Gene Therapy Scare as Pioneer Patient Develops Leukaemia

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Byline: JAMES CHAPMAN

THE safety of pioneering gene therapy experiments was called into question last night as doctors revealed that a young patient has developed leukaemia.

The three-year-old boy is one of 15 children born with defective immune systems given the therapy in a joint exercise between two hospitals in Britain and France.

The treatment appeared to be going well until the child, who would have been otherwise condemned to life in a sterile plastic bubble, developed the cancer.

Initial investigations suggest his illness has been triggered by the treatment, which uses a geneticallymodified virus to cure a genetic defect.

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