What about this: sequence a tumour, find a distinguishing part of its genome. Make a virus that search and replaces that with self destructing genes. Inject into tumour.
Yup. That's the idea. The problem right now is the cell entry. The crispr/cas has to be placed in the target cell somehow, and yes, we do this by, e.g. as a replacement of antimicrobials, using phages (viruses that attack bacteria. The mechanism must be specific and effective. Now, sadly, most cells and bacteria come with different phages/viruses that allow cell entry. And so it's a _lot_ of systems that have to be engineered and tested.
Of course, there is also the danger of cutting the genome in a wrong place with similar sequence. Again, this can cause adverse effects like loss of cell function or cancer.
Still, therapy with gene editing mechanisms are already been tested, albeit using the older zinc-fing-nucleases for treatmant of e.g. HIV. These are currently in phase 1/2 testing.
So yes, this is currently an active topic of research. But there are still lots of problems that make this technology only feasible in 10+ years for patiant treatment imo.
A big challenge is that cancer cell genomes are not well conserved. A study was done a while back to look at 1000 breast cancer patients. Mutations were rampant with only a few percentage actually sharing common mutations.
Perhaps the point really isn't about having an effective cure for all cancer patients, but just this one.
One of these days, we can detect the cancer cell, and the specific mutation for that person. The detection would take a day or less, and then prime your immune system to recognize and attack it.
So therapies and cures and not like a flu shot, like a jigsaw puzzle, where the last piece for the cure is different for every person (or a few people).
I can't remember the details of this either, but as I recall it was done in liver because when you inject DNA into mice the liver basically filters it all out, so you get very high efficiency in the liver, but no where else!
Then what if: 100 years later, this virus mutates and starts injecting self-destruct genes everywhere? Might be a good, fast way to a zombie apocalypse!
