The 2023 season will be crucial for the trajectory of Jimbo Fisher's tenure at Texas A&M, but Alabama, LSU and the rest are not the most significant battle in Fisher's life.
Fisher's son Ethan battles Fanconi anemia, an extremely rare blood disorder that affects around 30 children per year for which there is no known cure. Life expectancy for those affected is 28 years at the low end and 30 at the high end.
However, Jimbo shared at a recent booster event that scientists could be closing in on a cure.
Wow. Jimbo Fisher starts his speech to the Dallas A&M Club with some potentially amazing news.
— Carter Karels (@CarterKarels) May 18, 2023
He said that they learned that his son, Ethan, could possibly be cured of his Fanconi Anemia in 2-4 years. Said Ethan will start gene replacement therapy in June.
Ethan Fisher was diagnosed with FA in 2011 at age 6, which means the Fishers have lived the last 12 years hoping against hope for a cure, one that now may be on the way.
“The hardest part is knowing that it’s a waiting game,” Candi Fisher told USA Today in 2014. “We know that we can never ever let our guard down. We know that we can never relax. It’s always in the back of your mind, knowing this blood test day could be the day they say his numbers are dropping.”
The Fishers founded the Kidz 1st Fund to fight the disease. The foundation's website says it has raised $12 million for research at the University of Minnesota's Fanconi Anemia Comprehensive Care Program. Ethan's doctor, Margaret MacMillan, works out of the Minnesota clinic, and in 2021 Fisher told the Houston Chronicle that a cure has been within sights for "a few years."
“She said, ‘We have a chance to beat this thing and cure this thing,’” Fisher told the Chronicle. “I don’t know if I’ve ever heard greater words in my life.”
At the time, the only treatment for FA was a bone marrow transplant. A generation ago, only one in seven patients even survived bone marrow treatment to fight the disease. Those numbers have since risen to 90 percent.
However, the Minnesota clinic has worked with doctors at MIT to develop gene therapy, with Ethan Fisher as one of the first case studies. As MacMillan explained in 2021, a cure for Ethan Fisher could provide a pathway to a cure for others.
"They have Ethan’s cells, and they’re working to find the best regents to do gene therapy for Ethan," MacMillan told the paper. "This is called precision medicine. And it doesn’t get any more precise and spectacular than taking cells from an individual patient and saying, ‘How do we improve these cells?’
“The knowledge we gain from working on Ethan’s cells is going to help us with other Fanconi anemia patients, and it’s also going to help thousands of patients with other diseases, like sickle cell, immune deficiencies, children and adults with leukemia and cancer. … It’s a really ambitious journey not only to cure Fanconi anemia (but) the life-threatening diseases associated with it.”
“We accepted it in that God doesn’t put more on your plate than you can handle,” Jimbo said in 2014. “Everybody has issues in their life and we know this is a very serious one, but life goes on. It’s not going to control us. We’re going to control it. We look at it like an opponent. We’re gonna beat it.”