Jeffrey Isner, Alan, and lab technician Cynthia Curry.

Gene therapy once promised to be the medical panacea of the 20th century, but attempts at introducing genes to treat those suffering from genetic disorders have by and large failed. Though successful in lab tests, in human patients the new gene does not stay "switched on" for long after it is introduced into the cells. And when the treated cells die, the new gene dies with them without incorporating itself into the rest of the body.

Dr. Jeffrey Isner saw one way to apply gene therapy that did not require the introduced gene to stay active- or even in the body- very long. In "Bypass Genes On Trial," Alan joins Isner in the OR as he injects a gene that makes new blood vessels grow into patients with blocked arteries. As Isner puts it, it's like letting nature perform bypass surgery.

	Alan meets heart patient and gene therapy recipient Joe Lennon.

The gene, injected directly into cells in the blood vessel walls, need only do its job for 2 to 4 weeks. That's plenty of time for new vessels to grow around old blockages. His process has proven successful with patients in danger of losing their leg due to poor circulation. Now Isner hopes to achieve the same results by injecting the gene into the damaged tissue of end-stage heart disease patients. In the wake of a highly publicized death in a different gene therapy trial, however, the FDA shut down Isner's study. His results, and the hopes of the desperately ill patients enrolled, have been indefinitely postponed.

Scientific American Frontiers is sad to report the death of Dr. Jeffrey Isner. More on his life's work

For more on this topic, see the web feature:
Hope for Gene Therapy