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I understand that Fluorescence in situ hybridisation can be used to measure the effectiveness of a gene therapy experiment/trial.

But what are some other genetics techniques to measure the effectiveness of a gene therapy clinical trial. Would blotting (northern/southern) and PCR be a way to tell if a new genome have been integrated into existing cells.

Thanks

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  • $\begingroup$ These techniques will not tell you the effectiveness of a gene therapy. They will just let you know if the gene is inserted or not. Effectiveness means to what extent is the disease condition alleviated i.e the final response. $\endgroup$ – WYSIWYG Oct 31 '14 at 5:41
  • $\begingroup$ Genomic integration might not be a desired outcome of gene therapy. If not carefully controlled, the inserted DNA could be stuck right in the middle of an important gene, or disrupt a tightly regulated promoter or something else that disrupts the normal gene regulation and cause cancer. $\endgroup$ – user137 Oct 31 '14 at 6:30
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If all you cared about was genomic integration, then your best bet would be some kind of sequencing. If you sequence the modified region and the flanking regions you could be sure that the new sequence was present in the genome.

It would probably be more interesting to look at how the new genes affect the cell. For example you could look at differences between protein expression in modified and unmodified cells. For that you could use RNAseq.

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