Talk:Gene therapy

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Contents 1 Deletion of unnecessary redirects 2 Ashanti de Silva 3 Edits 4 Using Herpesviruses 5 Non-viral Delivery Methods 6 Content taken from another source without credit 7 Requested Copyediting, Section: "Non-Viral Methods". 8 Viral vectors 9 siRNA more common and useful than oligodeoxynucleotides 10 Latest News section

[edit] Deletion of unnecessary redirects

Hey, could somebody delete the redirect pages "Gene Therapy" and "Human gene therapy" we really only need this one article - Zvesoulis 20:46, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea. As far as I know, mods are the ones who delete things but you could mail them or something with this reason, they should comply. Tyciol 14:06, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Human gene therapy and Gene Therapy would need to go through the Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion process. I think you would find little support for their deletion, though, unless you can argue that the existence of the redirects creates confusion or presents an undue burden to people searching Wikipedia for particular articles. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 20:06, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ashanti de Silva

I think this article should include info on Ashanti de Silva, who was the first gene therapy "success story". -Mjklin July 4, 2005 15:15 (UTC)

"supplement an effective mutant" isnt supplant the intended word? -Whistlingmonkey

I think a better idea would be to make a brief mention of this case and give him/her their own wiki. I'm afraid I'm not familiar with it, could you make mention of the link? Feel comfortable adding a mention yourself. Tyciol 14:08, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edits

Organ transplantation is often considered to be the "original" form of gene therapy, that is, the insertion of foreign genes into a host to recover function. Many diseases which look to gene therapy for a potential cure can only be palliated by transplantation, sometimes of multiple organs.

removed since that just makes no sense to me, like saying buying a rebuilt engine is a form of engine repair (it's a form of AUTO repair, but not engine repair) - 165.247.224.196

I'd agree, because gene therapy would be modifying host cells. Organ transplant instead removes host cells and replaces them with alien cells (albeit, of the same species) so the effects are very much more hard to predict than modifying a single gene or two through gene therapy. It's more likely to be rejected and cause complications. Gene therapy is much safer, the only risk it has that organ transplant doesn't is the creation of side effects not priorly experienced by humans, which isn't really that horrible since you could probably predict a lot of them in the petri dish. Tyciol 14:06, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Organ transplants are considered a form of gene therapy because it is replacing an organ with defective genes with an organ with functioning genes. Furthermore gene therapy is neither safer nor more effective than organ transplants at the moment, for the most part gene therapy is in its infancy, there have been many many unintended/unforseen consequences of gene therapy - for instance two children getting leukemia as a result of the retrovirus inserting itself near the promoter of the p53 tumor supressor gene effectively disrupting the promoter. Before extolling the virtues of Gene therapy (which is lookin fantastic but is by no means there yet) please do your research. I would suggest http://www.pubmed.gov . skorpion 03:39, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Using Herpesviruses

Why hasn't anyone mentioned the use of herpesviruses in gene therapy?

Why don't you do it? skorpion 23:48, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Non-viral Delivery Methods

Due to certain problems using retroviruses there is a lot of research into non-viral delivery methods at the moment ie liposome mediated delivery

If I get the time I will do some research and rectify this, but in the meantime someone might want to do it for me. skorpion 03:38, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I have started the addition of a section on non-viral vectors. Have thus far covered nked DNA and Oligodeoxynucleotides. Still to come is lipoplexes and polyplexes and possibly a mention of hybrid methods. I will link to my sources when I am finished in a few hours time. skorpion 07:32, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Just had another read of what I werote and realised I need to dumb it down a bit. Will do that when I finsh the revision. skorpion 13:12, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Ok, as of this point what I was going to add is finished. It is referenced as well. Can someone please read over it, check wording and selling mistakes. skorpion 06:36, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Copy edit tag added skorpion 06:41, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Content taken from another source without credit

From the bad formating of the "probelems" list at the bottom it was clear it had been coppied from another source. A quick google brings up this, which is word-for-word identical. As a government website, is this in the public domain? Either way, the source should be credited. EAi 14:54, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I hate to see things taken verbatim, but I do believe that publications of the US government are considerred in the public domain. However, I'm not sure if that blanket copyright coverage applies to organizations such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which are parts of the government managed by private sector companies. Nonetheless, I've added a reference to this material ... though I am not the source of the original input to the article. Regards, User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 13:16, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested Copyediting, Section: "Non-Viral Methods".

I corrected the apparent spelling errors and checked many of the scientific terms against Google, seems alright. The terminology is pretty hard to follow; Elaborate more and consider using less-specialized terms. --Avillia ^{(Avillia me!)} 04:30, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Viral vectors

I suggest creating a new article on viral vectors using the material in this article as the foundation. Viral vectors are an important tool widely used in research as well as gene therapy. In that case there should just be a breif reference left in this article. Peter Znamenskiy 10:23, 21 Mayb 2006 (UTC)

I dunno about that, if we can find enough find enough articles to link to a vectors page - yeah maybe, but if you are going to move the viral vectors, move the non-viral ones too as they are becoming increasingly common in research. If it did happen I would call it Vectors in gene technology or something similar - and redirect viral vectors etc there. However what about pages like cationic lipids etc (if there isnt a page there the should be) as they have been created primarily for use in gene technology.) Viridae 13:00, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Creation of a new article that would deal with viral vectors generically would be fine, but leaving only a minor reference here to that article would not be OK. The use of viral vectors in gene therapy is a major issue with regard to the public's perception and the medical side effects of gene therapy. Therefore, a full section should remain here that deals with the matter of viral vectors in the context of gene therapy (a revision or replacement of current content), aided by a {{main}} reference to the new article that deals with the subject of viral vectors specifically and thoroughly; where the new article ventures into 'uses in gene therapy', a reciprocal {{main}} would be in order referring to this article. User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 13:08, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Okay, point taken. I've reread the section carefully and most of the material is in fact specific for gene therapy. I'll start on a general viral vector article and leave the material here. Peter Znamenskiy 00:17, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] siRNA more common and useful than oligodeoxynucleotides

I recommend that the section on oligodeoxynucleotides be reviewed and short interrupting RNA be discussed. Interruption at DNA level, from memory, is difficult and ineffective, where as transcriptional knock outs due to siRNA-mRNA interactions have been shown to be very efficient. siRNA techniques are very new, may have to search Pubmed reather than Google to confirm this. Cheers everyone.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 60.224.23.251 (talk • contribs) .

[edit] Latest News section

I just tagged the most recent research section for cleanup because as it is now, there are many missing links that could be used (like NIH should link to its article) and the references are in a flat format (and not even a correct one). The section text could be cleaned up to be more layman-friendly too. ju66l3r 17:25, 29 October 2006 (UTC)