Timeline of Gene and Cell Therapy

ASGCT was established in 1996 by Dr. George Stamatoyannopoulos, professor of medicine at the University of Washington's School of Medicine, and a group of the country's leading researchers in gene therapy. With more than 3,275 members in the United States and worldwide, today ASGCT is the largest association of individuals involved in gene and cell therapy research.

The concept of gene therapy was introduced in the late 1970s after the development of recombinant DNA technology. After the development of basic science and technology for gene transfer into patient's cells, the first gene therapy trial on humans was performed in 1990 by researchers at the National Institutes of Health. A four-year-old girl was treated for adenosine deaminase deficiency (ADA), a rare genetic disease in which children are born with severe immunodeficiency and are prone to repeated serious infections. Gene therapy has since been applied in clinical trials to treat a variety of diseases.