As a longtime advocate for curing all
bleeding and clotting disorders (for the sake of this article I will be
limiting myself to hemophilia B), I have started wondering if we have spent
enough time thinking about the next steps as we are moving into the age of gene
therapy becoming a reality. I first want to define what I think a cure is for
you. I have always defined it as a single treatment that
provides the coagulation factor the person needs to a level that would fall within the normal range when tested for periodically over the life of the person
being treated. In other words, a once and you are done forever, vision of a
cure. Given where treatment started for me, I could make the case that
treatment today might seem like a cure with the availability of long lasting
clotting factors and prophylaxis treatments. But it surely does not meet
the first criteria of a cure, that being a single treatment.
But, now we have the promise of gene
therapy where a single treatment gives the patient the ability to produce the
clotting factor themselves. There are several outstanding questions to be
answered by way of clinical trials. They are all important questions to
be answered but several stand out if this is to meet my definition of a cure.
The first is the level of Factor IX to be produced and the other is
persistence of that level. Please do not get me wrong on these points, if
gene therapy can move a person from severe hemophilia B to a level where they
are considered to have mild hemophilia B and the level persist for years, this
would be a great step forward. I am only noting that it does not meet the
standard of a cure that I previously defined and only time will answer the
persistence question. If persistence of the clotting factor is not
forever, then what is the possibility or probability of there being another
vector available for gene insertion (note: the term vector is used to define a
virus that has been hallowed out of its normal internal biology to carry new
cell instructions to produce the clotting factor in a cell, currently liver
cells are targeted by these viruses. Once used the body's immune system
prevents additional uses of the same virus). All of these issues and
points have been thought about and discussed for several years now. But
there are several questions that do not get asked or discussed with any
frequency which is the topic of this blog.
The first concern is the possibility that
not everyone who is treated with gene therapy will achieve factor levels in the
normal clotting range. As noted before moving someone from the severe
form of hemophilia to the mild form, (which is only a function of the
percentage of clotting factor in their blood) would be a huge step forward in
treatment. But what if this advance could also imperial that individual
in the long term? We as a community have invested years of teaching
people about hemophilia and how to advocate for their needs in a medical
setting like the Emergency Room (ER). We know from this long record that people
with mild hemophilia are the hardest to reach because some do not know they have hemophilia, because they never had a problem. If they do know most of them do not
understand just how serious it can be for them in an ER because they do not
have a problem with hemophilia day to day. So let's say we treat a child at
age five who was born with severe hemophilia with gene therapy and they get a
result of a 40 % Factor IX level, which is good but not in the normal range, so
they would have mild hemophilia by definition. They never have another
issue until a car accident sends them to the ER at age 20, do we think that
this person would have any understanding of what hemophilia is, and what their
health care needs might be at that moment? We know today that the people
born with mild hemophilia are more likely to have a very negative outcome even
death when compared to their peers born with severe hemophilia in an ER setting.
This is just a function of having the right information and sharing it
with the medical professionals. It is the knowing how and what to
advocate for at that moment that can be determinate of the outcome. Are
we prepared to keep the educational efforts going over those fifteen years for
people who may not really see the need for keeping informed about hemophilia.
The reality is that even with a robust educational program we will see people
that had severe hemophilia die with mild hemophilia because of a lack of
knowledge and are we prepared to face that fact? I would hope the answer
to that question is no. So the question is how do we continue to provide
the educational sessions to a community that might not see the need to remain a
community day to day unlike now where there is a strong community. We
actually had this event where the hemophilia community was strong and active
until the introduction of clotting factor and the "golden age of
hemophilia" occurred, then we saw strong chapter organizations become a
shell of themselves because no one saw the need. That is until the early
1980 when HIV/AIDS woke us up to the fact that we continually need to
participate, educate and advocate for our own needs.
The next concern is generational, given
the genetic probability that each child born to a carrier of hemophilia has a
50/50 chance to either have hemophilia if they are male or to be a carrier if
they are female. All female children of a hemophiliac males will be
carriers themselves. It may be necessary to setup a genetic registry to
be passed from generation to generation about hemophilia in the family as we
move towards a cure. We know today that about 30-35% of all new
diagnosis's claim no family history and some additional testing shows some are
new mutations either to the child or the mother. However, we also know
that hemophilia can be hidden in a string of carriers across several
generations before a male shows up with hemophilia, strictly because of the
probability factor. In my own family there is a history but it jumped one
generation even though there were two males born to a carrier, neither have
hemophilia. If it had gone one more generation the possibility of anyone
knowing the history would have been very remote. Regardless of the factor
levels produced by gene therapy the underlying genetics of the individual will
not have changed so we may see more carrier offspring of men who had hemophilia
than in past generations. Due mostly to improved treatments and hopefully
avoidance of medical mishaps like HIV. Most will live a coagulation
normal life and may not have any understanding of what he is passing on to his
daughters, because he himself may well not have the information of what it is
to be a person with severe hemophilia.
The final question is persistence of gene
therapy and this maybe a question that only time will answer. How long
will gene therapy persist in the body, years, decades or forever? We know
today that the liver can heal itself over time after an infection like
Hepatitis C is treated and cured if the damage is not to extensive. So
using this information and hypothesizing that liver cells infected by the gene
therapy vector may well decrease over time causing a slow return to the
previously normal level of clotting factor, in my case that would be less than
1%. Which would mean a slow return to having a severe form of the clotting
disorder if no alternate vectors are available. So how do we prepare for
this possibility, where someone returns to being severe after years of not
needing treatment? Will we still have current day treatment available in
that future after decades of not needing them? Will the educational
programs and the foundations that provide them today still be around to inform
them about their hemophilia if this possibility should occur? How do we
prepare for something that might not occur but if it does could be a real
problem for everyone affected.
I want to be clear, I am not diminishing
the effect or casting doubt on gene therapy as a treatment, to the contrary I
have tried to get into several research programs for gene therapy because I
think it is important to find the answers to some of these questions for future
members of the hemophilia community. I also do not want to see some of
the same mistake made in the past repeated because we see a bright new future
without hemophilia. I recently started to wonder what happens to our
Hemophilia Treatment Centers (HTC) when we have a bunch of mild hemophiliac
running around that do not have problems day to day for years but might well
need their expertise in some future life-threatening event. If we as a
community do not see their value to us under this premise, than how do we plan
to maintain them over time for the eventuality that we do need them? I do
not have all or any of the answers to these questions. But I think it is
important to start to ask them so we as a community can have a conversations
about planning for this future.
