Robert's Health

CAR V This post criticizes and presents and alternative to the approach presented in CAR III. In Car III I proposed further genetic manipulation of a CAR T-cell, that is a killer T-cell to which a chimeric antigen receptor which targets cancer cells but not normal cells has been added. The proposed modifications consisted of deleting5 genes. One logistic problem is that the procedure for deleting a gene is different from the procedure for adding a gene. Since the CAR T-cell or further modified CAR T-cell is custom made for each patient, this could be a serious problem. In any case, this post discussing modifying a CAR T-cell to make it able to function in a tumor micro-environment by adding various genes, one for the CAR receptor, one to make the CAR prepared for reactive oxygen species (ROS think hydrogen peroxide) and 4 to make the cell ignore checkpoints – signals to not kill which have a normal function in healthy people but which can be used by cancer cells to avoid the r...