MOLECULAR AND CELULLAR MEDICINE ADVANCES = ETERNAL YOUTH? Part I

who were given the gene coding for Factor IX began producing the blood-clotting protein and have been doing so for more than seven months. The good news is that, because of the increased production of the protein, the patients have reduced the amounts of Factor IX they have had to have injected to prevent bleeding. Also, in the Necker University Hospital in Paris two French unrelated boys were born with a defect similar to the one shown by the girl treated in 1990. They were given the healthy form of the gene when they were nine months old, and their immune systems have been working properly for a year since they got the DNA shot. They have been in good health, not getting the infections they used to suffer before GT.

As you can see, the good news come from clinical trials that involve very few people; and it will take several years to demonstrate that, indeed, those different patients have been cured by GT. Thus, we are not going to live longer thanks to GT just yet. I think that for GT to prove its worth, scientists are going to have to go back to basics. This means solving the problem of the delivery vehicle and trying to cure single-gene diseases before rushing into the study of conditions as complicated as cancer or any of the others that I mentioned before.

Take a look a another beautiful sunset in the Orinoco River.

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