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Novartis and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are joining forces to discover and develop a gene therapy to cure sickle cell disease with a one-step, one-time treatment that is

affordable and simple enough to treat patients anywhere in the world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa where resources may be scarce but disease prevalence is high. The three-year

collaboration, announced Wednesday, has initial funding of $7.28 million. Current gene therapy approaches being developed for sickle cell disease are complex, enormously expensive, and

bespoke, crafting treatments for individual patients one at a time. The collaboration aims to instead create an off-the-shelf treatment that bypasses many of the steps of current approaches,

in which cells are removed and processed outside the body before being returned to patients. STAT+ Exclusive Story Already have an account? Log in THIS ARTICLE IS EXCLUSIVE TO STAT+

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