Completely new to DIY gene therapy

[Elodie Hart]

Hello, all. I am completely new and know almost nothing about diy gene therapy, but I know I want to get involved in it. Can you please suggest some books that are about how to get started in gene therapy that are comprehensible to the beginnner? Thank you.

[Cathal Garvey]

DIY Gene Therapy is not, to my knowledge, a "thing" right now, nor
should it be.

As someone who studied nonviral integrative gene therapy several years
back for cancer therapeutic uses, I can tell you that there is no clear
consensus on how to efficiently transfect DNA into live tissue without
incurring a *significant* risk of inducing either cancer or a
catastrophic immune backlash. There have been gene therapy trials that
ended in the sudden deaths of participants due to unforeseen cytokine
storms that *did not occur in prior animal trials*.

Gene therapy is a potentially amazing medical technology, but it was
invented and first trialled over a decade ago, and is not yet a
recommended or permitted therapy for anything that I am aware of, and
the primary reason is that it is not, at all, safe.

I strongly recommend directing your interest in genetics towards one of
the many alternative courses of DIY research and leave gene therapy to
specialists with a strong medicine or immunology background.

--
Scientific Director, IndieBio Irish Programme
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[Mega [Andreas Stuermer]]

I think the gene therapy for cystic fibrosis was legal? Basically you inhale naked DNA into your lungs, some cells take it up and this is sufficient to cure the disease...

Don't try gene therapy at home diy, at least if you express proteins it has high risks involved. siRNAs - there's hardly data om that but I would rather have professional labs design them and then hack them diy style than testing them in homo
On a sidenote, if you follow a hypothetical project you can still learn a ton!

[Cathal Garvey]

Truth on the hypothetical part; there's nothing wrong with imagining,
scoping, and simulating stuff, as long as you don't kill yourself
attempting it.

As far as the Cystic Fibrosis gene therapy, there's loads of work there
and possibly even some stuff in trials, but I have yet to hear about it
ever being approved for use.

The "success story" of gene therapy was the SCID kids whose
immunodeficiency was partially resolved with gene therapy, but I think
at least three of those 10 kids developed leukemia due to the therapy
afterwards. If I were them, I'd consider that a fair price paid, because
SCID is as likely to kill you as leukemia, but as a result gene therapy
for SCID is not (AFAIK) something that happens anymore. It's considered
a failed trial.

[Koeng]

I'm not into gene therapy field, but I did read this article a bit back when it first came out

http://www.nature.com/news/gene-editing-method-tackles-hiv-in-first-clinical-test-1.14813

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24597865?dopt=Abstract&holding=npg

If my memory is correct, they use adeno-associated virus which integrates on chromosome 19 to express their zinc fingers. I don't exactly remember if they can turn off that expression though, but the immune system would most likely target the zinc fingers which may be a problem.

-Koeng

[Mega [Andreas Stuermer]]

If the zink finger modules are from human origin you might even get away with it, unless their quartary structures/hinge region bilds a new epitope...

[Jonathan Cline]

There's peeps working on it or at a minimum looking at it.   Some people clearly have no common sense as can be seen by the body modifier personalities already injecting useless semiconductor chips subdermally into their hands, then bragging about it.. others injecting even worse in the false name of biohacking.  Then again there are biologists who smoke cigarettes so science degrees and common sense do not always go together.


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