A patient with sickle cell disease died while participating in a clinical trial of a CRISPR-based treatment from Beam Therapeutics, threatening to overshadow early signals of effective gene editing.
Beam said the patient succumbed to respiratory failure, deemed to be “likely caused” by a regimen of chemotherapy required to prepare the patient for BEAM-101, a treatment that uses the company’s new, more precise form of CRISPR gene editing called base editing.
The patient who died was one of six participants with sickle cell disease treated to date in Beam’s first clinical trial. The death occurred four months after the patient received BEAM-101, the company said.
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