Aggregated News

Untitled Document

Researchers at UCLA announced today that they had cured 18 children who were born with the so-called Bubble Baby disease, a genetic disorder that leaves the young sufferers without a working immune system, putting them at risk of death from infections, even the common cold.

A team led by Dr. Donald Kohn, a stem cell researcher at the university’s Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research in Los Angeles, developed the breakthrough that cured 18 children who had adenosine deaminase (ADA)-deficient severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID).

“All of the children with SCID that I have treated in these stem cell clinical trials would have died in a year or less without this gene therapy, instead they are all thriving with fully functioning immune systems,” Kohn, a professor of pediatrics and of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics in the life sciences at UCLA, said in a statement.

There are several forms of SCID. About 15 percent of all SCID patients are ADA-deficient.

Kohn spent more than 30 years of research on finding the...