That is what killed 18 - year - old Jesse Gelsinger, who had a rare liver disease and was participating
in gene therapy research at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Food and Drug Administration immediately terminated all gene therapy trials there, and the incident prompted federal regulators to establish new rules for
human gene therapy research.
The policy — in the form of first Office Actions on a series of applications for patents on expressed sequence tags, ESTs — could greatly complicate basic
gene therapy research by substantially allowing patents for small sequences of a gene that may later be used by the patent holder to corner ownership and uses of entire genes.
The RAC model of diverse committee membership and open meetings has ensured a public voice in the review of the safety and ethics of
gene therapy research among academic and industrial investigators.
«We are looking for a partnership,» says You, who holds a master's degree in molecular biology and biochemistry and worked in both cancer and
gene therapy research before joining the FBI.
Although gene therapy research has made great strides in recent years, it has yet to be widely deployed, and no CRISPR - edited genes have yet been tested for safety or efficacy in human clinical trials.
After this incident, and the death in 1999 of a young man in a clinical trial, apparently because of an immune reaction to the treatment,
gene therapy research grounds nearly to a halt.
But Savio Woo, a gene therapy researcher at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City and past president of the American Society of Gene Therapy, says that vigorous FDA oversight will
strengthen gene therapy research.
Alessandra Biffi, MD Director, Gene Therapy Program Dr. Biffi is an internationally
known gene therapy research leader from Milan, Italy.
Dr. Nussbaum said that he and ASHG 2003 President David Valle, M.D., of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine's Institute of Genetic Medicine, plan to work closely together during the span of their tenures to strengthen ties with the genomic and
gene therapy research communities.
Exciting gene therapy research aimed at correcting this condition (in dogs as a model for human disease) is currenty being conducted at the University of Pennsylvania.
What may sound like an ad for a futuristic tanning salon is actually a triumph
of gene therapy research: A tweaked gene turns the skin cells of albino mice a dark color that lasts for weeks.
The Food and Drug Administration immediately terminated all gene therapy trials at Penn, and the incident prompted federal regulators to establish new rules for
human gene therapy research.
In the past all
the gene therapy research that has been approved by regulatory bodies has been somatic, not germline, because of the potentially unpredictable and heritable effects of germline research.
Gene therapy research and better drug screening methods have benefited and will continue to show promise thanks to the human genome, too.
Decades of
gene therapy research has yielded a reasonably good carrier for genetic material, the adeno - associated virus (AAV).
That clearance would be a high - water mark for
gene therapy research, which suffered a major setback in 1999 with the death of a patient in a clinical trial for a liver disorder.