Federal health advisers recommended Friday that gene therapy treatments for children with a severe immune deficiency be restricted to those who have no alternative. The Food and Drug Administration (news - web sites) convened the panel after a 3-year-old French boy became the third child to develop cancer after receiving gene therapy for treatment for X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency, or X-SCID. The FDA (news - web sites) had asked U.S. researchers doing similar work to put it on hold. Doctors and scientists on the advisory panel said they didn’t want to hold up the therapy for children who have already failed to respond to bone marrow transplants, an alternative treatment. But they noted that the number of such children — who under Friday’s recommendation would still be able to have experimental gene therapy — is very small.
