STAT+: Early findings in gene therapy death suggest CRISPR was not the cause

This post originally appeared on StatNews.

In February, four months after the first patient in the trial of a designer CRISPR therapy suddenly died, around 100 researchers gathered in a Tucson, Ariz., conference hall to hear investigators in the study walk through the results of an autopsy.

Few details had been made public about the death of Terry Horgan, a 27-year-old man born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, as the investigators worked to pinpoint a cause. There was dismay over his death and wide speculation. Some people wondered if he had even gotten the drug. Others feared that CRISPR-Cas9, a technology researchers hoped to deploy against many diseases, had played a role.

This post originally appeared on StatNews.