GENE therapy has cured Welsh baby Rhys Evans of the fatal “bubble boy” disease. “His progress seems nothing short of a miracle,” says his mother Marie. Another boy treated more recently continues to improve.
The treatment, carried out at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, is one of only a handful of successful gene therapy trials in people. It is also only the third trial of gene therapy for severe combined immunodeficiency or SCID. Alain Fischer’s team at the Necker Hospital in Paris reported the first-ever treatment in 2000, of two boys, while an Italian-Israeli team recently reported promising initial results with two people who have another…
