A New Orleans man’s history-making recovery is turning one family’s private battle into a statewide breakthrough for sickle cell patients.
Daniel Cressy, 23, has become the first person in Louisiana to be functionally cured of sickle cell disease through gene therapy, according to FOX 8. The milestone happened at Manning Family Children’s Hospital, where doctors used Cressy’s own stem cells, edited in a lab, to stop his body from producing the defective sickled cells that drive the disease.
For Cressy, the breakthrough is personal. He said sickle cell nearly cost him his dream of becoming a pilot, and the treatment process took nearly two years.
“This entire journey was the hardest thing I’ve been in my life, and the reason why I worked so hard with our organization, Privileged Pilots, is because I don’t want anybody else to have to experience the loneliness and the uncertainty and the hopelessness that I felt a couple of years ago,” Cressy said.
The moment is especially significant for Black communities. According to the CDC, sickle cell disease affects about 100,000 people in the U.S., and more than 90% are non-Hispanic Black or African American. The condition can cause severe pain crises, anemia, infections, organ damage, stroke and shortened life expectancy. In Louisiana alone, FOX 8 reports that around 3,000 people are living with sickle cell disease.
The medical breakthrough builds on a major national shift. In 2023, the FDA approved Casgevy and Lyfgenia, the first cell-based gene therapies for sickle cell disease. Casgevy also became the first FDA-approved treatment to use CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology. These therapies are designed to modify a patient’s blood stem cells, then return them to the body after chemotherapy preparation.
But access remains the biggest question. The treatments can cost millions, require specialized hospital care and may involve long recovery periods. The American Society of Hematology recently noted that gene therapy is powerful but still raises major cost-effectiveness concerns. Meanwhile, CMS has launched a Cell and Gene Therapy Access Model focused on helping Medicaid patients access these treatments through outcomes-based agreements.
Cressy said that equity is exactly why this moment matters.
“Someone’s ability to access treatment and potentially cure should not be defined by their zip code,” Cressy said. “People in Louisiana deserve the same opportunity as people anywhere else in this country. The people living with sickle cell disease are here. They are neighbors, our friends, our families.”
If more patients can access treatment closer to home, Cressy’s case could mark the beginning of a new era, one where sickle cell is no longer treated only as a lifelong burden, but as a disease with a real path toward freedom.
