New Brain Gene Therapies Dramatic Success

[BillTre]

This Science magazine news article describes several recent successes and the technical advances that helped them along.

One important advance was finding better viruses that could pass the blood brain barrier and infect more specific sets of cells by screening through a bunch of samples from different places.
Smartly making use of the diversity of nature with a proper search.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

It definitely seems like gene therapy is finally beginning to deliver therapies that can be used in patients. Earlier this year, the first gene therapy procedure—modifying a patient's T-cells to help fight cancer—was approved by the FDA (and a second version was just recently approved). This week, research reported in Nature showed that gene therapy could help regenerate the skin of a seven-year-old boy suffering from a genetic disorder that caused him to lose 60% of his skin.

 

[BillTre]

Here (from Science mag news and the NY Times) are a couple more descriptions of the skin replacement therapy.