What do football, jazz and acting have in common? They all happen to be the greatest accomplishments of some of the well-known celebrities who suffer from, and who have been vocal advocates for, Sickle Cell disease (SCD). While most people wouldn’t readily identify Tiki Barber, Miles Davis or Larenz Tate as carriers of the HBB gene, all three have been in the public eye as of late, spreading awareness about their .

Sickle cell disease is caused by having two mutated copies of the hemoglobin (HBB) gene (one from mom and another from dad). A person with two copies of the S version of the HBB gene (S which is short for “sickle”) typically has SCD.

People with sickle cell trait typically do not have any symptoms of sickle cell disease, but can pass it on to their children. Additionally, more than 80,000 Americans have sickle cell disease and despite decades of research the average life expectancy has dropped from 42 in 1995 to 39 today. It is a disease that largely targets the African-American community – which is why our team decided It was necessary to discuss this debilitating disease.

This event will feature Mark Walters, a pediatric hematologist/oncologist from Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, Don Kohn, Professor, Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics at UCLA, and Adrienne Shapiro, a patient advocate for SCD and the co-founder of the Axis Advocacy SCD patient education and support website.

Our Facebook Live event, “Ask the Stem Cell Team About Sickle Cell Disease” is– Tuesday, August 28th – from noon till 1pm PST. You can join us by logging on to our Facebook.

Also, make sure to “like” our FaceBook page before the event to receive a notification when we’ve gone live for this and future events.

We want to answer your most pressing questions, so please email them directly to us beforehand at info@cirm.ca.gov.

A recording of the session will be available in our FaceBook videos page shortly after the broadcast ends.

We hope to see you there.