Editing 938: T-Cells
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In this case, the two characters are talking about a trial in which immune cells are taken out of the patient's body and genetically modified. The modified cells are able to both attack the cancer cells and replicate very quickly. However, to make these genetic changes inside the cells, they used {{w|HIV}} as the vehicle to introduce these new genes as it is specialized in invading and modifying immune cells. HIV is good for this because HIV attacks your T-cells and slowly kills off your immune system. If HIV was used as a {{w|vector (molecular biology)|vector}} to introduce a trait into your T-cells it could express a trait to hunt tumors and since it is already good at changing your T-cells it would be well-suited to this task. | In this case, the two characters are talking about a trial in which immune cells are taken out of the patient's body and genetically modified. The modified cells are able to both attack the cancer cells and replicate very quickly. However, to make these genetic changes inside the cells, they used {{w|HIV}} as the vehicle to introduce these new genes as it is specialized in invading and modifying immune cells. HIV is good for this because HIV attacks your T-cells and slowly kills off your immune system. If HIV was used as a {{w|vector (molecular biology)|vector}} to introduce a trait into your T-cells it could express a trait to hunt tumors and since it is already good at changing your T-cells it would be well-suited to this task. | ||
| β | Basically, this treatment seems to replace one terrible disease with another terrible disease. As the title text says, they don't know how to get rid of the modified T-cells after they remove the cancer. And the last part of the title text is a joke, in which the doctor suggests yet another disease, {{w|smallpox}}, to inject into the patient's body. This is similar to the song {{w|There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly}} in which a little old lady who swallowed a fly where each time she puts some other animal in her body to get rid of the last one and eventually she dies. This is akin to that as you have cancer so you put super-strong T-cells modified by HIV to get rid of them but then you have | + | Basically, this treatment seems to replace one terrible disease with another terrible disease. As the title text says, they don't know how to get rid of the modified T-cells after they remove the cancer. And the last part of the title text is a joke, in which the doctor suggests yet another disease, {{w|smallpox}}, to inject into the patient's body. This is similar to the song {{w|There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly}} in which a little old lady who swallowed a fly where each time she puts some other animal in her body to get rid of the last one and eventually she dies. This is akin to that as you have cancer so you put super-strong T-cells modified by HIV to get rid of them but then you have Leukocytosis so you get smallpox to kill those, and so on. |
Cueball possibly could have guessed this because he is familiar with biology according to this comic and one of the most common diseases that attacks T-cells would be HIV. | Cueball possibly could have guessed this because he is familiar with biology according to this comic and one of the most common diseases that attacks T-cells would be HIV. | ||
