Crispr gene editing shown to permanently lower hereditary high cholesterol

cyu@sh.itjust.worksbanned from community to Technology@lemmy.world – 396 points –
Crispr gene editing shown to permanently lower high cholesterol
arstechnica.com
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Coming to a doctor's office nowhere near you and nowhere near affordable for the average joe.

"Workers will live longer while still eating the same garbage food as before, meaning we can continue to pay them a pittance"

Boom. It's on the health plan.

this. folks don't realize how having a healthier workforce is something overlords want. Its even better than babies because no costly education needed.

Eh. They want a healthier workforce during their prime years. After that they need them to die sooner so that they aren't a cause for an increase in taxes to support them. We're about to see that with the Boomers. These old fucks are living forever and the workforce is shrinking, meaning bigger bills with fewer people to tax to pay them.

things like this does that though. We are getting into a wierd situation though were some people break down still in the 50's and some can keep going into 70's decently but folks are making it to 90's.

Food intake has a very modest impact on cholesterol levels in people with familiar hypercholesteremia.

Like 10 % reduction when you are 500 % over safe levels.

Statins are already there on a once a day pill. I don't know how they are for other people, but I have a nuke-it-from-orbit dosage due to genetic issues, and I don't notice any side effects. A grapefruit might kill me, but I never liked them, anyway. Costco's out of pocket rate is around $30 for 90 days.

I'd take gene editing if it were cheap enough, but just speaking for myself, I'm fine without it. Health plans probably aren't going to make it cheap when the alternative tends to work fine.

Also said by a guy learning about car phones in the 1970's

Yeah it sucks for you Americans over there.

Hopefully it will pave the road for lots of other similar treatments and also bring prices under control.

It will bring prices under control for the manufacturers, which will raise their profit margin while they keep the prices sky high.

Also, lets not forget that our paying, or rather our insurance, paying absurd prices for drugs is what has long subsidized the rest of the world's cheap drugs. It's why drug companies fight so hard to keep America from lowering drug prices - it'd completely destroy their profit margins and they'd be relegated to being mere multimillionaires instead of multibillionaires.

Euh, it's because your market is totally deregulated compared to the EU for example. You're not paying for us, all the non needed benefits go in the pockets of the ultra rich.

Maybe not right now. But that was the case for every medicine or treatment immediately after it was first discovered. When insulin was first discovered as a treatment for diabetes only a few people could get it, for example, now it's standard.

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As somebody who's been a vegetarian for twenty years but still has 200 LDL at age 37, this would be really great to just have fixed. Dumb genes.

You want something in my genes. Constant dangerously low blood pressure, cholesterol, and heartbeat. I've had doctors joke that I need an IV of lard and salt. Oh yeah, I'm also either hyper or hypo glycemic. Whichever one needs to be reset with salt being added in to restart my glycemic regulation.

I basically get to eat whatever I want just to maintain consciousness, and even at 43 my metabolism shows no signs of slowing down.

Downside is that I will pass out if I stand up too fast, and I constantly crave salt.

Damn. I can't imagine. Hope you and the doctors get it figured out and that you're having a good day. Hang in there. We've barely scratched the surface of gene therapy.

I find it quite funny that CRISPR gene editing sounds, at first glance, no more complicated than genetic modification of e-coli bacteria that I performed in an undergraduate Biochemistry course 20 years ago.

Back then, I just followed a recipe - extract DNA from the bacteria, mix it with a chemical to cut at certain places, add in your desired gene, mix it with a "glue" chemical that joined them together, then just spin your new DNA in a centrifuge with the bacteria and finally grow it all on a medium that your new gene has a resiliance against, such that only the bacteria that absorbed the desired DNA would survive. I'm sure the CRISPR process is much more finessed, but many of the core principles are the same.

I also wonder if cold and other SARS/Covid viruses somehow mix and share genetic material in swirls in the air, like a natural centrifuge.

I mean, I've worked with CRISPR in plant biology. It's not really that much more complicated. It's just much more effective.

I suppose I shouldn't really be that surprised. I'm an electrical engineer these days, and one thing I've noticed is that most things are all just the same core principles (eg V = I x R) but applied in slightly different ways.

Reminds me of the similarities between electricity and water flow. Obviously, there are differences, but the metaphor holds up well enough that you can use one to help explain the other.

Restriction enzymes cut at specific sequences, and although there are lots of variations, this limits where the new material can be inserted. CRISPR can match an arbitrary sequence, so there is much more control over where changes are made.

Yes, although it's not completely arbitrary as you need a PAM sequence to be present right where you want to cut the DNA. It's quite small though so chances are, you'll find one in a convenient location

Close, the centrifugal effect comes from children spinning around on playgrounds before passing the newly minted viruses back into the world.

This one is apparently a better version of CRISPR, which is more targeted. Traditional CRISPR breaks DNA and expects your body to do the fixup, which increases cancer risk. This one is more targeted and safer.

there is a youtube video of a guy making a virus to cure his lactose intolerance which comes from the crisper process. Process is pretty much the same.

What if there's a benefit to high cholesterol?

I feel like if we know enough to fix this with gene editing on purpose, we know enough to unfix it on purpose too. If we later run into a situation as a species where having high cholesterol is somehow a major improvement for people, we can give everyone high cholesterol pretty easily.

My doctor has been telling me for 15 years my good cholesterol is too low. But nothing she recommended had any affect until I started taking a statin.

I have heard intermittent fasting helps a lot with stubborn health issues. Might be worth trying out.

I have a similar "issue". Good total cholesterol around 150, but too low of a ratio between good and bad cholesterol.

If there is, the problem is that the effect of high cholesterol would outweigh it. Unless you enjoy heart attacks and strokes.

This is the best summary I could come up with:


In a small initial test in people, researchers have shown that a single infusion of a novel gene-editing treatment can reduce cholesterol, the fatty substance that clogs and hardens arteries over time.

This places a very heavy treatment burden on patients, providers, and the health care system,” said Andrew Bellinger, chief scientific officer of Verve Therapeutics, at a news conference over the weekend.

In a study published in the journal Circulation earlier this year, researchers from the company showed that the approach lowered bad cholesterol 49 to 69 percent in monkeys, depending on the dosage they received.

While the participants already had severe coronary artery disease, and some had previously experienced a heart attack, the company aims to eventually treat younger patients in order to prevent these outcomes.

Sanjay Rajagopalan, director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, calls the results a “very exciting” proof of concept.

But Rajagopalan, who wasn’t involved in the Verve study, says the main concern about any Crispr-based approach is the potential for off-target effects, in which unwanted cells or genes would unintentionally be edited.


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