At 3 months old, Victoria Gray wouldn’t stop crying. Blood tests brought devastating news: she had sickle cell disease, a genetic blood disorder that blocks blood flow and oxygen delivery to the body. It causes unbearable pain that Victoria describes as “getting struck by lightning and hit by a truck.”

As she got older, Victoria felt increasingly isolated and hopeless. She often spent her kids’ birthdays at the hospital, where she received regular blood transfusions. “I felt like I was cheating my children out of their childhood,” she says. “I didn’t look forward to a long life. I stopped dreaming. I gave up on school or doing anything … I thought that I was close to dying.”

But at age 34, Victoria got a new chance at life. 

In 2019, she became the first person in the world to receive a revolutionary new treatment for the disease — a gene-editing tool called CRISPR discovered in a UC Berkeley lab, which would go on to win a Nobel Prize just one year later. 

“It felt like an answered prayer for me,” says Victoria. “CRISPR not only freed me, it freed my children.” 

This is the third episode of our latest Berkeley Voices season, featuring UC Berkeley scholars working on life-changing research — and the people whose lives are changed by it.

Listen to the episode and read the transcript on UC Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts/berkeley-voices).

Music by Blue Dot Sessions.

Photo courtesy of Victoria Gray; illustration by Neil Freese/UC Berkeley.

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