Speaker 1: In the fall of two thousand seven, a twenty three
Speaker 1: year old man went to see a doctor in Padua,
Speaker 1: sitting near Venice in the north of Italy. He had
Speaker 1: a blood clot in his leg. The whole case was unusual.
Speaker 1: The man was young and healthy, and he didn't take drugs.
Speaker 1: It turns out that the patient, whose name is still
Speaker 1: a secret, had a genetic mutation in his d N
Speaker 1: A somebody so rare that it had actually never been
Speaker 1: seen before. Yeah, it made a big impression on the
Speaker 1: doctor who saw him that day. Dr Paolo Simione I
Speaker 1: immediately realized the importance of this same mutation in a
Speaker 1: completely different context. They therapy. Gene therapy is an emerging
Speaker 1: area of medicine generating a lot of excitement right now.
Speaker 1: If it works, it could transform the lives of people
Speaker 1: who suffer from thousands of different conditions caused by tiny
Speaker 1: abnormalities in their d NA. It turns out that young
Speaker 1: man in Padua had walked into Dr Simone's office with
Speaker 1: a possible cure. You see, his blood clotted too easily.
Speaker 1: A protein responsible for blood clotting was too active or supercharged.
Speaker 1: But about twenty six thousand people around the world suffer
Speaker 1: from an opposite condition, hemophilia B. When most of us
Speaker 1: bleed are blood naturally forms a clot so the bleeding stops.
Speaker 1: But this natural mechanism doesn't happen in people with severe
Speaker 1: hem ophelia, which means that even with a relatively minor injury,
Speaker 1: people with this condition could suffer from serious internal bleeding.
Speaker 1: He was Betty, Betty Vitty excited by this fact that
Speaker 1: this might be a real treatment for remostly. Indeed, hemophilia B,
Speaker 1: the disease that famously plagued European royal families for generations
Speaker 1: thanks to Paulo Simyonis discovery back in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: scientists have been working on a new treatment that is
Speaker 1: now being tested on patients with him ophilia B. And
Speaker 1: unlike the frequent hospital visits and infusions patients have had
Speaker 1: to put up with their whole lives, this is potentially
Speaker 1: a one time treatment. Hi. I'm Brad Stone and I'm Donnyloomfield,
Speaker 1: and this week on Decrypted, we're taking you to the
Speaker 1: frontiers of science where we're starting to see the first
Speaker 1: effective gene therapies, treatments that could rewrite the lives of
Speaker 1: people living with genetic disease. Will follow one patient, in particular,
Speaker 1: j Con Duros, on his journey through an experimental trial
Speaker 1: to effectively get rid of his hemophilia. The potential cures
Speaker 1: are setting the stage to one day upset the ten
Speaker 1: billion dollar hemophilia market and even the gigantic billion dollar
Speaker 1: rare disease market dominated by genetic conditions like hemophilia. A
Speaker 1: small number of companies are on the brink of transform
Speaker 1: into space. Will go inside the lab at one such
Speaker 1: startup to explain the biotech breakthrough and how it's changed
Speaker 1: Jay's life. Plus we'll take a look at the challenging
Speaker 1: road ahead. So, Donnie, you're a biotech reporter. In simple terms,
Speaker 1: let's explain to our listeners and frankly to me, what
Speaker 1: gene therapy actually is. Genes are the underlying code of life.
Speaker 1: Humans have about twenty thou genes in their DNA, and
Speaker 1: the different genes they produce different kinds of proteins, which
Speaker 1: turn out into all different kind of characteristics that show
Speaker 1: up in our body, like our hair color, eye color,
Speaker 1: or how likely we are to get breast cancer. By
Speaker 1: the same token, they can cause real problems when they're
Speaker 1: messed up. Or when we have a bad mutation or body.
Speaker 1: And sometimes people might be missing a particular gene, or
Speaker 1: they might have a mutation that means their bodies don't
Speaker 1: operate normally. So the ideas gene therapy and fix it.
Speaker 1: Are you replacing a gene. The idea is, let's give
Speaker 1: these people a good gene, properly functioning gene that allows
Speaker 1: them to effortlessly start producing the proteins that they need
Speaker 1: from having the good gene in their body. So, being
Speaker 1: a tech guy, I think about this like altering a
Speaker 1: little piece of computer code to make make the computer
Speaker 1: function differently. Is that's sort of right. So in this case,
Speaker 1: it's not altering a code, it's giving people a new code.
Speaker 1: And when you give people that new code, they can
Speaker 1: run that, and you can think about a cell almost
Speaker 1: like running a piece of software which ultimately turns into
Speaker 1: these proteins. Of course, there is a big difference. You
Speaker 1: can't just try out whatever kind of code you want
Speaker 1: on people because even a little change can make a
Speaker 1: huge difference. They could hurt someone, that could kill someone.
Speaker 1: You have to be super cautious. You know exactly what
Speaker 1: different code you're putting into someone's body. So this concept
Speaker 1: of gene therapy has been around for a while now, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it has gone mainstream. So far, there have been
Speaker 1: very few large trials and people, and most studies so
Speaker 1: far haven't gone right, they've failed. But recently these treatments
Speaker 1: have started making the way of real patients Like Jay.
Speaker 1: As soon as I had any knowledge of anything, I
Speaker 1: knew that I had humophilia because um it had been
Speaker 1: diagnosed before, like by the time I was born. So
Speaker 1: I actually techniques beak of not missing the factory nine.
Speaker 1: The factory nine my body creates is creates a lot
Speaker 1: of it, but it's misshapen. It doesn't work properly. Factor nine.
Speaker 1: We're going to hear a lot more about that today.
Speaker 1: It's a protein found in our blood if we get
Speaker 1: a cut and start bleeding, Factory nine is a key
Speaker 1: part of the system in our bodies that stops the bleeding.
Speaker 1: The fact that Jay's genes don't produce a functioning version
Speaker 1: of this protein has had a major impact on this life. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Jay grew up in Canada, Montreal and Toronto. He says,
Speaker 1: the childhood was pretty normal Montre. All days were just
Speaker 1: your typical sixties seventy family life. I guess the father working,
Speaker 1: mother homemaking, and kids doing what kids do. But my
Speaker 1: very earliest memories are definitely the Volkswagen Peace Love vans
Speaker 1: and uh that's sixties vibe. I think it's in my
Speaker 1: soul for sure about it. For Jay, everything was normal
Speaker 1: except a hemophilia. How would you explain him afiliate to
Speaker 1: people if you did believe it or not. I've never
Speaker 1: breach approached the topic. For me personally, I've avoided any
Speaker 1: talk about it or to the point of leaving a
Speaker 1: room if it's the discussions that got that way. As
Speaker 1: a kid, Jay's friends would play hockey in the street
Speaker 1: or wrestle for fun. But because of Jay's hemophilia, what
Speaker 1: would have been regular scray and bruises for one of
Speaker 1: his friends would mean Jay's mother rushing into the hospital.
Speaker 1: Those things, even as a kid, were terrifying to me.
Speaker 1: Those things, would, you know, end up putting you out
Speaker 1: of commission kind of for you know, going to school
Speaker 1: for a couple of weeks at a time or even more,
Speaker 1: and then you'd be limping for another month recovering. So
Speaker 1: so since you'd know what's gonna happen, those kind of
Speaker 1: injuries were, Yeah, they get head towards being kind of terrifying. Today,
Speaker 1: Jay is fifty three years old and he isn't playing
Speaker 1: hockey in the streets anymore. Umphilia has become something he
Speaker 1: learned to live with. He and his wife Yolanta run
Speaker 1: a bakery called Nougat in Kitchener, Ontario. Hi, Lacy, it
Speaker 1: is newgat bakery, J speaking, can I put it in
Speaker 1: order for tomorrow? Almonds blenched meal, T pounds one box almond.
Speaker 1: For years, Jay has managed a hemophilia with a portable
Speaker 1: kit keeps with him so we can give himself an
Speaker 1: infusion of the factor nine protein when he's worried about
Speaker 1: a bleed. Despite that, a single bump, even if properly treated,
Speaker 1: could still swell up with internal bleeding and turn into
Speaker 1: a medical nightmare. For example, but in just a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, I ended up. I was shoveling snow
Speaker 1: and this shovel cut the the ashphalts and the tip
Speaker 1: of the shovel, which rotated the handle sideways into my thigh.
Speaker 1: An everyday incident like this could be really dangerous for Jay.
Speaker 1: Knew that was going to cause a bruise for sure,
Speaker 1: so I actually went home and getting myself a treatment
Speaker 1: right away. That's a factor nine infusion. Kid. Jay keeps
Speaker 1: at home, and then ended up being in the hospital
Speaker 1: for ten days and I was kind of on on
Speaker 1: steady dose factor nine treatment for the next month. I think,
Speaker 1: you know doctor's orders, and um, well it's on crutches.
Speaker 1: I think for another three weeks after I got to
Speaker 1: the hospital, and then on a cane and for another
Speaker 1: three months, and I think there was another three months
Speaker 1: after that before you'd say I was back to the
Speaker 1: shape I was in before. I just can't imagine how
Speaker 1: disruptive to his life hemophilia has been. I would imagine
Speaker 1: Donnie that he he really leapt at the opportunity when
Speaker 1: doctors told him, uh, they could cure as hemophilia. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone was promising a cure. But a
Speaker 1: year ago Jay's doctor did tell him about an experimental
Speaker 1: trial with a company called Spark Therapeutics, and they're based
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia. The goal of the trial seemed outlandish. Spark
Speaker 1: was testing a new kind of therapy, like you said,
Speaker 1: that would require one visit to the hospital and maybe
Speaker 1: after just one visit, Jay would see the symptoms of
Speaker 1: his hemophilia start to disappear. Are you telling me that
Speaker 1: you can have a disease your whole life because of
Speaker 1: so much drama and you have to have these injections.
Speaker 1: They come with their own risks of infection of you know, viruses.
Speaker 1: But all of a sudden, you can walk into some buildings,
Speaker 1: sit in a chair, have someone put an intravenous need
Speaker 1: on you for maybe an hour forty five minutes to
Speaker 1: an hour, and drip a clear bag of liquid into
Speaker 1: you and that's it. Pulled the needle out and go home.
Speaker 1: After talking over with his wife, he designed to sign
Speaker 1: up and we said down and we talked about it,
Speaker 1: and I thought it was a great idea. Uh, there
Speaker 1: are no huge side effects on that. I'm like, you
Speaker 1: have nothing to lose. The word that comes into my mind,
Speaker 1: I don't want to even say it, but but you
Speaker 1: could say it's a it's a joke. The company behind
Speaker 1: the trial was called Spark Therapeutics. The company has been
Speaker 1: around for four years and was born when a man
Speaker 1: called Steve Altruler, then the CEO of the Children's Hospital
Speaker 1: of Philadelphia, asked a consultant, Jeff Marazzo, to come to
Speaker 1: the hospital and see did any of the hospital's research
Speaker 1: of commercial potential. And I ended up agreeing with Steve
Speaker 1: that I would spend about three months from in the
Speaker 1: halls of the Children's Hospital Philadelphia meeting with scientists and
Speaker 1: clinicians and people even working on health information technology. That's Jeff,
Speaker 1: who's now the CEO a Spark. And one of the
Speaker 1: last conversations I had was with a woman named Dr
Speaker 1: Katherine High. My name is Dr Cathy High, and I'm
Speaker 1: the president and chief Scientific officer of Spark Therapeutics. And
Speaker 1: our one hour conversation, which I had scheduled with her,
Speaker 1: ended up going about seven hours, and as they say,
Speaker 1: the rest is history. As it turns out, Jeff's timing
Speaker 1: couldn't have been better. I was getting cold calls from
Speaker 1: investors in my office and I didn't want to talk
Speaker 1: to investors. I wanted to do my work. And as
Speaker 1: I was sitting there talking to him, I was thinking, Wow,
Speaker 1: if somebody like this were involved, he could take those calls. Donny,
Speaker 1: you went to go meet Jeff and Cathy in Philadelphia
Speaker 1: the other week, right, Yeah. So, Sparks Labs and offices
Speaker 1: are in the University of Pennsylvania, medical building. It's a
Speaker 1: swanky tower of glass and steel. The bottles sit in
Speaker 1: the roller rack, and then there are rulers here, which
Speaker 1: turned it around. Okay. Kathy has been doing research in
Speaker 1: this area for years, not just in gene therapies, but
Speaker 1: in he ma ophelia specifically. Her earliest projects were looking
Speaker 1: into the proteins that make blood clotting possible, and she
Speaker 1: helped guide patients through the nineties, which was a devastating
Speaker 1: time when most team ophelia patients in the US contracted
Speaker 1: HIV because the factor therapy became infected with the virus
Speaker 1: was very intense term. We uh started to evaluate all
Speaker 1: the people in the clinic and it turned out that
Speaker 1: nearly everyone was positive, but we didn't know what it meant,
Speaker 1: and the and the virologists didn't know what it meant either.
Speaker 1: My first thoughts were, um, I don't remember too much
Speaker 1: because it's very is a panicky feeling because all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, here in this a group of people who
Speaker 1: were um being hunted down by this virus. Many of
Speaker 1: your visions died, many of many of my patients died
Speaker 1: during that time in the nineties and early two thousand's
Speaker 1: Cathy was involved in some of the very first hemophilia
Speaker 1: gene therapy trials. How did those therapies go well? Early on,
Speaker 1: some of the issues was where to actually try and
Speaker 1: deliver the gene. So Cathy tried to deliver the gene
Speaker 1: to muff soul, but it just kept making factor nine
Speaker 1: but it didn't get into the blood, so that wasn't helpful.
Speaker 1: And then they tried to get it into the liver,
Speaker 1: which is where they ended up going. But when they
Speaker 1: did that, the immune system responded. Were their negative side
Speaker 1: effects for the patients that were in those trials not significantly.
Speaker 1: So far these mafiliate trials have been really saved. So
Speaker 1: walk us through how this current trial works. What exactly
Speaker 1: is the treatment sparks testing. The basic idea here is
Speaker 1: you want to deliver a gene, which you can think
Speaker 1: of as like an instruction manual, to the right cells
Speaker 1: that they can make the right protein. And they do
Speaker 1: that all by needing to start with a transportation device.
Speaker 1: And in this case, they take a virus, which sounds
Speaker 1: really scared. The virus does not sound like something you
Speaker 1: want in your body. Yeah, that's right. But what they
Speaker 1: did was they found a harmless one. They found these
Speaker 1: naturally occurring harmless viruses, and you can think of them
Speaker 1: like you know biological transportation system. The idea is that
Speaker 1: they have this factory nine gene in them. They swarm
Speaker 1: into the body, their billions of them, they swim him
Speaker 1: through the blood, and their designs that they're gonna laser
Speaker 1: in and hone in on those liver cells, which is
Speaker 1: kind of the body's factory from making things. Is it
Speaker 1: too early right now to draw any conclusions about sparks trial. Well,
Speaker 1: they've actually had fairly encouraging results. It is small, but
Speaker 1: they've shown that in ten people they can create pretty
Speaker 1: high levels of fact or nine and that's the clotting
Speaker 1: thing that that these people need. And what they've been
Speaker 1: able to find was that nine out of ten people
Speaker 1: haven't had any bleeds since they took this therapy. Is
Speaker 1: Cathy confident that this will work? She is pretty confident.
Speaker 1: She told me that, you know, if you can do
Speaker 1: organ transplantation, she doesn't know why you can't do gene
Speaker 1: transplantation too. But there have been years of hard work
Speaker 1: and setbacks to get to this point. To be fair,
Speaker 1: there were many gene therapy trials in the decade between
Speaker 1: and two thousand and nine, and about as many failures.
Speaker 1: A young man, Jesse Gelsinger, died in once a trial
Speaker 1: run by a colleague of Kathy's at penn What do
Speaker 1: I remember when I found out about the death of
Speaker 1: Jesse Gelsinger? I do remember Kathy couldn't have known at
Speaker 1: the time, but Jesse's death would upend the gene therapy
Speaker 1: field for a generation. Suddenly investors and pharmaceutical companies didn't
Speaker 1: want to touch this controversial field. Because I had been
Speaker 1: to speak the night before at the Hemophilia Association of
Speaker 1: New Jersey and I had been talking about the work
Speaker 1: that we were doing in gene therapy. And the next morning,
Speaker 1: the director of the hemp Association of New Jersey called
Speaker 1: me because it was in the newspaper. It was a shock. Interesting.
Speaker 1: Jay says he actually takes comfort in the fact that
Speaker 1: SPARK is associated with the University of Pennsylvania, where Jesse died.
Speaker 1: If if there's ever a bunch of people to go with,
Speaker 1: it's the people who um got surprised in the past
Speaker 1: and learned the hardest lessons. The patient's taking part in
Speaker 1: Kathy's gene therapy studies were safe, but for years her
Speaker 1: research kept running into a different problem. The body's natural
Speaker 1: immune system would detect the cells carrying the new genes
Speaker 1: and wipe them out. Why did they do that? Did
Speaker 1: they identify it as a pathogen? Yeah, So what happened
Speaker 1: was that they found out that when you put in
Speaker 1: these virus like particles, maybe unsurprisingly, the body react. When
Speaker 1: we get the flu or we get some other kind
Speaker 1: of virus, our body will respond and it will see
Speaker 1: this as a potential threat. So the immune system came back,
Speaker 1: took out all those cells, left everything alone, else alone,
Speaker 1: and thought, hey, I did a great job on this.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't sound like that's what Kathy was hoping for. No,
Speaker 1: but then there was a breakthrough. Let's go back to
Speaker 1: that doctor in Patro Italy. We heard at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the show. The doctor had found a patient with
Speaker 1: a random mutation in the gene that makes the protein factorne.
Speaker 1: This mutation is really the tiniest change, a single letter
Speaker 1: of the genome mutated changed from a g d n A.
Speaker 1: That tiny change meets factor nine protein way more effective
Speaker 1: than normal. We still don't fully understand why, and that
Speaker 1: sounds like a potential game changer for someone like j
Speaker 1: with hemophilia B because the supercharge protein is more effective
Speaker 1: than normal, you need less of it, and having a
Speaker 1: smaller amount of gene therapy product those little things that
Speaker 1: are derived from viruses entering the body, that means there's
Speaker 1: less chance of triggering the immune system to attack the
Speaker 1: foreign elements, which is what killed the cells in Cathy's
Speaker 1: earlier trials. So I can't wait to hear did it work.
Speaker 1: So far, it's encouraging. Eat. Out of the ten men
Speaker 1: who have been infused in this study have not had
Speaker 1: an immune response, so two of them did. But Spark
Speaker 1: thinks that can basically control that kind of immune response,
Speaker 1: and it's used steroids to try and tamp down the
Speaker 1: body's immune system, which has worked out pretty well for
Speaker 1: at least one of those patients. The other one is
Speaker 1: still producing a pretty steady amount of factor nine. Okay,
Speaker 1: so far we've learned about this new therapy from a
Speaker 1: company called Spark to treat people with hemophilia. We've learned
Speaker 1: it's been pretty effective in the very early tests, and
Speaker 1: it gets around some roadblocks that have held back other
Speaker 1: gene therapies. So, Donnie, what's next so to move the
Speaker 1: therapy to a broader group of patients, Spark and its partner,
Speaker 1: the pharmaceutical giant Fightser will have to test it in
Speaker 1: final stage studies, and they're called Phase three. Sparks CEO
Speaker 1: Jeff Mrazzo says it's now in Fightser's hands as to
Speaker 1: when that trial will begin this quarter. We are also
Speaker 1: conducting a meeting with the FDA under what's called a
Speaker 1: breakthrough Therapy designation, which we received for there are human
Speaker 1: fill a B product candidate UM and those discussions, as
Speaker 1: well as subsequent internal discussions with Fish will that they
Speaker 1: will to me determine what steps they want to take
Speaker 1: for those bigger and longer trials will be necessary to
Speaker 1: make sure that the therapy works on a larger scale,
Speaker 1: that it's safe, and that it will actually continue lasting.
Speaker 1: So this is not a done deal, no, not by
Speaker 1: any means. Tons of therapies that go into these kind
Speaker 1: of trials can still fail to show widespread success or
Speaker 1: there could be some kind of dangerous sun effect that
Speaker 1: didn't show up before. So I'm really curious, Donnie, if
Speaker 1: this shows promise with with hemophilia B as as seems
Speaker 1: to be showing what kind of other diseases can we
Speaker 1: address with gene therapy? Yeah, so Spark is actually working
Speaker 1: right now. They've finished a phase three study looking at
Speaker 1: this rare form of blindness that's caused by a genetic defect,
Speaker 1: and they're actually moving towards trying to get that approved
Speaker 1: by the FDA. And there are other companies that are
Speaker 1: working on things like sickle cell disease. UM, there's a
Speaker 1: small group in China that's working on certain forms of cancer.
Speaker 1: Are there any ethical concerns that have slowed down the
Speaker 1: adoption of these techniques? I mean questions about whether we
Speaker 1: are you know, tinkering with uh, you know, mother nature
Speaker 1: or or the design of our bodies. Well, I think
Speaker 1: in this case, it's not such an ethical concern. For
Speaker 1: one thing, you're not changing people's genes. You're giving them
Speaker 1: a new one, and you're giving them one that will
Speaker 1: help them live just a healthier and better life. And
Speaker 1: in a sense, we're already tinkering with mother nature when
Speaker 1: we're giving people fact or nine, which is part of
Speaker 1: what's keeping them align in the first place. So just
Speaker 1: to be clear, they don't they can't pass on the
Speaker 1: new gene as if it was their their original gene, right,
Speaker 1: they don't. They doesn't. This treatment doesn't change their genetic makeup. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. So the basic idea here is it doesn't incorporate,
Speaker 1: It doesn't get into the the rest of the genome.
Speaker 1: It's not like it's going into any of the cells
Speaker 1: that like sperm or egg that would eventually get passed down. Okay,
Speaker 1: I got it, so um obviously and decrypted. We we
Speaker 1: deal with businesses and the technologies effect on businesses. So
Speaker 1: obviously treating hemophilia is a large lucrative market. What what
Speaker 1: do these gene therapies mean for healthcare and the businesses
Speaker 1: that are pursuing these kinds of cures. There are a
Speaker 1: number of companies like Shire and Nova Nordisk and Fiser itself,
Speaker 1: which makes a ton of money from selling therapies to
Speaker 1: hemophilia patients, and those therapies do a lot of good.
Speaker 1: But of course, if you had a gene therapy that
Speaker 1: would be a one time shot cure, then they would
Speaker 1: be losing a lot of market share. But it's an
Speaker 1: interesting point that they could end up undermining their own businesses. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that that's how these companies like
Speaker 1: to think about these things where you know they want
Speaker 1: to make the next generation, and in this case, the
Speaker 1: next generation is really the hope is a one time cure.
Speaker 1: But I think that it's fair to say we're not
Speaker 1: there yet and they're still planning on making billions of
Speaker 1: dollars from hum ahiliate patients for the foreseeable future. Are
Speaker 1: are there any other gene therapies like this that are
Speaker 1: close to being commercialized? Yeah? So pharm a giant Glaxow
Speaker 1: smith Klin actually has a gene therapy on the market
Speaker 1: now in Europe for um a super rare disease called
Speaker 1: bubble boy disease. That's the kind of common name for it.
Speaker 1: It's only approved in Europe and it costs more than
Speaker 1: six thousand dollars. But the idea is that it's a
Speaker 1: one time shot that could replace an enzyme therapy that
Speaker 1: costs like three dollars a year. So how excited should
Speaker 1: we be? Well, I think the science is super cool
Speaker 1: and it's super exciting and we are seeing results, but
Speaker 1: we shouldn't get ahead of ourselves either. We're still in
Speaker 1: the early days here, and even though there is at
Speaker 1: least you know, one patient that's out more than a
Speaker 1: year with this spark gene therapy. That's seeing it work
Speaker 1: for them. We still need to see what the long
Speaker 1: term effects are and how could work in other diseases.
Speaker 1: And I would imagine they're some regulatory hurdles as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, of course they're going to have to succeed
Speaker 1: in their final stage study, which is a real difficult
Speaker 1: hurl to get over, and of course when you're working
Speaker 1: with regulators, you know there's a big process ahead of them.
Speaker 1: But the hope is that for a rare disease, those
Speaker 1: things can move quickly and if they really prove that
Speaker 1: they work, that this thing can move forward before we
Speaker 1: wrap up or show today. What are Jay and his
Speaker 1: wife you Alanta, up to now? So when I met
Speaker 1: them in Philadelphia, Jay was about to have his appointment.
Speaker 1: He was going to find out how much factor nine
Speaker 1: was actually being active in his body, and they found
Speaker 1: out the next day that he had normal factor nine activity,
Speaker 1: which maybe doesn't sound great, but for someone like Jay,
Speaker 1: that's pretty amazing, and that's somewhere where you can really
Speaker 1: have a basically completely normal life. And it's showing. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're feeling a lot more free and Jay even feels
Speaker 1: a little reckless. Here's his wife Filanta, Because we always
Speaker 1: traveled with the with the package with the act or
Speaker 1: nine just in case if something happens every time when
Speaker 1: we were traveling, and this time it was the first
Speaker 1: time when he said maybe I should not take it.
Speaker 1: That's a huge change. That's like hundred eighty degree change
Speaker 1: degrees change in his behavior by saying that it's generally stupid.
Speaker 1: But we only have so much space in our luggage.
Speaker 1: So I was thinking, well, if we're going to New
Speaker 1: York in a few days, maybe you wanted to need
Speaker 1: some more space for her shopping. And from scientific point
Speaker 1: of view, yes, definitely, it was interesting. It was something
Speaker 1: and I said, okay, I have a GMO husband now.
Speaker 1: And that's it for this week's episode of Decrypted. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. We love to hear what you thought of
Speaker 1: this episode. Record a voice message and send it to
Speaker 1: us at Decrypted at Bloomberg dot net or I'm on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Donnie Bloomfield and I'm at brad Stone. If
Speaker 1: you haven't already, please subscribe to our show on iTunes
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a
Speaker 1: rating and a review. It really helps more listeners Finder show.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Pio Gukari, Liz Smith, and
Speaker 1: Magnus and Rickson. A special thanks to our reporter Shelley
Speaker 1: Hagen for help with today's show. Alc McCabe is head
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg Podcast. We'll see you next week.