Below I discussed Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-cells and also pulled up a reply by Linda Eissenberg which taught me a lot. CAR T-cells are killer T-cells genetically modified to kill cells to which an antibody binds. I promised crazier ideas in later posts. One was the idea of further genetic modification of CAR T-cells. […]
Pulled up from a comment by Linda Eissenberg the community has been exploring them [CAR crazy ideas] for some time. For example, in the “Gene edited CAR-T” method section of this paper (Cooper, et al. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6102094/), T cells were treated with IL2 and IL15 before putting the CAR gene into the T cells. This work was […]
I graduated college in 1977 with a BA (with honors) in microbiology. I took courses in virology and immunology, among others. Thus, as a 22 year-old, I was already more qualified to discuss vaccines against polio and COVID than RFK Jr is or will ever be. He’s not the only clown in the Trump clown […]
At its beginning, no one knew that they were in the Industrial Age; let alone how to deal with it. It was like nothing anyone had ever seen before. Later on, great minds like Marx, Keynes, Galbraith, et al would give ‘how to deal with it’ their best shot. Since, say, 1970, we have been […]
This is a seven year-old NPR interview with David Honig, an attorney and adjunct professor at Indiana University, where he teaches negotiations. While this discussion dates from the first Trump term, he’s obviously learned nothing about negotiation skills since then: “HONIG: It’s an interesting question. I reread “The Art Of The Deal” today in anticipation […]
Matt Yglesias has a critical piece up on Biden. I am largely in agreement with Yglesias’ take, although I tend to see his failings as due to longstanding character traits, while Yglesias puts more emphasis on Biden’s age. A couple of snippets (the whole thing is worth reading, but not sure if it is public): […]
Truman famously had a desk sign reading “The buck stops here.” That was back when there were grown-ups in the White House. With Trump, the buck stops over there somewhere: “The news, linked above, that the resignations emails were Team Elon’s idea and didn’t have the okay of the White House comes from a Washington […]
“U.S. President Donald Trump’s military deportation flight to Guatemala on Monday likely cost at least $4,675 per migrant, according to data provided by U.S. and Guatemalan officials. “That is more than five times the $853 cost of a one-way first class ticket on American Airlines from El Paso, Texas, the departure point for the flight, […]
“Trump claims his policies will do just that, creating a new “golden age” that will lift most boats and more than make up for what people might lose in government largesse. Low taxes will trigger blowout growth; tariffs on imports will bring back millions of good-paying manufacturing jobs; unshackled workers aided by artificial intelligence will […]
Here CAR stands for Chimeric Antigen Receptor and refers to CAR killer T-cells which are cells genetically engineered to kill other cells which display something detectable (and antigen) typical of a type of cancer. The crazy refers to my dream of improving CARs using the knowlsege from my long ago BA in biology. The amazing […]