ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, February 19, 1991                   TAG: 9102190278
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

GENE RECIPIENT RESPONDING, SAYS SCIENTIST

The first patient to be treated with gene therapy, a child suffering from an immune deficiency, is responding and growing more healthy, a researcher said Monday.

The patient, identified only as a 4-year-old girl, was injected last September with genetically altered cells designed to correct a deficiency of an enzyme essential to the immune system.

Dr. Michael Blaese, a National Institutes of Health scientist and a co-researcher in the experimental trial, said the child has received four infusions of cells that have been altered to contain a missing gene.

The gene causes the secretion of an enzyme called adenosine deaminase, or ADA. The child was born without this gene. Such children do not develop an immune system and usually die of infection by the age of 2. - Associated Press 


 by CNB