Awesome!! 🌠
As cool as this truly is, what’s also wild is now this person doesn’t have the drastically higher chances of surviving Malaria! Sickle Cell requires both parents passing on a recessive gene that helps with Malaria. When one parent passes on the gene it doesn’t lead to sickle cell yet it provides the benefits against malaria 🤯
His chances of catching malaria in New Orleans are pretty slim, so I think that’s a fair trade-off. :)
Between climate change and the current US administration, malaria is starting to reappear over there (but I’m sure he’d rather risk it than stick with Sickle Cell+no piloting).
now this person doesn’t have the drastically higher chances of surviving Malaria
Do they not?
one parent passes on the gene it doesn’t lead to sickle cell yet it provides the benefits against malaria
They can’t have edited all of the patient’s cells, just enough of them to produce enough normal non-sickle blood cells to cure the disease. Would the remaining cells which still prosess the sickle-cell gene provide any protection against Malaria?
Thanks for the reply, it made me dig a bit deeper into this treatment (Casgevy) methodology and I learned some radical things about it! But the term gene editing in molecular/microbiology always refers to DNA, so these changes will be present in all future cells. Knowing the treatment used gene editing, I incorrectly assumed they just cut out the genetic sequence causing sickle cell. However, they edited the patients stem cells and reinfused them to create a permanent population of red blood cells with both the original sickle cell and fetal red blood cell traits! This works since fetal red blood cells don’t sickle due to their cell structure, meaning the sickle cell mutation remains in the patient’s DNA, so the edited cells still produce the trait to help with malaria.
Twice lucky, probably in a free trial and it worked.
Editing stem cells in a lab sounds… expensive.For the others after him:
Now you can get cured from sickle cell for only $12 000 000!
