A gene therapy developed by Stanford University has managed to heal the wounds of nine patients with epidermolysis bullosa, a rare genetic disease better known as ‘butterfly skin’.
The treated patients, all children or adolescents, suffered from a severe form of the disease. However, the treatment applied by drops on the own woundshas managed to heal lesions that had been open for years, as published by ‘Nature Medicine’.
Epidermolysis bullosa means that, from birth, children who suffer from it cannot synthesize a protein capable of hold the dermis and epidermis togethercausing small friction to cause injuries and sores on the child’s skinas well as in your mouth and digestive tract.
The cause of this disease is a defect in the COL7Al gene, so researchers have generated a gene therapy based on a modified herpes virus with healthy copies of this gene. When applying the drug, the cells begin to produce said protein.
As explained by dermatologist Peter Marinkovich in ‘Nature Medicine’, most of the patients’ wounds were kept closed for three months after receiving the treatment, while those in which it was not applied hardly had any healing. “This therapy tightens the skin and breaks the cycle of chronic wound opening and healing in patients.”
butterfly skin It is a rare and incurable genetic disease.which affects the skin and mucosal tissues, which become extremely fragile, so that patients suffer from open wounds, which leads to skin infections, fibrosis and, ultimately, an aggressive form of carcinoma.
Source: Lasexta
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