• Blóðbók@slrpnk.net
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    6 months ago

    it was done on a case-by-case basis. Each person has their own therapy tailored for them. This does not appear to be a mass-solution.

    I’m not sure what you are expecting for something to be considered a cure? What they are describing is a treatment procedure which uses the patient’s own tissue. How does that make it case-by-case?

    • Talaraine@fedia.io
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      6 months ago

      Because you can’t pack it up in a box and ship it to just anyone. They have to make it specifically for you. Hence case-by-case.

        • Blóðbók@slrpnk.net
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          6 months ago

          I reply to people on lemmy on a case-by-case basis. I decide how to eat food on a case-by-case basis. But if you give me a deck of cards and tell me to shuffle them, I generally do not decide how to shuffle on a case-by-case basis; it doesn’t matter whose cards they are.

      • Thrashy@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        This is actually becoming somewhat commonplace. For example, in many cutting-edge cancer therapies, blood is drawn from the patient, processed in tissue-culture suites on site to extract the patient’s immune cells and sensitize them to some marker expressed by their specific cancer cells, and then the modified immune cells are returned to the patient room and transfused back into their bodies. It’s not cheap per se but it’s something that most top-tier cancer centers can do, and to do the similar process of extracting stem cells, inducing them to transform into pancreatic islet cells, and transplanting those into the patient’s pancreas isn’t that big of a jump – and it’d be cheaper than a lifetime of insulin in any case. It also points the way towards treating other kinds of organ failure without the risk of rejection, too.

      • Blóðbók@slrpnk.net
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        6 months ago

        That’s not what case-by-case means. Wiktionary:

        Separate and distinct from others of the same kind; treated individually.

        Case-by-case implies that each treatment is different and is not generalisable; but the fact that they use a patient’s own tissue does not make each individual treatment different. If you want to extend the logic, you might call vaccination a case-by-case treatment as well, since they use different needles for each person.

        • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          The approach is generic. The implementation is case by case. But this is exactly the problem. When the implementation is generic, like a vaccine, then you can mass produce it and the costs go down.

          As far as this seems, you can’t mass produce this solution. You can mass implement the approach, but that doesn’t really bring the cost down.