938: T-Cells
| T-Cells |
 Title text: 'We're not sure how to wipe out the chimeral T-cells after they've destroyed the cancer. Though I do have this vial of smallpox ...' |
[edit] Explanation
This is a cancer and leukemia related comic. In this comic, two characters are having a discussion about a new trial treatment. A trial is a treatment that is not yet passed all of the hurdles to become an official drug or treatment, but it available to a certain set of patients based on the pharma company's set of criteria.
In this case, the two characters are talking about a trial in which the doctors take cells out of the patients body and treat it with specific code to attack the cancer. However, to make the cell replicate fast enough to match the replication of the cancer cells, they have treated the cells with HIV. HIV is Human Immunodeficiency Virus, which is the precursor to AIDS.
Basically, this treatment seems to replace one terrible disease with another terrible disease. As the image text says, they don't know how to get rid of the HIV cells after they remove the cancer. And the last part of the image text is a joke, in which the doctor suggests yet another disease to inject into the patients body.
[edit] Transcript
- [Two people are standing facing each other, having a conversation. One is holding a laptop.]
- Cueball (with laptop): What's the deal with this leukemia trial? {Citation: Nejm, Aug 10, 2011}
- Friend: Gotta wait and see.
- Friend: Helping the immune system attack tumors has been a longtime research target.
- Friend: Lots of promising leads. Often they don't pan out.
- Cueball: What'd these guys do?
- Friend: They took some of the patient's T-cells and patched their genes so they'd attack the cancer. That hasn't been enough in the past but their patch also added code to get the T-cells to replicate wildly and persist in the body.
- Cueball: Which worked, but created its own set of problems?
- Friend: How'd you guess? But I think the craziest part is the way they insert the patched genes.
- Cueball: How?
- Friend: Well, think - What specializes in invading and modifying T-cells?
- Cueball: Seriously?
- Friend: Yup. Must've been a fun conversation.
- [The last panel is set in a doctors office. A patient is sitting on the observation bed talking to their doctor.]
- Patient: Ok, so I have blood cells growing out of control, so you're going to give me different blood cells that also grow out of control?
- Doctor: Yes, but it's ok, because we've treated this blood with HIV!
- Patient: Are you sure you're a doctor?
- Doctor: Almost definitely.
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