As an early kick off to National Sickle Cell Awareness Month – which falls in September every year – CIRM is hosting a “Ask the Stem Cell Team” FaceBook Live event tomorrow, August 28^th, from noon to 1pm (PDT).

The live broadcast will feature two scientists and a patient advocate who are working hard to bring an end to sickle cell disease, a devastating, inherited blood disorder that largely targets the African-American community and to a lesser degree the Hispanic community.

You can join us by logging onto Facebook and going to this broadcast link: https://bit.ly/2o4aCAd

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. If you miss tomorrow’s broadcast, not to worry. We’ll be posting it on our Facebook video page, our website, and YouTube channel shortly afterwards.

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

For a sneak preview here’s a short video featuring our patient advocate speaker, Adrienne Shapiro. And see below for more details about Ms. Shapiro and our two other guests.

Adrienne Shapiro [Video: Todd Dubnicoff/CIRM]

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  Donald Kohn, MD

  Don Kohn, M.D. is a professor in the departments of Pediatrics and Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics in UCLA’s Broad Stem Cell Research Center. Dr. Kohn has a CIRM Clinical Stage Research grant in support of his team’s Phase 1 clinical trial which is genetically modifying a patient’s own blood stem cells to produce a correct version of hemoglobin, the protein that is mutated in these patients, which causes abnormal sickle-like shaped red blood cells. These misshapen cells lead to dangerous blood clots, debilitating pain and even death. The genetically modified stem cells will be given back to the patient to create a new sickle cell-free blood supply.

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  Mark Walters, MD

  Mark Walters, M.D., is a pediatric hematologist/oncologist and is director of the Blood & Marrow Transplantation Program at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland. Dr. Walters has a CIRM-funded Therapeutic Translation Research grant which aims to improve Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) therapy by preparing for a clinical trial that might cure SCD after giving back sickle gene-corrected blood stem cells – using cutting-edge CRISPR gene editing technology – to a person with SCD. If successful, this would be a universal life-saving and cost-saving therapy.

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  Adrienne Shapiro

  Adrienne Shapiro is a patient advocate for SCD and the co-founder of the Axis Advocacy SCD patient education and support website. Shapiro is the fourth generation of mothers in her family to have children born with sickle cell disease.  She is vocal stem cell activist, speaking to various groups about the importance of CIRM’s investments in both early stage research and clinical trials. In January, she was awarded a Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Action Award at the 2018 World Stem Cell Summit.