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Ricki Lewis

Genetic Linkage

Hannah’s 2016: From Curling Toes to Gene Therapy

January 12, 2016
Tags: gene therapy, GAN, giant axonal neuropathy, Ricki Lewis, Lori Sames, rare disease
Hannah Sames will have gene therapy in March, after an 8-year effort from her family. Go Hannah!
Eleven-year-old Hannah Sames can still curl her toes, just barely. But time is running out.

If Hannah can move her toes for a few more weeks, until she becomes the fourth child in a clinical trial for gene transfer to treat giant axonal neuropathy (GAN), the disease might halt – she may even regain function, as mice did.

It’s been an 8-year wait. So Facebook friends call 2016 “Hannah’s year.”

The first sign that something was amiss  Read More 
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Hannah's Hair: Why Traits Matter

July 9, 2015
Tags: GAN, giant axonal neuropathy, gene therapy
Hannah Sames, age 7 (Dr. Wendy Josephs)
It’s a rarely acknowledged law of nature that whatever the texture of a little girl’s hair, she wants the opposite.

For years I wrapped my tangles around soup cans and around my head, squished it under irons, and subjected it to stinky straighteners. I’d often succeed, only to venture outside and have the hated curls spring up and out anew.

Eleven-year-old Hannah Sames also relaxes her curls. In fact, the pale kinks were the first thing Hannah’s parents, Lori and Matt, noticed when she was born. “Their other daughters, Madison, five, and Reagan, two, had stick-straight hair, as do Lori and Matt. When the birthing goop had dried, Hannah’s curls were odder still, weirdly dull, like the ‘before’ photograph in an ad for a hair conditioner,” I wrote in my gene therapy book. A more recent story about a little girl with curly hair but straight-haired siblings and parents in the Times of India is remarkably similar. Read More 
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A Little Girl with Giant Axons, a Deranged Cytoskeleton, and Someday Gene Therapy

May 16, 2013
Tags: GAN, gene therapy, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's Disease, The Forever Fix
Hannah, 7 years old (Dr. Wendy Josephs)
“When you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras.” So goes the mantra of first-year medical students. If a common disease is a horse and a rare disease a zebra, then giant axonal neuropathy (GAN), with only 50 or so recognized cases worldwide, is surely a unicorn.

Five years ago this week, 9-year-old Hannah Sames of Rexford, New York, who lives near me, received a diagnosis of GAN, a disease much like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. And this month, thanks in part to the herculean fundraising efforts of Hannah's Hope Fund (HHF), the cover and lead article of the Journal of Clinical Investigation reveal most of the story behind the devastating inherited disease, with repercussions that will reach far beyond the tiny GAN community. Read More 
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The “Valley of Death” Looms for 8 Kids With a Rare Disease

May 24, 2012
Tags: gene therapy, Hannah's Hope Fund, Valley of Death, Francis Collins, Johnny Depp, Kim Karsdashian, Steve Gray, Brad and Angelina, Bill Clinton, romney, obama, fda, Julie Roberts, Michael J. Fox, Christopher Reeve, giant axonal neuropathy, GAN
Hannah Sames, here with her dog Ginger, awaits gene therapy. (photo: Dr. Wendy Josephs)
The pharmaceutical industry rightly calls the stage in drug development between basic research and clinical trials the “Valley of Death.” This is when a potential treatment that’s worked in mice, monkeys, and the like catapults to a phase 1 clinical trial to assess safety. It’s rare.

Francis Collins, MD, PhD, director of the National Institutes of Health, calls this period “where projects go to die.” The reason: $.

Matthew Herper writes in Forbes that the cost of developing a new drug is $4-11 billion, not the $1 billion that Pharma often claims. Yet even that $1 billion is unimaginable, especially when you put a face on a rare disease and witness what the family goes through to leap to phase 1.

For me, that face belongs to 8-year-old Hannah Sames, of Rexford, New York. Read More 
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