To be fair though, we are really close with cancer. Like really really close. cfDNA is revolutionary for our measurements. Crispr is revolutionary for understanding. So close.
To be fair though, we are really close with cancer. Like really really close. cfDNA is revolutionary for our measurements. Crispr is revolutionary for understanding. So close.
Just curious, on what do you base this opinion? Do you work in cancer research, or another biomedical field? These tools will definitely advance our understanding, but my feeling (as someone who worked in genomics for several years, though not in cancer) is that if you think "we are really close" to curing cancer (pardon me if I misinterpreted your statement) with these technologies, you are buying into a lot of hype around them. It's natural that that hype exists, though, given how much VC money is being poured into this area right now.
can't say too much but I work on the stats side of liquid biopsy. Been in genomics (on the cs side) for the last 6 years. the encouring part to me is 1) we can predict the effect of a treatment given the tumors clonal composition, 2) we can test the effects of drugs much more quickly thx to crispr 3) easily profile a tumors composition with cfDNA.
1 and 3 imply we may be able to drive clonal evolution to a place where we can indefinitely treat patients. 2 gives us a lot more options.
Personally I see crispr more as a tool for functional genomics. It took like two decades to knockout all pairs of genes in yeast. With crispr I've seen people do it in a single experiment.
Just curious, on what do you base this opinion? Do you work in cancer research, or another biomedical field? These tools will definitely advance our understanding, but my feeling (as someone who worked in genomics for several years, though not in cancer) is that if you think "we are really close" to curing cancer (pardon me if I misinterpreted your statement) with these technologies, you are buying into a lot of hype around them. It's natural that that hype exists, though, given how much VC money is being poured into this area right now.