The biggest ques­tions fac­ing gene ther­a­py, the XLMTM com­mu­ni­ty, and Astel­las af­ter fourth pa­tient death

Af­ter three pa­tients died last year in an Astel­las gene ther­a­py tri­al, the com­pa­ny halt­ed the study and be­gan fig­ur­ing out how to safe­ly get the pro­gram back on track. They would, ex­ec­u­tives even­tu­al­ly ex­plained, cut the dose by more than half and in­sti­tute a bat­tery of oth­er mea­sures to try to pre­vent the same thing from hap­pen­ing again.

Then trag­i­cal­ly, Astel­las an­nounced this week that the first pa­tient to re­ceive the new reg­i­men had died, just weeks af­ter ad­min­is­tra­tion.

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