A dying baby's parents were so desperate to cure her leukemia that they turned to a team of doctors with a completely untried, highly experimental treatment.
And it worked – for now. One-year-old Layla Richards is better, NBC News reported, and while it's too soon to say the gene editing they performed on her – modifying the body's cells in a very precise way – will keep her cancer in remission for long, the experiment did not make her any worse, they reported late Thursday.
The team at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London wasn't sure if their approach would work at all, but Layla's leukemia was very aggressive. She was so ill that her parents, Ashleigh and Lisa Richards, were ready to try anything.
"We asked the doctors to try anything for our daughter, even if it hadn't been tried before," Lisa Richards said.
Now, the team is preparing to tell a meeting of the American Society of Hematology next month about what appears to be a very successful surgery.
