Word: ada
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...science fiction to reality. It was Anderson who campaigned single-mindedly for the first approved test of the technology in 1990, who organized and supervised the trial, and who last year was able to announce that the subjects of the experiment, two young girls with a debilitating disorder called ADA deficiency, had been relieved of virtually all symptoms of the disease...
Having put his foot in the door, Anderson doggedly went on to win approval in 1990 for the historic and eventually successful gene-therapy trials of the two girls with ADA deficiency. The final committee vote was 16 to 1, the only opposition coming from Mulligan, who has been Anderson's most vociferous critic, and who called the proposal "bad science...
...Nelson Wivel, who is the head of the NIH's Office of Recombinant DNA Activities, defends the experiment. Anderson's detractors, he notes, "call him a zealot. But if it weren't for his zealotry, we probably wouldn't be doing gene therapy." Indeed, it was the ADA trial by Anderson, Blaese and Dr. Kenneth Culver that opened the floodgates for dozens of gene-therapy efforts...
...used in a landmark experiment three years ago. The disease the team targeted was severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), often called the bubble- boy disease because its most famous victim was encased in a plastic bubble during his short life to protect him from infection. One form of SCID called ADA deficiency is caused by a defect that blocks production of adenosine deaminase, a key enzyme; without it, important immune-system blood cells are immobilized...
...years ago, doctors began to treat patients with a form of bovine ADA; as a result they could survive outside a bubble, but some of them still tended to be sickly. A better treatment was needed, and Anderson thought he had the answer. In the world's first approved gene-therapy trial, his team extracted white blood cells from two young Ohio girls with the disease, inserted normal ADA genes into the cells, and reinjected them. The hope was that the blood cells would begin churning out enough natural ADA to boost the immune system measurably. They did. Last...