Researchers from Pritzker Molecular Engineering, under the guidance of Prof. Jeffrey Hubbell, demonstrated that their compound can eliminate the autoimmune response linked to multiple sclerosis. Researchers at the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) have developed
This article is garbage but I’m a molecular biologist and the publication they’re talking about is really neat.
The “ELI5 to the point of maybe reducing out the truth” way to explain it is that the researchers can add “flags” to proteins associated with immune responses that make cells pick them up and examine them. This is shown to work for allergins (so say, add a flag to peanut protein and the cells can look at it more closely, go “oh nvm this is fine” and stop freaking out about peanuts) as well as autoimmune diseases (where cells mistake other cells from the same body as potential threats).
It’s not nearly to a treatment stage, but tbh this is one of the more exciting approaches I’ve seen, and I do similar research and thus read a lot of papers like this.
There’s a lot of evidence that we are entering a biological “golden age” and we will discover a ton of amazing things very soon. It’s worrysome that we still have to deal with instability in other parts of life (climate change, wealth inequality, political polarization) that might slow down the process of turning these discoveries into actual treatments we can use to make lives better…
Still, don’t doubt everything you read! A lot of cool stuff is coming, the trick is getting it past the red tape
Wealth inequality won’t stop these discoveries making people’s lives better, it will just ensure that the 1% live forever in perfect health and the 99% get to watch their kids and grandkids get sicker as the environment, living standards and employment situation deteriorate, until automation gets to a point where the working class are no longer required and can be safely left to starve or killed off.
Americans invest milions in healh evolution and only 1% of the americans can use it. On the other hand every other country with a free heath care will provide the solution discovered by americans for free to their people. Americans dying to keep the world alive. This is really fucked up.
This is basically my fear, also. How can I retain hope that new, amazing treatments will help people if we don’t even have equitable access to the current treatments?
For example, we still make people seeking medicines for mental health try going through a gauntlet of dependency-forming drugs from greater than half a century ago (that have been shown to be effective in less than half of people who take them) before insurance will pony up for contemporary alternatives (that work much more often).
I don’t work in the clinical space so don’t trust me too much… but jeez we have so many things to solve before the “bio golden age” really helps normal people
“Red tape” eh? Shit if I had MS or AIDS I’d get some red contact lenses and some fake white fur, just don’t ask where the rat tail is attached, and be in for clinical trials in the AM. “I’m a rat it’s fine. I mean squeek squeek.”
That is so funny… tbh I know I’d get shit for this professionally, but it definitely frustrates me that we don’t allow people with few other choices to have access to crazy, left field treatment stuff.
My best friend died of a specific and rare cancer this year. We know exactly how that cancer works on a molecular level, and we’ve found a few chemicals that interfere with the function of those cells in vitro while not seeming to harm average cells.
Sure, it’s a huge risk to take that drug that’s only been tested in a dish, and it wouldn’t be worth it for most people. But he was going to (and did) die within a year of diagnosis. It’s not like he had other options.
Maybe he should have invested in a rat costume ;)
Every time I see articles like this I’m very happy for everyone having those horribly debilitating and deadly autoimmune diseases.
Then with some shame I hope it might maybe one day also cure my slightly debilitating non deadly simple allergies one day.
Yay it seems it might be good for both!
As someone with both Multiple Sclerosis and a whole bunch of environmental and food allergies, I hope we both get helped.
The privacy on that site was horrible, and I stoped de-selecting vendors who want permission to track me after two minutes.
But I wanted to ask you: are there any biologics based on this discovery in phase I or even II at this point? Any odds on one of them making it to III?
(also re: your last comment, read William Gibson’s The Peripheral; you are describing his “jackpot” scenario)
Just open the page in a private window at that point, and click the “yeah sure track everything bro” button.
“Private browsing” is for not letting your mom see your porno history on the family computer, it does fuck all for you being tracked online.
It deletes the cookies from Incognito, if you only open that site in incognito and then close the tab, it does nothing.
It still knows your IP and browser fingerprinting still works, they still know who you are and what sites you visit. If you change your VPN server you’re a little closer, and of course there’s Tor assuming you don’t get a malicious exit/entry node set, but private browsing isn’t as private as people seem to expect.
Fair enough.
It’s actually good in firefox and safari, just don’t use chrome
Nope! This research is all done in rodents, to my knowledge. I’m always like “wow what a cool and maybe lifesaving discovery!.. for people in like a decade+!” 🙃
(thanks for the book rec!)
Maybe if people knew they’re going to be around for 200 years they’d think twice about these other issues because now it’s affecting them too and not just the next generation.
Thanks for the time saving summary