As information technology evolves, our medical capability improves significantly. With the usage of artificial intelligence and big data, some advanced medical systems now can be able to diagnose a patient’s disease faster and more accurate than a human doctor. It can be seen in the future that more and more medical software will act as the role of doctor. However, only diagnosing patients is not enough. Combing medical knowledge and information technology, immune engineering has recently made a breakthrough on “T-Cell” which is designated to kill other cells. (Immune Engineering, 2017)
T-Cells are normally extracted from person’s own blood, due to the fact that human immune system is the most powerful vaccine. Nevertheless, cancer or other lethal disease cannot be cured by our own immune system. This is where T-Cell comes in. By adding new generic infrastructure with certain virus, T-Cell now can be able to sense the target cell and eliminate the disease. (Immune Engineering, 2017) There are many additional application for T-Cell, for instance, curing arthritis and sclerosis.
Certainly, limitations also exists. When an individual does not have enough T-Cell from own blood, T-Cells from other donors now become suppliers. There are chances that patient’s body will resist the T-Cell from outside which might consequently lead to death. Thus, before injecting foreign T-Cells, a gene editing is needed to create a compatible cell. (Immune Engineering, 2017) If the gene editing process can be successfully implemented, then we are one step closer to cure cancer.
Curing cancer is one of the biggest challenges for human kind. If T-Cell can effectively cure cancer, countless lives will be saved. In the meantime, it also attracts huge amount of capital investment. In 2014, Bellicum Pharmaceuticals raised over 160 million dollar through IPO and in 2015, Cellectis raised 228 million dollar. (Immune Engineering, 2017) All in all, it is believed that lethal diseases, such as, cancer can be cured by Immune Engineering (T-Cell) with the help of technological breakthrough and massive capital investment.
Immune Engineering. (2017). MIT Technology Review, pp.8-13.
Interesting article! Ever-developing medical insights and new technological applications gives us hope for the future: I think everybody wonders whether cancer will be cured when we are old.
This technology, however, prompts an ethical discussion similar to the discussion around prenatal genetical modification. If we are able to cure cancer with a very expensive technology, this is only available to those who can afford it. Normal health insurance companies can not afford to include this type of treatments in their package. On national scale this technology will make the gap between rich and poor even greater. On a global scale, technologies like this result in an even bigger gap between the first-world and the third world. As much as a technological cure for lethal diseases is a hopeful thought for us, it is quite scary to envision a world in which an elite group does not have to worry about lethal diseases anymore where the rest of the world still has to.