NEWS

04 November 2026

A clinical trial in three people tested a combination of gene-laden viruses and a drug.

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Mariana Lenharo Mariana Lenharo is a reporter for Nature in New York City.

A scan shows the brain of a man with epilepsy. A newly developed gene therapy targets locations in the brain that are the root of epileptic seizures. Credit: Allison Robbert/The Washington Post/Getty

Three people with epilepsy resistant to drug treatment saw the number of seizures they had per month fall by more than 90%, after gene-laden viruses were infused directly into their brains as part of an early-stage clinical trial 1 .

In each participant, the gene therapy was precisely targeted to a small patch of brain tissue that was the source of their seizures. The viruses carried a gene that makes neurons sensitive to a specific drug, which works like a dimmer switch for the therapy.…