https://x.com/EricDKoch/status/1882893055222837321
A friend of mine has skin cancer and was about to start a clinical trial at MD Anderson after his other treatments did not work.
— Eric Koch (@EricDKoch) January 24, 2025
Trump's decision to temporarily halt funding for medical research also applies to clinical trials.
His treatment is now canceled. pic.twitter.com/7L8cxrwND5
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source: random butt emails from literally who
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The EO effects all funding for cancer immunology treatments as they nearly all qualify as gain of function. They use a modified virus to get the immune system to attack cancer cells.
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I'd rather these people die of cancer than we accidentally create a new super virus.
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They don't work like that.
Oncolytic viruses have a capsid engineered such that it can't be transmitted between hosts. They are usually have to be given via IV as they can't infiltrate the body any other way. This is how they work rather than a desired property, humans still suck hard at genetics.
The proteins on the capsid select for specific cell types. Non-cancerous cells are minimally impacted (if they get infected at all they defeat the virus quickly). Depending on the specific virus you might not know you are even infected because they don't all trigger an immune response that gives you cold like symptoms, some of them take advantage of defects in some types of cancer cells that make them more susceptible to viruses so the virus literally kills the cancer cells rather than getting the immune system to do it.
It would be fricking awesome if humans understood genetics enough to engineer a transmissible virus that killed cancer cells though. That would be pretty sweet.
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So will this affect phage research too? Last I checked we were on the cusp of the post-antibiotics era with few means to combat simple resistant skin infections so surgical wounds continue to have increased risk and people were looking at making viruses for bacteria do the same thing as antibiotics since we're already swimming in them.
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Tbf we're always on the cusp of post-x in medicine.
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Keep yourself safe tryhard.
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We could do a pact to do it together. I'm pretty dumb though so I need you to go first and show me how to do it.
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Vibes based science
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