Lot of disruptive work happening around cells, says oncologist

With recent innovations in manipulating and changing the properties of cells, new frontiers in medicine are opening up, said oncologist Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee, speaking at the launch of his book 'The song of the cell: An exploration of medicine and the new human', in the city on Wednesday.

Dr Mukherjee, an assistant professor at Columbia University and co-founder of Immuneel Therapeutics, Bengaluru, said, “There is a lot of disruptive work happening around cells, such as CAR-T cell therapy for cancer. There are new therapeutic modalities, and a new appreciation about what we do and don’t know about immune systems.”

The book chronicles how scientists discovered and learned more about cells, and how they are now using them to usher in revolutionary changes through biomedicines, said Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, who discussed the book with Dr Mukherjee.

The idea that all diseases are caused by cellular dysfunction was radical at its time, said Dr Mukherjee. “Even today we are trying to find the cellular basis for some diseases like depression. Questions such as what cell is causing the disease to manifest, what are its mechanisms and how to change these, also remove the stigma around certain illnesses,” he said.

Responding to a question from Mazumdar-Shaw about the ethics of cellular modification, Dr Mukherjee said that three conditions should be satisfied for such work - whether it can alleviate suffering, if there’s scientific certainty that its benefits would outweigh risks, and whether the questions of choice and informed consent are addressed. Regarding concerns about genetically modified ‘designer babies’, he said, "Gene editing is complex. Our characteristics are defined by thousands of genes and there is no technology now to change so many of them."

He added that there are many unsolved questions in cell biology - such as why certain sites in the body are more prone to cancer metastasis, and why some get long Covid and not others. "There is so much left to learn about cell biology," he said.