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More than 200 people had been treated with experimental CRISPR therapies, according to a March 10, 2023 report by Jessica Hamzelou in MIT Technology Review. That is a dated report, not a verified total for 2026: the available sources do not establish how many people have received CRISPR treatment since then or provide an independently audited breakdown.

What does “more than 200” mean?

The figure describes people treated with experimental CRISPR therapies as reported in March 2023. It should not be read as a current cumulative count, a count of people cured, or the number treated with one particular therapy. The available report citation does not establish the underlying inclusion criteria or a disease-by-disease breakdown.

A Singapore government consultation paper also cites the MIT Technology Review report, but that is a reference to the same report rather than independent confirmation. No later authoritative cumulative total is established by the sources cited here.

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What changed after the 2023 report?

On December 8, 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Casgevy for sickle cell disease in patients 12 years and older. The FDA described it as the first approved therapy to use CRISPR/Cas9 genome-editing technology. This is an important regulatory milestone, but an approval announcement and a clinical-trial cohort do not update the earlier worldwide treatment count.

The same FDA announcement approved Lyfgenia for the same age group and condition. Lyfgenia is a cell-based gene therapy that uses a lentiviral vector, not CRISPR, so it should not be included as a CRISPR therapy merely because it also modifies a patient’s cells.

How Casgevy works and what treatment involves

Casgevy edits a patient’s own hematopoietic, or blood-forming, stem cells. After collection, the cells are edited and infused back into the patient. They engraft in the bone marrow and increase fetal hemoglobin, which helps prevent red blood cells from sickling.

  1. The patient’s blood stem cells are collected.
  2. The cells are edited outside the body using CRISPR/Cas9.
  3. The patient receives myeloablative conditioning with high-dose chemotherapy before infusion.
  4. The edited cells are infused and engraft in the bone marrow; the FDA says recipients are followed in a long-term study.

What the FDA trial results do—and do not—show

In the FDA’s supporting Casgevy trial, 44 patients were treated. Of the 31 participants with sufficient follow-up to be evaluable, 29 achieved at least 12 consecutive months without severe vaso-occlusive crises during the 24-month follow-up period. That is a result for a defined trial endpoint and denominator—not a universal cure rate, nor evidence about the historical count of people treated worldwide.

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The FDA listed common effects including low platelet and white-cell counts, mouth sores, nausea, musculoskeletal and abdominal pain, vomiting, febrile neutropenia, headache, and itching. The intensive chemotherapy conditioning and long-term follow-up are part of the treatment context, not details captured by the headline’s aggregate figure.

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Why the headline is not one measure of CRISPR success

“Experimental CRISPR therapies” covers different diseases, editing approaches, delivery methods, and stages of clinical development. A total number treated cannot by itself tell a reader whether a therapy works, how safe it is, or how many patients received any one approach. The available sources provide no current aggregate breakdown by disease, therapy, or trial stage.

Casgevy’s later approval illustrates why dates and definitions matter: it is a specific FDA-approved treatment for a defined population, while the 2023 headline reports an aggregate of experimental therapies. Neither the FDA trial numbers nor the subsequent approval should be substituted for a current worldwide count.

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