A new cure for sickle cell disease may be coming. Health advisers will review it next week

There soon may be a new cure for sickle cell disease that attacks the disorder at its genetic source. On Tuesday, advisers to the Food and Drug Administration will review a gene therapy for the inherited blood disorder, which mostly affects Black people in the U.S. If approved by the FDA, it would be the first therapy on the U.S. market based on CRISPR, a gene editing tool that won its inventors the Nobel Prize. Sickle cell disease afflicts millions of people worldwide, including about 100,000 in the U.S., and can cause excruciating pain, organ damage and other problems.