{"id":111548,"date":"2026-02-11T23:35:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T23:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/111548\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T23:35:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T23:35:09","slug":"new-jersey-man-pain-free-thanks-to-revolutionary-sickle-cell-treatment-at-childrens-hospital-of-philadelphia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/111548\/","title":{"rendered":"New Jersey man pain-free thanks to revolutionary sickle cell treatment at Children&#8217;s Hospital of Philadelphia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A better treatment for sickle cell disease, which strikes mainly people of color, is transforming medicine in Philadelphia, making this Black History Month especially meaningful for one local family.<\/p>\n<p>This is a new gene therapy that works with the patient&#8217;s own blood, which gets reprogrammed. It&#8217;s already changing one young man&#8217;s life.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/philadelphia\/news\/sickle-cell-disease-childrens-hospital-of-philadelphia\/\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Austin Louis<\/a>, 20, stays busy almost a year after getting a revolutionary treatment for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/philadelphia\/news\/sickle-cell-disease-cure-research\/\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">sickle cell disease<\/a>, a genetic blood disorder that causes excruciating pain.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It totally worked, I feel amazing,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>For the first time in his life, Louis can enjoy being outside in the cold, which triggered pain before the treatment.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I feel totally different,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s a brand new body. I feel like a new human.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Louis was the first patient at Children&#8217;s Hospital of Philadelphia \u2014 outside of a clinical trial \u2014   to get a new FDA-approved treatment.<\/p>\n<p>It involves collecting his stem cells, which are then manipulated with a gene editing technology called <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/crispr-jennifer-doudna-walter-isaacson-the-code-breaker\/\" data-invalid-url-rewritten-http=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">CRISPR<\/a> to normalize the blood.<\/p>\n<p>Last March, Louis was back at CHOP for the infusion of his reconstituted blood.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I totally feel relieved,&#8221; Louis said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>His parents, who moved the family from New York to South Jersey to be closer to CHOP, are relieved, too.<\/p>\n<p>Because sickle cell disease affects mainly people of color, this Black History Month is especially poignant for the family.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is history in the making,&#8221; Jennifer Louis, Austin Louis&#8217; mother, said. &#8220;I think it&#8217;s pretty amazing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also a big accomplishment for the team at CHOP, offering a novel new way of treating \u2014 and maybe even curing \u2014 sickle cell disease.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t get these very often in your career. So for me, wow, this is a big one,&#8221; said Dr. Alexis Thompson, chief of hematology at CHOP. &#8220;To be able to imagine something that is as extraordinary as gene therapy affecting a population that so often feels overlooked and is underserved by our health care system, it&#8217;s just so rewarding.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A growing number of patients have received the gene therapy, putting a future within reach where sickle cell disease is not such a devastating diagnosis.<\/p>\n<p>Austin Louis is glad to be living without pain for the first time in his life \u2013 and helping others along the way.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m paving the way for others,&#8221; he said. &#8220;So I feel great about that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\n          More from CBS News\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"content__tags__label\">In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A better treatment for sickle cell disease, which strikes mainly people of color, is transforming medicine in Philadelphia,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[47998,32056,53256,69,71,70,53255],"class_list":["post-111548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-black-history-month","tag-children039s-hospital-of-philadelphia","tag-crispr","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-sickle-cell-disease"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}