News

The Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP), a branch of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), is recommending the use of a subcutaneous (under the skin) injection formulation of Remsima (infliximab) by people with ankylosing spondylitis and four other disorders. Celltrion Healthcare designed this new version…

The Alexion Charitable Foundation has awarded $1.1 million in grants to programs that support those with rare diseases during the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization recently announced. The grants will support activities that align with the foundation’s Rare Belonging focus, a set of funding priorities aimed at improving the…

Simponi (golimumab) — a TNF inhibitor — is an effective therapy for people with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and other chronic inflammatory conditions, regardless of pre-treatment with other TNF inhibitors, real-world data from Germany suggested. While the best results were seen in patients given Simponi as a first-line treatment, these findings…

Cosentyx (secukinumab) has been approved in the U.S. to treat people with active non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis (nr-axSpA), its developer, Novartis, has announced. The approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) follows a similar decision by the European Commission in April. In both the…

Nepexto, a biosimilar to Enbrel (etanercept), has been approved by the European Commission to treat ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and several other inflammatory disorders. The therapy, co-developed by Mylan and Lupin, is expected to be available to patients in the European Union in the second…

The Black Women’s Health Imperative (BWHI) recently created a Rare Disease Diversity Coalition focused on reducing racial disparities in the rare disease community. Getting a timely and accurate diagnosis for a disease that few people — sometimes even physicians — have heard of is challenging on its own merit.

Eli Lilly‘s Taltz (ixekizumab) has been approved in the U.S. to treat non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis (nr-axSpA) in people who have objective signs of inflammation. “This approval reflects Lilly’s continued growth and commitment to supporting rheumatologists and people with autoimmune conditions, including nr-axSpA,” Patrik Jonsson, senior vice president…

Around 2,000 patients across the U.K. with ankylosing spondylitis (AS), psoriatic arthritis, or chronic pain conditions such as fibromyalgia will take part in a study aimed at understanding how the COVID-19 lockdowns may be impacting their health. The charity Versus Arthritis and the British Society for Rheumatology…

While the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic won’t have much of an impact on cash available for new biotech startups, it has begun to cause delays in the development of gene therapies to treat a variety of rare diseases. That’s the consensus of industry experts who spoke in a May 26 webinar…

European authorities must step up efforts to screen babies for a multitude of genetic disorders, a panel of experts suggested during a May 14-15 online medical conference. The session was part of the 10th European Conference on Rare Diseases & Orphan Products (ECRD2020) — which was to have occurred…