NIH, Gates Foundation launch effort to bring genetic cures to world’s poor

The NIH and the Gates Foundation are investing at least $200 million over the next four years toward developing gene therapies for sickle cell disease and HIV. Unlike many other attempts at such therapies, the focus will be to ensure that the treatments are affordable and available to resource-poor countries, especially in Africa. The move comes amid growing concern that new treatments that alter the underlying genetics of a disease will be prohibitively expensive — a gene therapy for a rare form of blindness, for instance, costs around $425,000 per eye. The initiative will aim to test any potential cures in the U.S. and countries in sub-Saharan Africa in the next seven to 10 years, and to then make such therapies available in the hardest-hit areas. “We aim to go big or go home,” NIH Director Francis Collins said in a statement.