Booming sales of Benlysta (belimumab) to treat adults with active, autoantibody-positive systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) have led British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline to invest $139 million in its manufacturing plant in Rockville, Maryland. The facility, which will expand the company’s bulk substance production by nearly 50 percent, will produce a new subcutaneous, self-injectable form…
EpiVax has licensed its Tregitope technology — a new approach to harnessing the power of regulatory T-cells in autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) — to an undisclosed global pharmaceutical company. The license will allow the company to enhance its existing drug development strategy for autoimmune diseases…
We live in an age where simpler has become better, yet again. A quick Google search will pull up hundreds of articles on how to simplify life, from having children to raising your aging parents. I have yet to come across one that helps those os us with…
Galapagos will collaborate with Gilead on a Phase 2 trial evaluating the effectiveness and safety of filgotinib as a treatment for the skin disease cutaneous lupus erythematosus (CLE). Lupus is an autoimmune disease affecting many systems and organs, which means many symptoms are associated with it. CLE is a skin…
The Lupus Foundation of America has started an online platform where patients can provide information about their lives that researchers can use. It will help patients as well as researchers understand lupus better, the foundation said. The Research.forME Lupus Registry will collect patients’ observations about caregivers’ experiences as well. The information will…
Many systemic lupus erythematous (SLE) patients suffer from vocal disorder, or dysphonia, and should get voice therapy to improve the overall quality of their lives. So argues an article, “Voice disorder in systemic lupus erythematosus,” that recently appeared in the open-access journal PLOS One. Back in the 1950s, people with SLE…
Aurinia Pharmaceuticals’ product candidate voclosporin continues to show promise in patients with lupus nephritis (LN), according to the company. In addition to meeting complete and partial remission endpoints at 48 weeks of the trial, treatment with voclosporin also met secondary endpoints, such as reduction in speed of remission, disease…
A large Chinese cohort study has shown that anti-pentraxin 3 (PTX3) auto-antibodies were less prevalent in lupus nephritis patients with active disease than in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients without renal involvement, and was linked to less severe renal damage. These findings confirm the protective role of anti-PTX3 auto-antibodies in lupus nephritis. The…
A super-sensitive assay, capable of detecting minute amounts of the immune factor interferon-alpha, will aid physicians in diagnosing systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) as well as other autoimmune conditions linked to the factor. Interferon-alpha is an extremely potent molecule, and because of this, it is only present in tiny amounts in…
Monthly intravenous Cytoxan (cyclophosphamide) treatment was linked to a lower accumulation of lupus nephritis kidney damage than other induction therapies investigated in a study of Japanese patients. Findings indicated that a complete response to treatment at three months predicted a lower damage accumulation, prompting researchers to suggest that a sustained…