Hataalii Tiisyatonii Begay (HT) is paving the road for newborns with SCID. When HT was born in 2018 in a remote part of the Navajo nation, he was quickly diagnosed with a rare and -usually fatal- condition. Today, thanks to a therapy developed at UCSF and funded by CIRM, he’s a healthy four-year-old boy running around in cowboy boots.

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has invested $12 million to test this therapy in a clinical trial at UC San Francisco.

The disorder is Artemis-SCID, a form of severe combined immunodeficiency disease. Children born with this condition have no functioning immune system so even a simple infection can prove life-threatening or fatal.

Currently, the only approved treatment for Artemis-SCID is a bone-marrow transplant, but many children are unable to find a healthy matched donor for that procedure. Even when they do find a donor, they often need regular injections of antibodies to boost their immune system.

In this clinical trial, UCSF doctors Morton Cowan and Jennifer Puck are using the patient’s own blood stem cells, taken from their bone marrow. In the lab, the cells are modified to correct the genetic mutation that causes Artemis-SCID and then re-infused back into the patients. The goal is that over the course of several months these cells will create a new blood supply, one that is free of Artemis-SCID, and that will in turn help repair the child’s immune system.

In April 2022, HT finally moved back home to Arizona. Nowadays, HT is off his medication and living the life of a normal and happy young child. On the Arizona ranch, there are horses to pet, cattle and sheep to tend, and streams to cool his hands in.

Watch the video below to find out more about HT’s journey and the team at UCSF behind the pioneering trial.