Hey YouTube, Jim here!
Welcome to Top 10 Archive!
Perhaps you have, at one time or another, wondered about your family’s medical history.
You can see a lot about what you’re most vulnerable to!
Of course, I’m talking about diseases.
If you or a loved one has suffered from cancer, blood disorders, blindness, cystic fibrosis,
and even death, we may have a solution.
Our video breaks down 10 diseases that science could soon cure.
That’s right!
We may not have to worry about dying prematurely anymore!
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in the comment section tell us which disease you'd love to see get cured the most!
10.
Cancer Cancer has taken so many lives in history
that by the time we finally abolish it forever, it will still be later than we all hoped.
However, thanks to CRISPR, it could be one of the first successful clinical trials.
One is running in China as we speak, trying to treat patients with esophagus cancer.
They are extracting immune T cells from trial patients and modifying them to remove the
gene holding a PD-1 Protein, to which some tumors bind to keep them from attacking.
So, the cells are placed back in the patient, much more capable of attacking the cancer.
Similar studies are being done in other countries including the United States with leukemia,
lymphoma, and other cancers.
Soon, the whole world could very well be cancer-free.
9.
Blood Disorders Using CRISPR, the U.S. and Europe started
testing patients to attempt to treat beta-thalassemia and sickle cell disease.
What, you’ve never heard of them?
Well, about 100,000 in the United States could fill you in as to how it feels.
The disorders affect the transport of oxygen in the blood.
The treatment consists of harvesting bone marrow stem cells to CRISPR them -yeah, I’m
using that as a verb now - to make them produce hemoglobin, a protein that carries oxygen
and binds to it better.
Hemophilia is another blood disorder that CRISPR technology could tackle and possibly
eradicate.
8.
Blindness Okay, so CRISPR changed the game and it’s
going to keep coming up, let’s just face that fact now.
As we see it tackle some of the world’s scariest diseases, it’s also going to go
after genetic blindness.
There’s a specific type of mutation that causes a variety of hereditary forms of blindness
and CRISPR can attack that exact mutation and modify it.
So what are they going after?
Leber Congenital Amaurosis, the most common cause of inherited childhood blindness which
remains without treatment.
CRISPR is literally bringing light into children's eyes.
What else could you ask for?
7.
AIDS Finally!
What we’ve been waiting for since the 70s and 80s AIDS crisis when people were dying
left and right and marginalized people suffered in silence.
CRISPR to the rescue, once again!
For one, it could cut the DNA of the HIV virus, which could be used to attack the virus in
its inactive form.
This tricky method is exactly what keeps doctors from treating it now.
They might also try to make humans resistant to the HIV infection, which would be even
cooler!
Right now, some people already have a natural resistance to HIV, thanks to a mutation of
a protein that doesn’t allow the virus to bind to it.
This was used in a trial last year done in China.
They edited human embryos to make them resistant to HIV, causing outrage in the medical community.
See, some studies seemed to suggest that these babies could be at a higher risk of dying
younger.
It seems that they’ll be doing more testing before continuing to test on others.
6.
Cystic Fibrosis Now here’s another genetic disease that
we’re about to kick to the curb.
This one is known for causing severe respiratory problems.
Right now, there are several ways to treat the illness, but mainly they’re for treating
symptoms.
People with Cystic Fibrosis only live for around 40 years.
With today’s technology... yes, CRISPR, we could edit the mutations that cause this,
located in a gene called CFTR.
Since using CRISPR in human lung cells is a viable method proven by scientists, they
can start testing on humans very soon.
It’s not a clear path, though, because cystic Fibrosis can be caused by a variety of mutations,
so several methods will have to be created, tested, and applied.
For now, they’ll look at the most common and some of the rarest that currently have
no treatment.
5.
Muscular Dystrophy This disease, also called Duchenne Muscular
Dystrophy, is caused by mutations in the DMD gene.
This disease causes those who suffer from it to have progressive muscular degeneration,
for which there’s no treatment, just care.
CRISPR research in mice shows that it could be used to fix some of the mutations behind
the disease.
Recently, researchers in the US unveiled a method that used CRISPR to cut at 12 of what
they call mutation hotspots, which covered the majority of the estimated 3,000 mutations
that cause this disease.
It’s also probable that in the future they’ll work on an approach that would remove the
whole section of the mutated protein, making it shorter, but still functional.
4.
Huntington’s Disease This condition, a neurodegenerative disease
with a strong genetic component, is caused by abnormal DNA repetition within the gene.
The more copies an individual has, the earlier the disease manifests.
It can be absolutely devastating for many people, young or old.
Scientists are now looking at ways of making the editing tool safe because the off-target
effects of CRISPR could have tragic consequences.
They actually included something that seems straight out of a Dexter’s Laboratory episode.
The version of CRISPR that they’ve modified for this purpose has a “self-destruct button”,
while another version has opted for pairing the CRISPR version with an enzyme that makes
it more precise.
3.
Alzheimer’s Millions of people around the world suffer
from Alzheimer’s, and that number is only increasing.
The search to cure the memory black hole that is Alzheimer’s may not be completely hopeless,
however.
What they’re doing first is defining measurable markers for the disease much in the same way
that cholesterol is a marker for heart disease.
This would lead to early detection and faster treatment.
It could also lead to prevention.
New treatments include gene therapy, helping reduce the buildups of plaque in the brain
that leads to dementia.
Soon, we can have less fear of losing our loved ones to this awful disease long before
they pass away.
2.
Childhood Seizures Some of the most intriguing illnesses in today’s
world, written about by world-renowned doctors and New York Times writers like Dr. Lisa Sanders,
have some sort of seizure involved.
Epilepsy is one of the causes of childhood seizing and there is one subset of childhood
epilepsy that could be cured very soon.
This subset focused on seizures caused by genetic and environmental factors, that with
treatment can allow the children to overcome it.
This is because of how we’ve come to understand genetically determined epilepsy and technology
that allows advanced imaging of the brain to identify abnormalities.
1.
Death So, you think death is not an illness?
That’s the first symptom.
Just kidding, but thinking of death as an illness is the first step scientists have
taken to start solving the problem.
They’re starting to consider options like genetic editing, detaching our consciousness,
and even just using stem cell research and bionic organs.
Biologic death is the illness we’re trying to eradicate here.
Death and disease are the first things to tackle.
150,000 people die every single day!
So, if aging is declared a disease, can we take it away all together?
Some doctors say we’re just a decade or two from at least expanding our lifetimes
dramatically.
We’ll see what happens with that, but if you’re interested, Google more about Transhumanism!
Thanks for watching!
So which diseases or human malady do you want to see remedied most?
Let us know in the comments.
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