Sickle Cell Patient Reveals Why She Is Volunteering For Landmark Gene-Editing Study
Victoria Gray is waiting patiently in a hospital room at the Sarah Cannon Research Institute in Nashville.
"It's a good time to get healed," she says. The 34-year-old from Forest, Miss., has struggled with sickle cell disease throughout her life.
Gray is at the hospital because she volunteered for one of the most anticipated medical experiments in decades: the first attempt to use the gene-editing technique CRISPR to treat a genetic disorder in the U.S.
She's the first patient ever to be publicly identified as being involved in such a study.
"I always had hoped that something will come along," Gray says in an exclusive interview with NPR. "It is just amazing how far things have come. I just want to kind of help bring awareness to this disease and let other people know that there is hope."
Sickle cell affects millions of people around the world. About 100,000 are in the U.S.,
