The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Friday approved two gene therapies for sickle cell disease, making one of them the first treatment in the United States based on the Nobel Prize-winning CRISPR gene editing technology.

Casgevy, developed by partners Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX.O) and CRISPR Therapeutics (CRSP.BN), and bluebird bio's (BLUE.O) Lyfgenia were approved for people aged 12 years and older.

For the first time in history, there’s hope that the debilitating illness known as sickle cell disease may be treatable — even cured.

The Food and Drug Administration announced Friday that two gene therapies for sickle cell disease have been approved following years of clinical trials.

Sickle cell disease is an inherited blood disorder caused by a mutated gene that affects hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the world’s first medicine based on CRISPR gene-editing technology, a groundbreaking treatment for sickle cell disease that delivers a potential cure for people born with the chronic and life-shortening blood disorder.

The new medicine, called Casgevy, is made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics. Its authorization is a scientific triumph for the technology that can efficiently and precisely repair DNA mutations — ushering in a new era of genetic medicines for inherited diseases.

Next week, hundreds of scientists from around the world will convene in London for an international summit on genome editing. That technology, which enables scientists to easily excise, alter, or replace specific sections of DNA, was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

Intellia Therapeutics Inc. reported encouraging early-stage study results for its Crispr gene-editing treatments, the latest sign that the pathbreaking technology could result in commercially available drugs in the coming years.

Intellia said Friday that one of its treatments, code-named NTLA-2002, significantly reduced levels of a protein that causes periodic attacks of swelling in six patients with a rare genetic disease called hereditary angioedema, or HAE.