Patients cured of 2 nasty inherited blood diseases using gene editing and gene therapy

US and German scientists say they've cured a pair of nasty inherited blood diseases - beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease -  using the gene editing technique CRISPR-Cas9. The researchers treated two patients, one with each disease, using gene-edited stem cells from healthy donors. The edited cells were implanted into the patients, whose own blood cell production had been suppressed. A year later, they studied the patients' blood and bone marrow cells and found high levels of the edited versions. Both patients were now independent of the blood transfusions usually required to treat these diseases, and the patient with sickle cell disease no longer suffered from blockages in their blood vessels, one of the symptoms of that disease. Both beta thalassemia and sickle cell disease cause problems with the production of haemoglobin in blood cells, meaning oxygen can't be properly distributed around the body. Another, unrelated, study by US scientists found a gene therapy technique called post-transcriptional genetic silencing successfully boosted haemoglobin production in six sickle cell disease patients, and reduced or cleared symptoms of the disease.