In this week’s Medical Discovery News by UTMB’s David Niesel and Norbert Herzog: While sickle cell disease has long been studied, a recent discovery revealed that the disease significantly increases the levels of a molecule called sphingosine-1-phosphate, or S1P, which is generated by an enzyme called sphingosine kinase 1. Inhibiting this SphK1 enzyme was found to reduce the severity of sickle cell disease in mice, which will hopefully lead to new drugs that target SphK1 in order to treat sickle cell disease in humans.