Wounds of Kids With “Butterfly Disease” Healed by DNA Gel
31st March 2022
A gene-laced topical gel can heal the wounds of children with “butterfly disease” — a painful, potentially deadly disorder that makes the skin so fragile, even touching it can cause tears to form.
That makes me hurt just thinking about it.
Stanford University-led team has now developed an easy-to-apply topical gel to treat recessive dystrophic EB (RDEB), a form of butterfly disease that prevents the production of the skin-binding protein collagen VII.
The gel is a kind of gene therapy, which delivers working copies of the gene right to the site of a wound, allowing the skin to hold together as it heals.