Sickle cell disease

CIRM-catalyzed spinout files for IPO to develop therapies for genetic diseases

/ Yimy Villa / 1 Comment

Graphite Bio, a CIRM-catalyzed spinout from Stanford University that launched just 14 months ago has now filed the official SEC paperwork for an initial public offering (IPO). The company was formed by CIRM-funded researchers Matt Porteus, M.D., Ph.D. and Maria Grazia Roncarolo, M.D.

Six years ago, Dr. Porteus and Dr. Roncarolo, in conjunction with Stanford University, received a CIRM grant of approximately $875K to develop a method to use CRISPR gene editing technology to correct the blood stem cells of infants with X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency (X-SCID), a genetic condition that results in a weakened immune system unable to fight the slightest infection.

Recently, Dr. Porteus, in conjunction with Graphite, received a CIRM grant of approximately $4.85M to apply the CRISPR gene editing approach to correct the blood stem cells of patients with sickle cell disease, a condition that causes “sickle” shaped red blood cells. As a result of this shape, the cells clump together and clog up blood vessels, causing intense pain, damaging organs, and increasing the risk of strokes and premature death. The condition disproportionately affects members of the Black and Latin communities.

CIRM funding helped Stanford complete the preclinical development of the sickle cell disease gene therapy and it enabled Graphite to file an Investigational New Drug (IND) application with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), one of the last steps necessary before conducting a human clinical trial of a potential therapy. Towards the end of 2020, Graphite got the green light from the FDA to conduct a trial using the gene therapy in patients with sickle cell disease.

In a San Francisco Business Times report, Graphite CEO Josh Lehrer stated that the company’s goal is to create a platform that can apply a one-time gene therapy for a broad range of genetic diseases.

Paving the Way

/ Kevin McCormack / Leave a comment

When someone scores a goal in soccer all the attention is lavished on them. Fans chant their name, their teammates pile on top in celebration, their agent starts calling sponsors asking for more money. But there’s often someone else deserving of praise too, that’s the player who provided the assist to make the goal possible in the first place. With that analogy in mind, CIRM just provided a very big assist for a very big goal.

The goal was scored by Jasper Therapeutics. They have just announced data from their Phase 1 clinical trial treating people with Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). This is a group of disorders in which immature blood-forming cells in the bone marrow become abnormal and leads to low numbers of normal blood cells, especially red blood cells. In about one in three patients, MDS can progress to acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a rapidly progressing cancer of the bone marrow cells.

The most effective way to treat, and even cure, MDS/AML is with a blood stem cell transplant, but this is often difficult for older patients, because it involves the use of toxic chemotherapy to destroy their existing bone marrow blood stem cells, to make room for the new, healthy ones. Even with a transplant there is often a high rate of relapse, because it’s hard for chemotherapy to kill all the cancer cells.

Jasper has developed a therapy, JSP191, which is a monoclonal antibody, to address this issue. JSP191 helps supplement the current treatment regimen by clearing all the remaining abnormal cells from the bone marrow and preventing relapse. In addition it also means the patients gets smaller doses of chemotherapy with lower levels of toxicity. In this Phase 1 study six patients, between the ages of 65 and 74, were given JSP191 – in combination with low-dose radiation and chemotherapy – prior to getting their transplant. The patients were followed-up at 90 days and five of the six had no detectable levels of MDS/AML, and the sixth patient had reduced levels. None of the patients experienced serious side effects.

Clearly that’s really encouraging news. And while CIRM didn’t fund this clinical trial, it wouldn’t have happened without us paving the way for this research. That’s where the notion of the assist comes in.

CIRM support led to the development of the JSP191 technology at Stanford. Our CIRM funds were used in the preclinical studies that form the scientific basis for using JSP191 in an MDS/AML setting.

Not only that, but this same technique was also used by Stanford’s Dr. Judy Shizuru in a clinical trial for children born with a form of severe combined immunodeficiency, a rare but fatal immune disorder in children. A clinical trial that CIRM funded.

It’s a reminder that therapies developed with one condition in mind can often be adapted to help treat other similar conditions. Jasper is doing just that. It hopes to start clinical trials this year using JSP191 for people getting blood stem cell transplants for severe autoimmune disease, sickle cell disease and Fanconi anemia.

Three UC’s Join Forces to Launch CRISPR Clinical Trial Targeting Sickle Cell Disease

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Sickle shaped red blood cells

The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), in collaboration with UC Berkeley (UCB) and UC Los Angeles (UCLA), have been given permission by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to launch a first-in-human clinical trial using CRISPR technology as a gene-editing technique to cure Sickle Cell Disease.

This research has been funded by CIRM from the early stages and, in a co-funding partnership with theNational Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute under the Cure Sickle Cell initiatve, CIRM supported the work that allowed this program to gain FDA permission to proceed into clinical trials.    

Sickle Cell Disease is a blood disorder that affects around 100,000 people, mostly Black and Latinx people in the US. It is caused by a single genetic mutation that results in the production of “sickle” shaped red blood cells. Normal red blood cells are round and smooth and flow easily through blood vessels. But the sickle-shaped ones are rigid and brittle and clump together, clogging vessels and causing painful crisis episodes, recurrent hospitalization, multi-organ damage and mini-strokes.    

The three UC’s have combined their respective expertise to bring this program forward.

The CRISPR-Cas9 technology was developed by UC Berkeley’s Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna, PhD. UCLA is a collaborating site, with expertise in genetic analysis and cell manufacturing and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland is the lead clinical center, leveraging its renowned expertise in cord blood and marrow transplantation and in gene therapy for sickle cell disease.

The approach involves retrieving blood stem cells from the patient and, using a technique involving electrical pulses, these cells are treated to correct the mutation using CRISPR technology. The corrected cells will then be transplanted back into the patient.

Dr. Mark Walters

In a news release, UCSF’s Dr. Mark Walters, the principal investigator of the project, says using this new gene-editing approach could be a game-changer. “This therapy has the potential to transform sickle cell disease care by producing an accessible, curative treatment that is safer than the current therapy of stem cell transplant from a healthy bone marrow donor. If this is successfully applied in young patients, it has the potential to prevent irreversible complications of the disease. Based on our experience with bone marrow transplants, we predict that correcting 20% of the genes should be sufficient to out-compete the native sickle cells and have a strong clinical benefit.”

Dr. Maria T. Millan, President & CEO of CIRM, said this collaborative approach can be a model for tackling other diseases. “When we entered into our partnership with the NHLBI we hoped that combining our resources and expertise could accelerate the development of cell and gene therapies for SCD. And now to see these three UC institutions collaborating on bringing this therapy to patients is truly exciting and highlights how working together we can achieve far more than just operating individually.”

The 4-year study will include six adults and three adolescents with severe sickle cell disease. It is planned to begin this summer in Oakland and Los Angeles.

The three UCs combined to produce a video to accompany news about the trial. Here it is:

A word from our Chair, several in fact

/ Kevin McCormack / 2 Comments

In 2005, the New Oxford American Dictionary named “podcast” its word of the year. At the time a podcast was something many had heard of but not that many actually tuned in to. My how times have changed. Now there are some two million podcasts to chose from, at least according to the New York Times, and who am I to question them.

Yesterday, in the same New York Times, TV writer Margaret Lyons, wrote about how the pandemic helped turn her from TV to podcasts: “Much in the way I grew to prefer an old-fashioned phone call to a video chat, podcasts, not television, became my go-to medium in quarantine. With their shorter lead times and intimate production values, they felt more immediate and more relevant than ever before.”

I mention this because an old colleague of ours at CIRM, Neil Littman, has just launched his own podcast and the first guest on it was Jonathan Thomas, Chair of the CIRM Board. Their conversation ranged from CIRM’s past to the future of the regenerative field as a whole, with a few interesting diversions along the way. It’s fun listening. And as Margaret Lyons said it might be more immediate and more relevant than ever before.

Charting a course for the future

/ Kevin McCormack / 1 Comment
A new home for stem cell research?

Have you ever been at a party where someone says “hey, I’ve got a good idea” and then before you know it everyone in the room is adding to it with ideas and suggestions of their own and suddenly you find yourself with 27 pages of notes, all of them really great ideas. No, me neither. At least, not until yesterday when we held the first meeting of our Scientific Strategy Advisory Panel.

This is a group that was set up as part of Proposition 14, the ballot initiative that refunded CIRM last November (thanks again everyone who voted for that). The idea was to create a panel of world class scientists and regulatory experts to help guide and advise our Board on how to advance our mission. It’s a pretty impressive group too. You can see who is on the SSAP here.  

The meeting involved some CIRM grantees talking a little about their work but mostly highlighting problems or obstacles they considered key issues for the future of the field as a whole. And that’s where the ideas and suggestions really started flowing hard and fast.

It started out innocently enough with Dr. Amander Clark of UCLA talking about some of the needs for Discovery or basic research. She advocated for a consortium approach (this quickly became a theme for many other experts) with researchers collaborating and sharing data and findings to help move the field along.

She also called for greater diversity in research, including collecting diverse cell samples at the basic research level, so that if a program advanced to later stages the findings would be relevant to a wide cross section of society rather than just a narrow group.

Dr. Clark also said that as well as supporting research into neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, there needed to be a greater emphasis on neurological conditions such as autism, bipolar disorder and other mental health problems.

(CIRM is already committed to both increasing diversity at all levels of research and expanding mental health research so this was welcome confirmation we are on the right track).

Dr. Mike McCun called for CIRM to take a leadership role in funding fetal tissue research, things the federal government can’t or won’t support, saying this could really help in developing an understanding of prenatal diseases.

Dr. Christine Mummery, President of ISSCR, advocated for support for early embryo research to deepen our understanding of early human development and also help with issues of infertility.

Then the ideas started coming really fast:

  • There’s a need for knowledge networks to share information in real-time not months later after results are published.
  • We need standardization across the field to make it easier to compare study results.
  • We need automation to reduce inconsistency in things like feeding and growing cells, manufacturing cells etc.
  • Equitable access to CRISPR gene-editing treatments, particularly for underserved communities and for rare diseases where big pharmaceutical companies are less likely to invest the money needed to develop a treatment.
  • Do a better job of developing combination therapies – involving stem cells and more traditional medications.

One idea that seemed to generate a lot of enthusiasm – perhaps as much due to the name that Patrik Brundin of the Van Andel Institute gave it – was the creation of a CIRM Hotel California, a place where researchers could go to learn new techniques, to share ideas, to collaborate and maybe take a nice cold drink by the pool (OK, I just made that last bit up to see if you were paying attention).

The meeting was remarkable not just for the flood of ideas, but also for its sense of collegiality.  Peter Marks, the director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (FDA-CBER) captured that sense perfectly when he said the point of everyone working together, collaborating, sharing information and data, is to get these projects over the finish line. The more we work together, the more we will succeed.

Month of CIRM: Making sure stem cell therapies don’t get lost in Translation

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All this month we are using our blog and social media to highlight a new chapter in CIRM’s life, thanks to the voters approving Proposition 14. We are looking back at what we have done since we were created in 2004, and also looking forward to the future. Today we feature a blog written by two of our fabulous Discovery and Translation team Science Officers, Dr. Kent Fitzgerald and Dr. Ross Okamura.

Dr. Ross Okamura

If you believe that you can know a person by their deeds, the partnership opportunities offered by CIRM illustrate what we, as an agency, believe is the most effective way to deliver on our mission statement, accelerating regenerative medicine treatments to patients with unmet medical needs.

Dr. Kent Fitzgerald

 In our past, we have offered awards covering basic biology projects which in turn provided the foundation to produce promising therapies  to ease human suffering.  But those are only the first steps in an elaborate process.

In order to bring these potential therapies to the clinic, selected drug candidates must next go through a set of activities designed to prepare them for review by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). For cell therapies, the first formal review is often the Pre- Investigational New Drug Application Consultation or pre-IND.  This stage of drug development is commonly referred to as Translational, bridging the gap between our Discovery or early stage research and Clinical Trial programs.

One of our goals at CIRM is to prepare Translational projects we fund for that  pre-IND meeting with the FDA, to help them gather data that support the hope this approach will be both safe and effective in patients.  Holding this meeting with the FDA is the first step in the often lengthy process of conducting FDA regulated clinical trials and hopefully bringing an approved therapy to patients.

What type of work is required for a promising candidate to move from the Discovery stage into FDA regulated development?  To address the needs of Translational science, CIRM offers the Translational Research Project funding opportunity.  Activities that CIRM supports at the Translational stage include:

  • Process Development to allow manufacturing of the candidate therapy under Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP). This is to show that they can manufacture  at a large enough scale to treat patients.
  • Assay development and qualification of measurements to determine whether the drug is being manufactured safely while retaining its curative properties.
  • Studies to determine the optimal dose and the best way to deliver that dose.
  • Pilot safety studies looking how the patient might respond after treatment with the drug.
  • The development of a clinical plan indicating under what rules and conditions the drug might be prescribed to a patient. 

These, and other activities supported under our Translational funding program, all help to inform the FDA when they consider what pivotal studies they will require prior to approving an Investigational New Drug (IND) application, the next step in the regulatory approval process.

Since CIRM first offered programs specifically aimed at addressing the Translational stage of therapeutic candidates we have made 41 awards totaling approximately $150 million in funding.  To date, 13 have successfully completed and achieved their program goals, while 19 others are still actively working towards meeting their objective.  Additionally, three (treating Spina Bifida, Osteonecrosis, and Sickle Cell Disease) of the 13 programs have gone on to receive further CIRM support through our Clinical Stage programs.

During our time administering these awards, CIRM has actively partnered with our grantees to navigate what is required to bring a therapy from the bench to the bedside.  CIRM operationalizes this by setting milestones that provide clear definitions of success, specific goals the researchers have to meet to advance the project and also by providing resources for a dedicated project manager to help ensure the project can keep the big picture in mind while executing on their scientific progress. 

Throughout all this we partner with the researchers to support them in every possible way. For example, CIRM provides the project teams with Translational Advisory Panels (TAPs, modeled after the CIRM’s Clinical Advisory Panels) which bring in outside subject matter experts as well as patient advocates to help provide additional scientific, regulatory and clinical expertise to guide the development of the program at no additional cost to the grantees.  One of the enduring benefits that we hope to provide to researchers and organizations is a practical mastery of translational drug development so that they may continue to advance new and exciting therapies to all patients.

Through CIRM’s strong and continued support of this difficult stage of development, CIRM has developed an internal practical expertise in advancing projects through Translation.  We employ our experience to guide our awardees so they can avoid common pitfalls in the development of cell and gene therapies. The end goal is simple, helping to accelerate their path to the clinic and fulfilling the mission of CIRM that has been twice given to us by the voters of California, bringing treatments to patients suffering from unmet medical needs.

Progress in the fight against Sickle Cell Disease

/ Kevin McCormack / 1 Comment
Marissa Cors, sickle cell disease patient advocate

Last November Marissa Cors, a patient advocate in the fight against Sickle Cell Disease (SCD), told the Stem Cellar “A stem cell cure will end generations of guilt, suffering, pain and early death. It will give SCD families relief from the financial, emotional and spiritual burden of caring someone living with SCD. It will give all of us an opportunity to have a normal life. Go to school, go to work, live with confidence.” With each passing month it seems we are getting closer to that day.

CIRM is funding four clinical trials targeting SCD and another project we are supporting has just been given the green light by the Food and Drug Administration to start a clinical trial. Clearly progress is being made.

Yesterday we got a chance to see that progress. We held a Zoom event featuring Marissa Cors and other key figures in the fight against SCD, CIRM Science Officer Dr. Ingrid Caras and Evie Junior. Evie is a pioneer in this struggle, having lived with sickle cell all his life but now hoping to live his life free of the disease. He is five months past a treatment that holds out the hope of eradicating the distorted blood cells that cause such devastation to people with the disease.

You can listen to his story, and hear about the other progress being made. Here’s a recording of the Zoom event.

You can also join Marissa every week on her live event on Facebook, Sickle Cell Experience Live.

A Month of CIRM: Where we’ve been, where we’re going

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All this month we are using our blog and social media to highlight a new chapter in CIRM’s life, thanks to the voters approving Proposition 14. We are looking back at what we have done since we were created in 2004, and also looking forward to the future. We kick off this event with a letter from our the Chair of our Board, Jonathan Thomas.

When voters approved Proposition 14 last November, they gave the Stem Cell Agency a new lease on life and a chance to finish the work we began with the approval of Proposition 71 in 2004. It’s a great honor and privilege. It’s also a great responsibility. But I think looking back at what we have achieved over the last 16 years shows we are well positioned to seize the moment and take CIRM and regenerative medicine to the next level and beyond.

When we started, we were told that if we managed to get one project into a clinical trial by the time our money ran out we would have done a good job. As of this moment we have 68 clinical trials that we have funded plus another 31 projects in clinical trials where we helped fund crucial early stage research. That inexorable march to therapies and cures will resume when we take up our first round of Clinical applications under Prop 14 in March.

But while clinical stage projects are the end game, where we see if therapies really work and are safe in people, there’s so much more that we have achieved since we were created. We have invested $900 million in  basic research, creating a pipeline of the most promising stem cell research programs, as well as investing heavily on so-called “translational” projects, which move projects from basic science to where they’re ready to apply to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to begin clinical trials.

We have funded more than 1,000 projects, with each one giving us valuable information to help advance the science. Our funding has helped attract some of the best stem cell scientists in the world to California and, because we only fund research in California, it has persuaded many companies to either move here or open offices here to be eligible for our support. We have helped create the Alpha Stem Cell Clinics, a network of leading medical centers around the state that have the experience and expertise to deliver stem cell therapies to patients. All of those have made California a global center in the field.

That result is producing big benefits for the state. An independent Economic Impact Analysis reported that by the end of 2018 we had already helped generate an extra $10.7 billion in new sales revenue and taxes for California, hundreds of millions more in federal taxes and created more than 56,000 new jobs.

As if that wasn’t enough, we have also:

  • Helped develop the largest iPSC research bank in the world.
  • Created the CIRM Center of Excellence in Stem Cell Genomics to accelerate fundamental understanding of human biology and disease mechanisms.
  • Helped fund the construction of 12 world class stem cell institutes throughout the state.
  • Reached a unique partnership with the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institutes to find a cure for sickle cell disease.
  • Used our support for stem cell research to leverage an additional $12 billion in private funding for the field.
  • Enrolled more than 2700 patients in CIRM funded clinical trials

In many ways our work is just beginning. We have laid the groundwork, helped enable an extraordinary community of researchers and dramatically accelerated the field. Now we want to get those therapies (and many more) over the finish line and get them approved by the FDA so they can become available to many more people around the state, the country and the world.

We also know that we have to make these therapies available to all people, regardless of their background and ability to pay. We have to ensure that underserved communities, who were often left out of research in the past, are an integral part of this work and are included in every aspect of that research, particularly clinical trials. That’s why we now require anyone applying to us for funding to commit to engaging with underserved communities and to have a written plan to show how they are going to do that.

Over the coming month, you will hear more about some of the remarkable things we have managed to achieve so far and get a better sense of what we hope to do in the future. We know there will be challenges ahead and that not everything we do or support will work. But we also know that with the team we have built at CIRM, the brilliant research community in California and the passion and drive of the patient advocate community we will live up to the responsibility the people of California placed in us when they approved Proposition 14.

CIRM-Funded Project Targeting Sickle Cell Disease Gets Green Light for Clinical Trial

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Dr. Matthew Porteus

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Investigational New Drug (IND) permission enabling Graphite Bio to test the investigational, potentially revolutionary gene editing therapy GPH101 developed under the supervision of Matthew Porteus, MD, PhD, in a clinical trial for people with sickle cell disease (SCD).

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) has been supporting this project with a $5.2 million grant, enabling Dr. Porteus and his team at the Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford University to conduct the preclinical manufacturing and safety studies required by the FDA.

“We congratulate the Graphite Bio team for obtaining the IND, a critical step in bringing the GPH101 gene therapy forward for Sickle Cell Disease,” says Dr. Maria T. Millan, CIRM’s President & CEO. “CIRM is committed to the national Cure Sickle Cell initiative and are delighted that this technology, the product of CIRM funded research conducted by Dr. Porteus at Stanford, is progressing to the next stage of development”

Sickle cell disease is caused by a genetic mutation that turns normally smooth, round red blood cells into rigid, sickle shaped cells. Those cells clump together, clogging up blood vessels, causing intense pain, damaging organs and increasing the risk of strokes and premature death. There are treatments that help control the damage, but the only cure is a bone marrow stem cell transplant, which can only happen if the patient has a stem cell donor (usually a close relative) who has matching bone marrow.  

The investigational therapy GPH101 harnesses the power of CRISPR and natural DNA repair mechanisms to cut out the single mutation in the sickle globin gene and paste in the correct “code.” Correction of this mutation would reverse the defect and result in healthy non-sickling red blood cells.  

CEDAR, a Phase 1/2, multi-center, open-label clinical study is designed to evaluate the safety, preliminary efficacy and pharmacodynamics of GPH101 in adult and adolescent patients with severe SCD.

For patient advocate Nancy Rene, the news is personal: “It’s always exciting to hear about the progress being made in sickle cell research.  If successful it will mean that my grandson, and especially other young adults, can look forward to a life free of pain and organ damage.  They can actually begin to plan their lives, thinking about careers and families. I want to thank Dr. Porteus and all of the scientists who are working so hard for people with sickle cell disease. This is wonderful news.”

CIRM has funded four clinical trials for Sickle Cell Disease using different approaches and has a unique partnership with the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institutes under the NIH “Cure Sickle Cell” initiative.

CIRM funded trial for sickle cell disease gives patient a chance for a better future

/ Yimy Villa / 1 Comment
Evie Junior is participating in a CIRM funded clinical trial for sickle cell disease that uses a stem cell gene therapy approach. Image credit: UCLA Broad Stem Cell Research Center

For Evie Junior, personal health and fitness have always been a top priority. During his childhood, he was active and played football, basketball, and baseball in the Bronx, New York. One would never guess that after playing these sports, some nights he experienced pain crises so severe that he was unable to walk. One would also be shocked to hear that he had to have his gallbladder and spleen removed as a child as well.

The health issues that Evie has faced all of his life are related to his diagnosis of sickle cell disease (SCD), a genetic, blood related disorder. SCD causes blood stem cells in the bone marrow, which make blood cells, to produce hard, “sickle” shaped red blood cells. These “sickle” shaped blood cells die early, causing there to be a lack of red blood cells to carry oxygen throughout the body. Due to their “sickle” shape, these cells also get stuck in blood vessels and block blood flow, resulting in excruciating bouts of pain that come on with no warning and can leave patients hospitalized for days.

SCD affects 100,000 people in the United States, the majority of whom are from the Black and Latinx communities, and millions more people around the world,. It can ultimately lead to strokes, organ damage, and early death.

Growing up with SCD inspired Evie to become an emergency medical technician, where he would be able to help patients treat their pain en route to the hospital, in much the same way he has managed his own pain crises for his whole life. Unfortunately as time passed, Evie’s pain crises became harder and harder to manage.

Then in July 2019, Evie decided to enroll in a CIRM funded clinical trial for a stem cell gene therapy to treat SCD. The therapy, developed by Dr. Don Kohn at UCLA, is intended to correct the genetic mutation in a patient’s blood stem cells to allow them to produce healthy red blood cells. Dr. Kohn has already applied the same concept to successfully treat several genetic immune system deficiencies in two other CIRM funded trials, including a cure for a form of Severe Combined Immunodeficiency, also known as bubble baby disease, as well as X-Linked Chronic Granulomatous Disease.

After some delays related to the coronavirus pandemic, Evie finally received an infusion of his own blood stem cells that had been genetically modified to overcome the mutation that causes SCD in July 2020.

Although the results are still very preliminary, so far they look very promising. Three months after his treatment, blood tests indicated that 70% of Evie’s blood stem cells had the new corrected gene. The UCLA team estimates that a 20% correction would be enough to prevent future sickle cell complications. What is also encouraging is that Evie hasn’t had a pain crisis since undergoing the treatment.

In a press release from UCLA, Dr. Kohn discusses that he is cautiously optimistic about these results.

“It’s too early to declare victory, but it’s looking quite promising at this point. Once we’re at six months to a year, if it looks like it does now, I’ll feel very comfortable that he’s likely to have a permanent benefit.”

In the same press release, Evie talks about what a cure would mean for his future and his life going forward.

“I want to be present in my kids’ lives, so I’ve always said I’m not going to have kids unless I can get this cured. But if this works, it means I could start a family one day.”

You can learn more about Evie’s story and the remarkable CIRM funded work at UCLA by watching the video below.