StemCell Therapy

SALT LAKE CITY - No doubt about it, Cinch Wight is going to be a cowboy just like his dad.

"He loves the dog and the horses and the cows," shared Cinch's dad, Alex Wight.

But it has been a wild ride for this young bronco. A mandatory newborn screening test at birth revealed Cinch had spinal muscular atrophy, or SMA.

"That was the first time I'd ever even heard the term and what it was, and so it was very scary," recalledCinch's mom, Amber Wight.

A neuromuscular disorder can paralyze a baby in the first few weeks of life.

"My first thought was he's never going to be able to ride broncs or anything like that," expressed Alex.

But just one day after Cinch was born, the FDA approved a new gene therapy.

"We were pretty excited to get a phone call from the department of health, you know, and have this baby here who we can use this treatment on after its approval," explained Dr. Russell Butterfield, a pediatric neurologist at University of Utah Health and Intermountain Primary Children's Hospital.

A critical gene in little Cinch was missing. Butterfield used an infusion to deliver a virus carrying a new copy of the gene into Cinch's nerve cells.

"It's like a delivery truck to deliver genes to where you want them to go. What that does do is it stops the disease right where it is," Butterfield explained.

Just a few years ago, most children born with SMA didn't make it to their second birthday. Now?

"The hardest is holding a baby in one hand and holding that drug in the other and really feeling the weight of that, and understanding that how different this child's life will be with this new medicine," Butterfield said.

It took a lot of courage for this family to get this far. That's why Alex wrote a book for his son, a true story about how real cowboys never give up.

"I wanted to let him know that no matter how hard it gets, as long as he keeps going, he'll be all right," shared Alex.

Doctors don't know if the one-time infusion will last a lifetime or will have to be repeated, and there could be a possible risk of inflammation to the liver that doctors will closely monitor.

The gene replacement therapy costs $2.1 million. Insurance paid for most of it, but Alex hopes sales from his children's book will help pay the rest. You can find the book, "A Cowboy and His Horse," on Amazon.

See the original post here:
Health Beat: Boy saved by groundbreaking gene replacement therapy - WFMZ Allentown

This entry was posted on November 24, 2020 at 9:53 am and is filed under Gene therapy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |