Posted by Michael Wonder on 12 Jan 2020
At 16, she’s a pioneer in the fight to cure sickle cell disease
11 January 2020 - Helen Obando is the youngest person ever to get a gene therapy that scientists hope will cure the disease, which afflicts 100,000 Americans.
Helen Obando, a shy slip of a girl, lay curled in a hospital bed in June waiting for a bag of stem cells from her bone marrow, modified by gene therapy, to start dripping into her chest.
The hope was that the treatment would cure her of sickle cell disease, an inherited blood disorder that can cause excruciating pain, organ damage and early death.
