AuthorBY - HARINI B Over the years cancer has proven to be vicious and untreatable. Despite the odds, patients, doctors and scientists alike have been fighting tooth and nail to find a well-established and assured treatment for cancer. Having several mainstream options like chemotherapy, radiation and surgery in front of them, there seem to be a million different scientists still working on a single cure for cancer. The new form of cancer treatment, now approved by the FDA, is a process of gene therapy. In simple terms, it uses a part of our own immune cells taken from our blood, called T-cells, which is modified with new genes and reinserted into the blood stream to better find and kill cancer cells. WHAT IS CAR T-CELL THERAPY? As the name implies, the T-cells are the main part of this type of treatment. T-cells in the body kill infested cells and control and orchestrate the immune response given by the body to foreign bodies. When the T-cells are engineered after being collected from the blood, a gene for a special receptor that binds to a certain protein on the patient’s cancer cells is added to the T cells. The now reengineered cell binds with the cancer cells in the patient's body effectively killing the cell. This special receptor is called chimeric antigen receptor (CAR). This method is used widely to treat certain types of blood cancers but is also being studied for other types of cancer. SIDE EFFECTS As is the case with all types of cancer treatments, CAR T-cell therapy also has its wide range of side effects including a mass decline in the B-cells which produce antibodies. A major and serious side effect is CRS- cytokine release syndrome. Cytokines are released by the T-cells regularly to stimulate and direct immune responses. When the T-cells and engineered and a person is affected with CRS, the T-cells start flooding the bloodstream with cytokine which can cause side effects ranging from fevers to low blood pressure, and sometimes may even be fatal HOW EFFECTIVE IS CAR T-CELL THERAPY?
In most cases, CAR T-cell therapy is considered a last stage treatment when a patient’s cancer is already worse. But there have been cases in which this method has proven more efficient than the standard treatments for patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma whose cancer returned after their initial, or first-line, chemotherapy. Besides being considered a second line treatment for people with a return of cancer, CAR seems to have a higher success rate in children with ALL who are not having an optimal response to their initial chemotherapy treatments. CAR T-cells has also paved the way for other cellular therapy treatments like TILs and TCRs which have shown promise in certain areas.
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AuthorBY - THAPASVI PUVVADA The transport and logistics industry is, without doubt, the most important industry, that being said, this is also the industry that has the biggest global carbon footprint, contributing to about 7.3 billion metric tons of CO2 emissions annually. With the growing concern in global warming and pollution, an interest to find an alternative fuel has been on the rise and is likely to be driven by more research and development to make this alternative source of fuel sustainable for commercial use. The need to switch to an alternate source of fuel, for commercial applications includes the fact that fossil fuels sources are finite and depleting at a rapid rate, energy crisis and security, and the constant increase in oil prices. WHY BIOFUELS? Biofuel is one such alternative source of fuel, and as the name suggests it can be extracted from renewable sources such as corn, algae, soybean, animal fats, and so on, therefore, biofuels could potentially be the next big thing in the automotive industry, and may even beat electric vehicles, on running on a cleaner source of energy, when taking the detrimental effects of lithium-ion mining and electricity production into consideration. The production and usage of biofuels are not new, vegetable oils have been used as a source of fuel back in 1930 under emergency situations, however, biofuels are as of now not completely sustainable. Biofuels can be classified based on the source from which biofuel is extracted as first generation, second generation, and third-generation biofuels. First-generation- First-generation biofuels are extracted from starch and sugar sources, vegetable oils, and animal fats, in general, first-generation biofuels, are extracted from consumable crops and animal fats. Second-generation- Second-generation biofuels are extracted from non-consumable crops such as stalks of wheat and corn. Third-generation- Third-generation biofuels are produced from micro-organisms such as microalgae and green algae. The question of sustainability arises when talking about the commercial application or implementation of these biofuels, as first-generation biofuels are produced from edible crops, it is not considered as sustainable as these crops compete for land used for cultivating crops as a food source, hence the question of ethical morality arises when using these biofuels. Second-generation biofuels as mentioned earlier are produced from non-consumable plant matter, they do not compete directly with arable land, and are hence said to be more sustainable, however low conversion rates of plant matter to fuel means that they cannot meet the global energy demands unless a substantial area is dedicated for growing such crops, this explains the increasing interest in the production of third-generation biofuels. Third-generation biofuels are cultivated using micro-organisms such as algae. Algae grow rapidly in favorable conditions and are known to accumulate up to 50% oil in their total weight. Future scope of genetic engineering in biofuel synthesis
The production of third-generation biofuel can be further improved to increase its sustainability through the applications of genetic engineering. Genetic engineering in this field is rapidly expanding due to its potential to boost the production of biomass while lowering its cost and enhancing its quality, this gives rise to a new type of biofuel classified as fourth-generation biofuels, which is the usage of genetically modified algae for the production of biofuel. Through genetic engineering, many improvements have been realized such as increased carbohydrate and lipid production and improved H2 yields. |