A Symposium Tribute to Brian Sorrentino and Derek Persons

Dr. Brian Sorrentino was a childhood cancer survivor who grew up to save children throughout the world. For a quarter century, Dr. Sorrentino worked at St. Jude, where he served as director of Experimental Hematology since 2001. A prodigious researcher known for his brilliance, dedication and hard work, the New York native arrived at St. Jude in 1993 after spending five years at the National Institutes of Health. For years, Dr. Sorrentino worked to pursue a safer and more effective way to deliver gene therapy for infants with X-linked SCID (Severe Combined Immunodeficiency), also known as "bubble boy disease." Without treatment, most children with this rare immune disorder die within the first two years of life. Sorrentino and his team created a lentiviral vector that can insert a healthy copy of the  gene into a patient's blood-forming cells. Clinical study results show this gene therapy is safe and has dramatically improved the immune systems of infants with SCID.

Dr. Derek Persons is remembered by his colleagues as a dedicated researcher and a kind-hearted individual with a great sense of humor. Dr. Persons was a faculty member in Hematology from 1996 to 2014. Persons directed a successful research program in the field of gene therapy for sickle cell anemia and beta-thalassemia. He was named Outstanding New Investigator by the American Society of Gene Therapy in 2007. His research impacted the development of current gene therapy and gene editing techniques used today in the clinical trial for the treatment of people with sickle cell and beta thalassemia disease.