Making Gene Therapy Accessible

Doxzen and Lockwood discuss gene therapy. In the early 2000s, funders, pharmaceutical companies, and governments of donor countries who were reluctant to provide antiretroviral therapies (ART) to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) contended that ART was too expensive and too complex for developing countries' limited health infrastructures. But advocates persevered, and by 2020, 19 million people in Africa were benefiting from these life-saving drugs. As gene therapies make it possible to move beyond managing HIV to a functional cure, there is an imperative to ensure such transformative treatments are available in LMICs with the highest burden of disease. The key will be to set up policies now so gene therapies are developed through a collaborative process, thereby creating the infrastructure and support systems to address multiple diseases--rather than the single-target approach of traditional global health initiatives.