Warrior Spirit: An Interview with Victoria Gray, Sickle Cell Pioneer
        
            By Victoria Gray, Uduak Thomas, and Kevin Davies, 
                The CRISPR Journal
             | 02. 14. 2024
        
                    
                                    
                    
                                                                                                                                    
                                                                            
                              
    
  
  
    
  
          
  
      
    
            In July 2019, medical staff in Nashville dosed the first U.S. patient in the exa-cel therapy trial, sponsored by Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics. That first patient was Victoria Gray, a mother of four from Forest, Mississippi, a sickle cell warrior and a true pioneer in the world of CRISPR and cell therapy. That process began 4.5 years ago. Today, she is healthy, enjoying a pain-free life with her family and friends—as are dozens of other sickle cell patients who participated in the trial. In December 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Casgevy, setting a list price of $2.2 million for the one-time therapy. In January 2024, Executive Editor Kevin Davies and GEN Senior Editor Uduak Thomas interviewed Gray for “The State of Cell and Gene Therapy,” a GEN virtual summit that was broadcast on January 24, 2024.
(This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.)
Victoria, how are you feeling today?
Gray: I'm still doing good—way better than I expected in the beginning. So life is good for me right now.
What can you...
 
       
 
  
 
    
    
  
   
                        
                                                                                
                 
                                                    
                            
                                  
    
  
  
      Related Articles
    
  
          
  
  
  
  
  
  
      
            
                  
  
      
    
    
    
    
            Paula Amato & Shoukhrat Mitalipov
[OHSU News/Christine Torres Hicks]
On September 30th, a team of 21 scientists from Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) published a significant paper in Nature Communications, with a scientifically accurate but, to many, somewhat abstruse headline:
Induction of experimental cell division to generate cells with reduced chromosome ploidy
The lead authors were Shoukhrat Mitalipov, recently described here as “a push-the-envelope biologist,” and his long-term colleague Paula Amato. (Recall that in July the pair had co-published with...
 
       
 
 
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Pam Belluck,  The New York Times | 10.17.2025
                                                        
     
    
    
            Before dawn on a March morning, Doug Whitney walked into a medical center 2,000 miles from home, about to transform from a mild-mannered, bespectacled retiree into a superhuman research subject.
First, a doctor inserted a needle into his back to...
 
       
 
 
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Elizabeth Dwoskin and Zoeann Murphy,  The Washington Post | 10.01.2025
                                                        
     
    
    
            MEXICO CITY — When she walked into an IVF clinic in June, Alin Quintana knew it would be the last time she would try to conceive a child. She had prepared herself spiritually and mentally for the visit: She had traveled to a nearby...
 
       
 
 
  
      
    
    
                
                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
                                                           By Rob Stein,  NPR | 09.30.2025
                                                        
     
    
    
            Scientists have created human eggs containing genes from adult skin cells, a step that someday could help women who are infertile or gay couples have babies with their own genes but would also raise difficult ethical, social and legal issues...