The first cell he cultured was an immune cell from a mouse. The cell moved as he looked at it through a microscope.
He said he could sense the pulse of life. The basic unit of life that connects us and plants andbacteria and archaea is what you see under the microscope.
Mukherjee is an oncologist, cell Biologist and hematologist. In his new book, The Song of the Cell, he writes about the emerging field of cell therapy and how cellular science could one day lead to breakthrough in the treatment of cancer, HIV, Type 1 diabetes and other diseases.
T cells are a type of white blood cell that is activated to fight diseases. One day the cancer's there, and the results have been striking, he's been treating patients in India who have certain types of cancer. He says that the cancer is almost gone the next day.
T cells that are genetically engineered have become a staple in the treatment of leukemias, lymphomas and blood cancer. The cells have not been proven to be effective in fighting solid tumors like lung and prostate cancer. He hopes that further research will change that.
It's difficult for me to convey the excitement that's sweeping through the whole field of cell biology.
Emily is a child with leukemia.
T cells are removed from a patient's body We use a gene therapy to weaponize them and make them resistant to the cancer. The T-cells are grown in a sterile chamber. When the cells have grown and activated, we give them back to the patient. Gene therapy and cell therapy are combined to give a patient.
When Emily was first treated, she was about 7 years old. She had an answer. It's like soldiers on a rampage when the T cells are activated. The body can't handle this kind of attack because you can get so much T cells. Emily was treated with a medicine so that she would survive. She was the first child to survive this type of therapy. I hear that she is applying to colleges.
The engineered cells target the cancer cells.
One way to tell the immune system that a cell isn't normal is to find a flag on the surface of the cell. If I were to transplant a piece of skin from one person to another, that piece of skin would not be accepted. The skin cells have flags on their surface, which T cells can see. T cells will reject anyone who says, "Wait a second, you don't belong to this person." That is the reason the skin transplant is rejected. One way to specifically direct the immune system against any cell type is to find a flag that's in the targeted cell and engineer a T cell or make antibodies against it.
His experience with depression made him empathise with his patients.
There was a sense of doom and uncertainty. One of the most common symptoms of depression is uncertainty. People will often tell you that they are anxious, but there is an underlying depression component to this. It's a symptom of that. It's the result of a mood disorder, not a panic that's happening through their brain. One of the most profound forms of anxiety is caused by illness. I encourage cancer patients to seek out help with their mental health issues. My own experience with my mood and mood disorder helped me understand what patients went through.
There was anti-science sentiment in the U.S. during the H1N1 epidemic.
There was an anti-science sentiment that kept saying "Scientists are egghead idiots because they keep changing their minds" during the time of the Pandemic. We keep changing our minds because we have the right to do so. Facts continued to change during the Pandemic.
Uncertainty and authority are two different things. Uncertainty is not knowing what's going to happen. Even though you don't know it, false authority is still claiming. I don't believe that those are the same thing. The confusion between uncertainty and false authority was one of the reasons for the anti-science sentiment that swept through the United States during the Pandemic. There were a lot of uncertainties. That's one of the reasons that the CDC changed. We had to change a lot. I don't think they were always correct. They could change over time. Sometimes they were incorrect. Sometimes, they were correct. The scientific process had to be maintained throughout the epidemic.
The interview was edited by Sam and Thea. They adapted it for the internet.
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