Comment by AnthonBerg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AnthonBerg | Hacker News Reader

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We should strive to take jthedisciple’s comments at face value, and literally. From there we will arrive at a charitable interpretation.

Here is an example where Harvard Stem Cell Institute discusses mRNA therapy as gene therapy: https://hsci.harvard.edu/translation/what-are-drugs-4-gene-t...

The Wikipedia entry on gene therapy discusses mRNA therapy under the Non-viral section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_therapy – “BioNTech, Moderna Therapeutics and CureVac focus on delivery of mRNA payloads, which are necessarily non-viral delivery problems.”

Indeed the mRNA vaccines carry a genetic payload – a segment of viral genome which is modified using a genetic perspective and from a position of genomic understanding. mRNA is a temporary and deliberately non-permanent message carrier substrate; Here too, humanity’s employment of such facts can be interpreted as scientific knowledge of the matters of the genes. If we choose to call mRNA vaccines gene therapy – which they are less clearly than other techniques – then it is certainly the better gene therapy for purposefully avoiding permanent alteration of the genome in the subject to be treated.

> Here is an example where Harvard Stem Cell Institute discusses mRNA therapy as gene therapy: https://hsci.harvard.edu/translation/what-are-drugs-4-gene-t...

And the very next paragraph (in its heading, no less) makes it clear that RNA therapies and gene therapies are distinct, i.e. that RNA therapies are not (necessarily) gene therapies.

The Wikipedia article you cite doesn’t mention mRNA vaccines. The single mention of “mRNA payloads” does not necessarily refer to vaccines (there are other RNA therapies, and some of these might be gene therapies, although I don’t think they are) — but even if it did the sentence’s inclusion in this article is debatable at the very least.

Fundamentally, gene therapies always work by modifying the host genome. mRNA vaccines don’t do this (nor do any other RNA therapy approaches that I’m aware of).

I assure you thay we are in technical agreement! I’d like to point towards my words on mRNA vaccines precisely and purposefully not modifying the genome.

Re. this: ” And the very next paragraph (in its heading, no less) makes it clear that RNA therapies and gene therapies are distinct, i.e. that RNA therapies are not (necessarily) gene therapies.”

For the avoidance of doubt and my greater understanding, may I ask for a quote of paragraph being referred to?

Edit, update: That paragraph aside, the article index does indeed distinguish between RMA therapy and gene therapy: https://hsci.harvard.edu/translation/what-are-drugs

Title: “Manufacturing gene and RNA therapies” “A challenge for both gene and RNA therapies is getting the nucleic acid molecules into a cell. […]”

Thank you! I want to explicitly state my agreement, due to the sensitivity of nuance here.

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