Cancer Horror Stories

JESSE GELSINGER: SACRIFICED TO GREED?

THE RACE TO CASH IN

In September 1990, Dr. W. French Anderson injected white blood cells into a four year-old girl who suffered from a genetically based immune deficiency. The cells had been altered to contain the gene that she lacked. With this action, he created that decade's Holy Grail of Medicine. The multi-billion dollar race to develop gene therapies for a wide range of disorders was on. Jim Wilson, a biologist at the University of Pennsylvania was determined to win that race.

Wilson founded Genovo Inc. in 1992,to develop new gene therapies. Within seven years the firm would have over $22 million in funding, roughly a quarter of which went to underwrite the Institute for Human Gene Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania. He would soon be recognized as a leader in genetic research. For Genovo, however, the question was where to concentrate its efforts.

Once a decision was made concerning the condition that would be targeted in their experiment, the next key decision was how to deliver the bio-engineered genes. Wilson and his collaborators thought the choice was obvious: the adenovirus, the same one that infects you when you get a cold.

The trouble was, in other gene experiments using the adenovirus as a carrier, subjects experienced serious side effects. Indeed, one experiment attempting to find a gene therapy for cystic fibrosis had to be cancelled when a patient's lungs became inflamed.

By 1993, Genovo was conducting experiments on mice with OTC. Therapies that work in mice, however, do not always work in humans. To get some indication of how safe a therapy might be in human subjects it must first be tested on higher species, specifically primates. Here, the results were less encouraging.

Safety studies were conducted on baboons and rhesus monkeys. All four of the monkeys developed severe inflammation of the liver, and blood clotting disorders when treated with the first version of the virus.

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