in mind that the JX-594 was initially injected directly into the tumor, so it has traveled to make it to the blood). They were also able to confirm that at least in some subjects, that the JX-594 in the blood was due to replication and spreading of it, rather than just leakage from the tumor. Subjects also developed an immune response to the B-gal, which is what was added to the JX-594 to produce an immune response. This means that it was actually working.
They then looked for indications that patients developed anticancer immunity by looking for the presence of antibody mediated complement dependent cytotoxicity (CDC). In the 16 subjects they tested, 11 of them (69%) showed some form of resistance to some form of liver cancer. What was interesting here was that there were signs of protection against both virally caused tumors, and non-virally caused tumors. They also found that non-injected tumors showed some signs of undergoing necrosis, which, while something that could happen on its own, is somewhat unlikely.
Finally, lets get to the more easily understood numbers about survival. The entire population had a median survival length of 9 months. The median for high dosage subjects was 14 months, and the median for low dosage was 6.7 months. From what I can see, it looks like they are seeing a 35% chance of surviving 2 years. This indicates that there is long term systemic effects caused by the treatment, because that took place over a 4 week time span. The long term survival indicates that it is continuing to act on the subjects. They did find a statistically significant correlation between survival and dosage.
The part with the survival numbers that really stand out though, was in looking at the 6 high dosage subjects who had previously failed systemic therapy of some form. The median survival for those who fail systemic therapy is 2-4 months. The 6 of them who received the high dosage JX-594 survived a median of 13.6 months, and two of them survived more than 2 years. This is a huge improvement over conventional methods.
All of this be
All of this being said, this is a n=30 study, so they can't really make any definitive statements about how effective it is. What they can say is that the high dosage also appears to be safe, and it appears to be more effective than the low dosage. This was pronounced enough that they cut off study enrollment early on when they saw how much more beneficial the high dosage was when compared to the low dosage. There next step from here is to go into larger clinical trials (n=120) to be able to determine how effective the virus is at helping with cancer.
tl;dr: It looks like it helps, but we can't say that for sure. However, they can now move on to larger trials to see how much it really does help.
tl;dr = too long; doesn't read
This study has been completed: A Phase 2 Open-Label Pilot Safety Study of JX-594 (Vaccinia GM-CSF/Thymidine Kinase-Deactivated Virus) Administered by IV Infusion Followed by Intratumoral Injection Prior to Standard Sorafenib Treatment in Patients With Unresectable Primary Hepatocellular Carcinoma.
Подождём дальнейших результатов.
Кстати, лично видел препарат на основе модифицированной сальмонеллы (Это генная инженерия называется), который создаёт мощный иммунитет против ВИЧ. По легенде, один профессор не поверил, съел, и теперь не может в Америку въехать в течении 15 лет, ибо антитела к ВИЧ повышены
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