First Patient Begins Sickle Cell Gene Therapy That F.D.A. Approved – Generic English
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Last week, Kendric came prepared for the stem cell collection — he has spent many weeks in this hospital being treated for pain so severe that on his last visit, even morphine and oxycodone could not control it. He brought his special pillow with a Snoopy pillowcase that his grandmother gave him and his special Spider-Man blanket. And he had a goal.
“I want to be cured,” he said.
Bone marrow stem cells, the source of all the body’s red and white blood cells, are normally nestled in a person’s bone marrow. But Kendric’s doctors infused him with a drug, plerixafor, which pried them loose and let them float in his circulatory system.
To isolate the stem cells, staff members at the hospital inserted a catheter into a vein in Kendric...