Simple explanation
In 2015 doctors here treated an infant with leukaemia using donor immune cells edited with TALENs, after everything else had failed. It was the first time gene-edited cells were given to a patient anywhere — years before CRISPR reached the clinic.
Go deeper
Great Ormond Street Hospital, with University College London, administered TALEN-edited allogeneic CAR-T cells to an infant with relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in 2015 under compassionate use — the first therapeutic use of gene-edited cells in a patient.
Sources
- Science Translational Medicine · 2017
Molecular remission of infant B-ALL after infusion of universal TALEN gene-edited CAR T cells ↗