Flu Is Relentless. Crispr Might Be Able to Shut It Down (wired.com)
- Reference: 0180518995
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/01/05/183201/flu-is-relentless-crispr-might-be-able-to-shut-it-down
- Source link: https://www.wired.com/story/crispr-flu-antivirals/
The approach uses the Cas13 enzyme, a lesser-known cousin of the DNA-cutting Cas9, which can be engineered to seek out conserved regions of influenza's genetic code that are found in virtually all flu strains and are crucial to the virus's survival. The delivery mechanism would use lipid nanoparticles to ferry two molecular instructions to flu-infected cells in the respiratory tract: an mRNA that tells cells to produce Cas13 and a guide RNA that directs the enzyme to specific parts of the influenza virus's code.
Cas13 then cuts the viral RNA and effectively stops the infection at the genetic level, Sharon Lewin, the infectious diseases physician leading the project, told Wired. Early safety testing at Harvard's Wyss Institute used a "lung on a chip" model to examine whether human cells producing Cas13 could fight off flu strains including H1N1 and H3N2. The institute's founding director Donald Ingber says the studies showed no off-target effects.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/crispr-flu-antivirals/
mRNA (Score:1)
If this works the anti-mRNA crowd will go nuts. And RFK joker will declare it causes autism.
Comment subjects are stupid (Score:3)
Glad to see this kind of innovation can continue elsewhere in the world.
Criticism valid and invalid (Score:3, Informative)
“I like the idea of it, but it’s putting a foreign protein from a bacteria into someone’s body,” he says. “So will the body make an immune response against it?”
Yes, in the current implementation, it most likely will. This is not only because the protein is of bacterial origin, but also because it did not originate from the patient's own proteome and was therefore never subject to immune tolerance. What will first happen is a process that eventually affects nearly every protein in a cell, whether they're good or bad: the Cas13 is broken down into fragments and displayed on the cell's surface. This mechanism is known as the MHC-I antigen presentation system. Once these Cas13 fragments are displayed, the immune system recognizes the cell as compromised or foreign and destroys it.
However, there are solutions to this. For example, one could introduce a molecule like CD47 (among others) alongside the Cas13, which acts like a Jedi mind trick on the immune system. These molecules essentially signal the immune system to ignore any foreign antigens displayed on that cell's surface.
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"Heaton also cautions against “off-target effects,” the chance that a Crispr treatment will inadvertently go after your body’s own RNA as well as an invading virus."
Uh, no it won't on a scale that matters. As for will it destroy the RNA of the infected cell and cause it to die? Probably yes (note: there's a way to prevent that), which may be a good thing.
Re: (Score:1)
nothing can possibly go wrong with this.
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and nothing can possibly go wrong with being infected with a virus that is known to kill millions of people every year?
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You are downplaying the risks. Not only immune system will react to these bacterial proteins, it will likely react to cell producing foreign proteins as infected and also kill them off. Last but not least, the immune system might also end up reacting to similar things and this is how you end up with a novel allergy.
I don't want cas13 in my body (Score:2)
What other RNA could be shredded? This could be dangerous
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You already have Cas13 in your body, some of the bacteria in your gut have it.
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I don't want my cells producing it. It's fine in my gut.
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Only infected cells receive the CAS13-generating RNA. Once the infected cells are dead, no more CAS13 will be produced by your cells.
You will always have CAS13-producing bacteria in your gut biome. If there were any serious side effects associated with a low-to-moderate presence of CAS13, we would already know about them.
It is possible that CAS13 can cause problems in areas outside of the gut, if it is present at higher-than-normal levels in those tissues. The comment about "no off-target effects" suggests
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> "Only infected cells receive the CAS13-generating RNA."
That's probably not true. I haven't read the paper (is there one?), but I would be surprised, actually shocked, if they had a reliable/efficient way to ensure both high transfection efficiency and that only infected cells receive the cas13-generating RNA. It's far more likely that they targeted the cell type that gets infected with influenza. That would be the more efficient and currently best method. The way the treatment works is that the cas13 has to be triggered by the presence of viral RNA. Without vir
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Humans are pretty delicate compared to some life forms, but overall we're pretty robust. The probability of anyone dissolving or turning into a blob of jelly after spraying this up one's nose is not significant. Probably not zero, but close to it. It's also unlikely to cause widespread en-jelly-fication.
I'll come back in a few hours... (Score:1)
and hopefully by then, someone with some knowledge will have provided a plain-English and neutral analysis without any of the knee-jerk insults to Trump or RFK that I'm sure will represent a sizeable percentage of the discourse here.
This site used be to be awesome but the partisan bickering and grandstanding makes it miserable to read good dialogue.
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This is medical research done by actual scientists. I tend to believe them.
good luck (Score:4, Insightful)
Good luck getting that approved in the US any time soon.
I'm ready to leave the US for better and cheaper healthcare alone.
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Actually, the current administration only objects to long proven medical treatments.
New techniques that they can take credit for will of course be happily accepted and funded.
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Did you miss this news item? [1]RFK Jr. pulls $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccine contracts [npr.org]
[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/08/05/nx-s1-5493550/rfk-jr-funding-mrna-vaccine-development
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> Good luck getting that approved in the US any time soon.
From the changes I've seen happen, they seem to be aiming to approve just about anything.