Daniel Cressy rang a bell on Monday (June 22). It meant his body had stopped fighting itself.
According to Fox 8 New Orleans, the 23-year-old Metairie native became the first person in Louisiana — and the Gulf South — to be functionally cured of sickle cell disease through gene therapy. He underwent the procedure at Manning Family Children's Hospital in New Orleans, and doctors say the disease is no longer active in his system.
The treatment reportedly took more than two years to complete, first delayed while waiting for approval under Louisiana's Medicaid program.
Once approved, doctors extracted Cressy's stem cells, sent them to a lab to be genetically edited so they would no longer produce the defective, crescent-shaped blood cells that cause the disease, and reintroduced them into his body after chemotherapy cleared his existing bone marrow. The drug alone reportedly cost $2.2 million.
Cressy described the toll the process took on him.
"This entire journey was the hardest thing I've been in my life, and the reason why I worked so hard with our organization, Privileged Pilots, is because I don't want anybody else to have to experience the loneliness and the uncertainty and the hopelessness that I felt a couple of years ago," he told the outlet.
He's already turning the experience into advocacy. Cressy founded a nonprofit, Privileged Pilots, to support others going through sickle cell treatment.
"Someone's ability to access treatment and potentially cure should not be defined by their zip code," Dr. Ben Watkins, a pediatric hematologist and oncologist at Manning Family Children's, said. ”People in Louisiana deserve the same opportunity as people anywhere else in this country. The people living with sickle cell disease are here. They are neighbors, our friends, our families."
Cressy's bell-ringing ceremony drew a crowd of state and local leaders, including Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, Congressman Troy Carter, and New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno.
Sickle cell disease disproportionately affects Black Americans and is the most common genetic blood disorder in the world. Louisiana has more cases per capita than any other state in the country, per Manning Family Children's Hospital.
Cressy is one of more than 100 patients nationwide who have been cured using the two FDA-approved gene therapies for sickle cell, Casgevy and Lyfgenia, according to Verite News. Five more Louisiana patients are currently undergoing the same treatment at Manning Family Children's.
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