Sapphira Mohammed, Copy Editor
Fourth-year biology student William Thomas has been conducting research at VCU on curing sickle cell disease, the very same disease he has lived with his entire life.
Thomas has had his eyes set on becoming a doctor since he was a kid. Fascinated by his own doctors, Thomas wanted to learn more about how his body worked when going to appointments for his sickle cell.
Now, Thomas is in the business of figuring out how all bodies handle sickle cells in order to cure himself and other minorities who are disproportionately affected by the chronic illness.
Sickle cell disease is a condition that causes red blood cells to become rigid and deform into a crescent, or sickle shape, according to the CDC. Sickled cells die early and often become lodged in small blood vessels, restricting blood flow, which can lead to serious health problems such as pneumonia, heart disease and strokes.
Thomas was diagnosed with the illness at birth, but only reckoned with what that meant when his high school science teacher taught his class about the disease. At that point Thomas began falling in love with the subject. However, his interest in research came during his freshman year in college after he was hospitalized for sickle cell complications.
“That’s when I was like ‘okay, this is something that I need to address, because I don’t want to be put in this position anymore,’” Thomas said.
During his junior year, Thomas worked in medicinal chemistry professor Martin Safo’s lab, which focuses on developing promising molecules that target hemoglobin for treating sickle cell, according to VCU.
Safo has been working on treating sickle cell for over 30 years. He said Thomas was a hard worker as a research student and impressed him in their first few meetings.
“When I have people interested in my lab, I sit them down, talk to them on what I’m doing, my expectation and then I ask them, ‘Do you have any questions?’ [Thomas] really had done his homework and [was] able to articulate several questions concerning the research I’m doing, especially with sickle cell disease,” Safo said. “So I was very, very much impressed. I mean right from the beginning.”
During Thomas’ time in Safo’s lab, he worked on stabilizing a potential affordable drug for sickle cell that would help prevent the sickling of red blood cells. Safo’s lab has successfully finished all of their studies of the drug and will be going into clinical studies in the near future, with the help of Thomas’s research, Safo said.
There is a drug on the current market called Hydroxyurea that is known to reduce sickling of the red blood cells — however, the medication can either be ineffective for some patients, according to Thomas. It can cause severe side effects on others such as leg wounds, blood in urine or breathing problems.
Genetic cures are being explored, such as bone marrow transplants or gene therapy, but are expensive. Bone marrow transplants can cost over $1 million, and gene therapy can cost over $3 million.
Sickle cell disproportionately affects Black people — more than 90% of patients are Black. One of 365 Black babies born in the United States are diagnosed with the illness, and one in 13 are born with the sickle cell trait, according to the CDC.
3-9% of sickle cell patients are Hispanic or Latino, and one of every 16,300 Hispanic American babies are diagnosed with sickle cell disease.
While the estimate of total sickle cell patients in America in 2010 was about 100,000, there is no approximate number of patients known in the country today, nor in the state of Virginia, which Thomas said he believes correlates with race.
“It’s underfunded because it affects Black people,” Thomas said.
Disproportionally, Black people do not receive the same level of care — even outside sickle cell cases, according to Thomas. Black mothers especially face significant disparities in health care settings.
“That’s because we don’t have people in the health care fields that look like us and that know the things that we go through on a daily basis,” Thomas said.
Thomas is a member of Black Men in Medicine at VCU, a club founded in 2013 which works to band Black men from all parts of the medicine field together to work together in breaking down barriers, according to their vice president Jaja Malcolm O’Neil.
“It’s important [to have representation] because not only does it help show an accurate representation of our population, but also for helping to build that relationship with patients, that’s really important,” O’Neil said. “Having someone who looks like you or knows your background or can understand where you’re coming from is really important when helping patients and making them feel comfortable.”
Thomas is also a board member of VCU’s Pre-Health, Related Interests, & Mentoring Experiences, or P.R.I.M.E. Its mission is to help pre-health students with finding resources, according to their president Oniya Smith.
“[Thomas] is great. He’s an amazing member. He’s a part of the outreach team right now, so he does great with tabling, resources and just getting the word out to other schools as well as other organizations about VCU P.R.I.M.E’s mission and our events,” Smith said.
Thomas said that being in P.R.I.M.E has also helped him improve his communication skills and prepared him for his future in health care after college.
“I want to uplift people and I want to offer support where it’s needed as well,” Thomas said. “It’s always important to give back, and that’s something that I highlight a lot in my life, cause I’ve had people that give to me a lot.”
After graduating this May, Thomas plans to take some gap years before going to medical school where he will focus on researching lymphocytes, or immune cells that can fight off cancers like lymphoma, in a research lab at Washington University in his hometown of St. Louis, Missouri.
His overall goal in research is to improve approaches to gene therapy so it can be made more widely available to patients.
“When you don’t have people that look like you that face those same problems, it creates a sort of mistrust in the health care system, or amplifies what’s already there,” Thomas said. “So I really think it is important to have someone that knows the experience or gravity of what you’re going through because that, in my opinion, that makes it so that person is able to advocate for you more.”