Ashanti desilva biography
Ashanti desilva biography wikipedia
Ashanti desilva today!
April 1, 2016 (Vol. 36, No. 7)
Co-Leader of the Seminal Study Says Team “Basically Showed That You Could Do This”
When she was just two days old, Ashanti DeSilva developed an infection.
It turned out to be the first of many infections that would baffle her parents and doctors until she turned 26 months old, when she was finally diagnosed with adenosine deaminase (ADA) deficiency, a form of severe combined immunodeficiency disease (SCID).
Like other children with the disorder, DeSilva was started on pegylated ADA (PEG-ADA), an enzyme therapy that emerged in the 1980s.
The treatment worked well enough for her to gain weight, develop a normal peripheral T-cell count, and experience fewer infections.
Ashanti desilva biography
Yet her immune deficiency persisted.
At the age of four years, DeSilva made history at 12:52 p.m. on September 14, 1990, as the first patient to undergo an approved application of gene therapy. She was part of a trial authorized by the FDA and the NIH’s Recombinant DNA Advisory C