New Breakthrough Set to Make Gene Therapy Safer and More Accessible
A major discovery by Dr Chuck Bailey and his team, published in Cell, has revealed a new entry pathway for adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors. A breakthrough that could dramatically reduce treatment doses and improve the safety of gene therapy.
Over the past year, Dr Bailey has secured $3.0M in NHMRC Ideas Grants and advanced this work through AAVec Bio, a Centenary Institute–owned startup developing safer, lower-cost AAV technologies. His team is also pioneering an innovative CAR T cell approach that reprograms immune cells inside the body, with promising applications for pancreatic cancer and mesothelioma.
For decades, we’ve been anticipating the dawn of regenerative medicine. Again and again, we’ve been promised that stem cells will soon cure just about every ill imaginable. If not tomorrow, then the next day, or the day after that, and so on. We’re still waiting.
This book is an antidote to hype and a salve to sooth the itch for stem-cell salvation. In it, Professor John Rasko, a leading physician-scientist, and writer-historian Carl Power take us on a wild historical tour of this scandal-prone field. They expose all the dirty little secrets that the hype merchants prefer to ignore – the blunders and setbacks, confusions and delusions, tricks and lies.
Is there any good news? Which of the many promises of stem-cell research have been kept? And what of the future? Rasko and Power insist that we can only know where we’re going if we have a sense of where we’ve been. Their study tears down the hype surrounding stem cells in order to reveal what’s still worth hoping for.