An inexpensive blood test can warn couples if they face one in four odds of having a baby with the disease. No one ever told Lametra Scott and Rickey Buggs about it.
About 150,000 babies are born each year in Nigeria with sickle cell, a deadly disease. Tens of thousands of them die annually before their fifth birthdays.
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Researchers Halt Trials of Promising Sickle Cell Treatment
Two patients in a gene therapy study developed cancer years after treatment. It is not clear whether the therapy was responsible.
Researchers working in the cellular and molecular therapeutics branch at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Md.Credit.Erin Scott/Reuters
Feb. 22, 2021
Just when it seemed that a new gene therapy for sickle cell disease was sailing toward success, the company developing the treatment found that two patients now have cancer and halted the trial.
A patient who was treated five and a half years ago has developed myelodysplastic syndrome, a form of cancer that is often a precursor to leukemia, Bluebird Bio reported, while another has developed acute myeloid leukemia.