Sutimlimab shows promise for hard-to-treat, rare blood disorder
In a first-in-human clinical trial reported today in Blood, the investigational drug sutimlimab appeared to be effective in treating cold agglutinin disease, a rare chronic blood disorder for which there are currently no approved treatments. Cold agglutinin disease is caused by a malfunction in the immune system that causes antibodies - components of the immune system that are produced in the blood and help the body fight off disease - to mistakenly latch onto and kill red blood cells.
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Tumors backfire on chemotherapy
Some patients with breast cancer receive chemotherapy before the tumor is removed with surgery. This approach, called 'neoadjuvant' therapy, helps to reduce the size of the tumor to facilitate breast-conserving surgery, and can even eradicate the tumor, leaving few or no cancerous cells for the surgeon to remove. In those cases, the patients are very likely to remain cancer-free for life after surgery.
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Helping the anti-parasitic medicine go down
Scientists have developed a new way to deliver anti-parasitic medicines more efficiently. An international team, led by Professor Francisco Goycoolea from the University of Leeds and Dr Claudio Salomon from the Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina, and in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Münster, Germany, have developed a novel pharmaceutical formulation to administer triclabendazole - an anti-parasitic drug used to treat a type of flatworm infection - in billions of tiny capsules.
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Drug cocktail turns off the juice to cancer cells
A widely used diabetes medication combined with an antihypertensive drug specifically inhibits tumor growth - this was discovered by researchers from the University of Basel's Biozentrum two years ago. In a follow-up study, recently published in Cell Reports, the scientists report that this drug cocktail induces cancer cell death by switching off their energy supply.
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Statins overprescribed for primary prevention
Even healthy people who don't suffer from a cardiovascular disease are prescribed cholesterol-lowering drugs, known as statins, if they meet certain risk criteria. However, for years the use of statins for primary prevention has been hotly debated among experts. "Ultimately, this measure helps to prevent heart attacks or strokes in only a few cases. But all people who take statins are at risk of experiencing the side effects," says Milo Puhan, professor of epidemiology and public health at the University of Zurich.
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Cannabis-based compound may reduce seizures in children with epilepsy
Interest has been growing in the use of cannabinoids - the active chemicals in cannabis or marijuana - for the treatment of epilepsy in children. A recent Epilepsia analysis of relevant published studies indicates that this strategy looks promising. The analysis included four randomized controlled trials and 19 non-randomized studies, primarily involving cannabidiol, a particular type of cannabinoid that does not have psychoactive effects.
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CAR-T cell update: Therapy improves outcomes for patients with B-cell lymphoma
In their phase-2 study of tisagenlecleucel (marketed as KYMRIAH®), to be published on-line Dec. 1, 2018 in the New England Journal of Medicine, an international team of researchers evaluated 93 patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). They found that 52 percent of those patients responded favorably to the therapy. Forty percent had a complete response and 12 percent had a partial response.
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