Breakthrough gene therapy at WSU

FAIRBORN, Ohio (WDTN) - A local researcher helps find a cure for a rare disease.

Gene therapy is the key that unlocked treatment for a disorder that attacks the pancreas at a laboratory at Wright State University.

Dr. Kate Excoffon has been working to help some patients who have a rare gastrointestinal disease that attacks the pancreas.

"This disease is called lipoprotein lipase, so all the fat we take in, whether McDonald's or somewhere else, comes in intestine and fatty particles enter blood stream and have to be digested," said Dr. Excoffon.

Because these patients don't have the gene that digests fat, Dr. Excoffon found a way through gene therapy, to make a healthy genetic copy.

She uses a common virus, places the gene inside and inserts that into muscle tissue.  Once inside the muscle cells, the protein is created.

That process developed a drug that has been approved in Europe, providing life saving therapies for patients with all kinds of genetic diseases.

The name of the drug created by Dr. Excoffon through gene therapy is called Glybera and is the first human gene therapy approved outside of China.

Hopefully, it can lead to the approval of other similar therapies.