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Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment

(www.nytimes.com)
1167 points jbredeche | 10 comments | 15 May 25 18:06 UTC | HN request time: 1.026s | source | bottom
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colechristensen ◴[15 May 25 19:25 UTC] No.43998409[source]▶
>KJ has made medical history. The baby, now 9 ½ months old, became the first patient of any age to have a custom gene-editing treatment, according to his doctors.

This is _not_ the first human to be treated with a treatment under the wide umbrella of gene therapy based on their own edited genes. There probably is a more narrow first here but the technical details get lost in journalism which is a shame.

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1. autoexec ◴[15 May 25 19:29 UTC] No.43998437[source]▶
Okay, I'll bite: Who then was the first patient of any age to have a custom gene-editing treatment?
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2. jfarlow ◴[15 May 25 19:35 UTC] No.43998483[source]▶
This is an AI-generated response, and is inaccurate.

That was one of the first cases of _germline_ gene editing using CRISPR - NOT "the first instance of gene editing." There have been quite a few other genetic editing tools that predate CRISPR, and there have been other edits using CRISPR that were not of the entire human's genome.

3. ◴[15 May 25 19:36 UTC] No.43998492[source]▶
4. shermantanktop ◴[15 May 25 19:36 UTC] No.43998493[source]▶
Ah yes, the "neutral" tone of AI generated content. "significant controversy and ethical concerns," sure.
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5. roywiggins ◴[15 May 25 19:37 UTC] No.43998501[source]▶
That is not accurate, attempts at gene therapy in humans go back further than that.

https://www.whatisbiotechnology.org/index.php/science/summar...

6. sigzero ◴[15 May 25 19:46 UTC] No.43998599{3}[source]▶
There are always those concerns.
7. namuol ◴[16 May 25 03:20 UTC] No.44001533[source]▶
I know of at least one YouTuber who took a homemade treatment that alerted his GI system DNA to produce lactase so he could eat pizza again:

https://youtu.be/J3FcbFqSoQY

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8. agos ◴[16 May 25 06:38 UTC] No.44002407[source]▶
I remember six kids treated with a HIV retrovirus based therapy in 2013 in Italy
9. codeulike ◴[16 May 25 14:46 UTC] No.44006144[source]▶
That's not gene editing, but you could call it a gene therapy - he's introducing new fragments of DNA/RNA into his cells which then just float around and cause the right enzyme get made. Sometimes called upregulation. This is different to actually editing the existing DNA in the cell.
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10. namuol ◴[16 May 25 19:24 UTC] No.44008963{3}[source]▶
Good point - to be honest I didn’t realize the difference which is very significant from a treatment perspective.