Louisiana’s first sickle cell gene therapy patient aims to fly

This story is the first in an occasional series following Louisiana’s first patients to receive gene therapy for sickle cell disease.

On the third floor of Manning Family Children’s Hospital in New Orleans last week, a spinning centrifuge wobbled and hummed next to Daniel Cressy’s bed.

From his neck, thin tubes snaked into the machine spinning his blood, separating out the stem cells doctors hope will help cure his sickle cell disease.

Later the same day, the bag of blood hanging from the top of the machine was on its way to Scotland, where the stem cells were scheduled to be genetically edited to reset his body’s switch for protection from the searing, unpredictable pain of his chronic disease.

Once those modified stem cells are reintroduced and take root in his bone marrow, Cressy ho