Family’s gene therapy journey

Available for over a year

In this week’s episode of Health Check, we meet the Poulin family who live in Thailand. They tell us about their long quest to have their little girl Rylae-Ann diagnosed with an incredibly rare disease. And that’s just the beginning of the story. Rylae-Ann was fortunate enough to have gene therapy on a clinical trial in Taiwan – and it has transformed her life – but it’s not a treatment that’s available to everyone. Joining presenter Smitha Mundasad in the studio is family doctor Graham Easton, who’ll discuss why that’s the case – and what the risks are around this experimental treatment and the ethics of diagnosing rare conditions. We’ll also hear from a scientist in Vancouver on her fascinating research which has discovered a compound in a sea sponge that blocks Covid-19 in human cells in the lab. And we’ll have the latest on the virus in China, as concerns grow about its spread ahead of the Lunar New Year, and a rather unusual study about a very small trial in London involving scars being treated using transplanted hair. Presenter: Smitha Mundasad Producer: Gerry Holt and Tess Davidson