Fourteen years from a lab discovery to a cure in his blood

Mohammad, 19, was born with broken instructions for making blood. Severe beta-thalassemia left him needing a transfusion every three weeks, and past 14, the one known cure — a stem-cell transplant — was too risky for him. Then, in May, doctors at Berlin’s Charité hospital did the textbook-impossible: they took his own blood stem cells, edited them with the CRISPR tool that won the 2020 Nobel Prize, and put 900 million of them back in. The edit switched on the fetal hemoglobin every baby makes in the womb — a version that carries oxygen just as well. Within 40 days his body was making it; today his hemoglobin is in the normal range and the transfusions are over. The CRISPR discoverer herself, Emmanuelle Charpentier, was there when he was treated. A young man who lived hospital to hospital is now planning vocational training.