On Feb. 17, 2021, Novartis announced that it had entered into a grant agreement with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation provided funding support for the discovery and development of a single-administration, in vivo gene therapy to cure sickle cell disease (SCD). The project brought together Novartis drug discovery and gene therapy expertise with the Gates Foundationﾒs charitable objectives to expand access to healthcare in low-resource settings in an effort to address this potentially life-threatening genetic disease.