Researchers are working on ways to treat SCID patients who don't have a matched brother or sister. One of the goals is to avoid the problems that happen with stem cell transplant from parents and unrelated people, such as repeat transplants, incomplete cure of the immune system, exposure to chemotherapy, and graft versus host disease.
The idea behind gene transfer is to replace the broken gene by putting a piece of genetic material (DNA) that has the normal gene into the child's cells. Gene transfer can only be done if we know which gene is missing or broken in the patient. For SCID-X1, gene transfer has been done in the laboratory and in two previous clinical trials by inserting the normal gene into stem cells from bone marrow. The bone marrow is the "factory" inside the bones that creates blood and immune cells. So fixing the gene in the bone marrow stem cells should fix the immune problem, without giving chemotherapy and without risk of graft versus host disease, because the child's own cells are used, rather than another person's.
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NCT01129544 |
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Active, not recruiting |
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Boston Children’s Hospital |
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Started: May 2010 |
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Principal Investigator: Sung-Yun Pai, MD |
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Not recruiting |