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Swiss physician Friedrich Miescher found a weak acid in the nuclei of white blood cells, but he actually was the first person to encounter DNA
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This is the first time discovered that a gene can be transferred from one cell to another.
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It is discovered that viruses too can be used as vectors to help deliver genes into the body.
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In 1953, Watson and Crick discovered that the DNA molecule is in the form of a double helix.
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In 1970, it was attempted for the first time to do gene therapy on a hope and the theray ended up being successful.
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A four-year old girl was the first ev gene therapy patient in 1990 at the NIH Clinical Center. She had ADA, a genetic disease which leaves a patient defenseless against infections. White blood cells were taken from her body, and the normal genes for making adenosine were inserted into them. The corrected cells were reinjected into her.
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The U.S. government provided scientists $58 million for gene therapy research. Many increases of $15-40 million dollars every year over the next four years were also provided.
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Andrew Gobea, a newborn baby had SCID deteced earlier by genetic screening, was treated through gene therapy and it was also successful.
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Jesse Gelsinger dies in a gene therapy clinical trial to treat his liver disease. His death caused major setbacks for gene therapy research in the United States.
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Moorfields Eye Hospital and University College London's Institute of Ophthalmology declared the world's first gene therapy trial for inherited retinal disease. The first operation was carried out on a 23 year-old male, Robert Johnson. The results of a small clinical trial in children were published in New England Journal of Medicine in April 2008.
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In 2009, the journal Science reported that researchers succeeded at stopping a fatal genetic disorder called ALD in two children using a lentivirus vector to deliver a correct version of ABCD1, the gene that is the one mutated in the disease..
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A paper by Komáromy deals with gene therapy for a form of achromatopsia in dogs. Achromatopsia, which is complete color blindness, is presented as an ideal model to develop gene therapy directed to cone photoreceptors. Cone function and day vision have been restored for at least about 33 months in two of the young dogs that have achromatopsia. However, the therapy was not as efficient for older dogs.
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In March 2014 researchers at the University of Pennsylvania said that 12 patients that had HIV were treated since 2009 in a trial with an altered virus with a rare mutation known to protect against HIV.
