News

Q&A With RARE-X Disease Data Platform Founder, Nicole Boice

The nonprofit RARE-X is creating an easily-accessible, centralized data hub for all rare disease patient data that can help researchers answer questions about existing disorders, discover new ones, and work toward finding treatments. It was spun out of the work that Nicole Boice, founder and chief engagement officer of…

FDA Designates CT103A, CAR T-cell Therapy, an Orphan Drug

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted orphan drug status to CT103A, an experimental CAR T-cell therapy that IASO Biotherapeutics and Innovent Biologics are developing to treat relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma. Orphan drug designation is given to therapies with a potential to substantially improve…

Xpovio-Kyprolis Combo Shows Good Response in Hard-to-treat Myeloma

Xpovio (selinexor) combined with Kyprolis (carfilzomib) and low-dose dexamethasone leads to strong and durable responses in heavily pretreated multiple myeloma patients, results from a Phase 1/2b trial show. The study, “Once weekly selinexor, carfilzomib and dexamethasone in carfilzomib non-refractory multiple myeloma patients,” was published…

Immune Therapy AO-176 Awarded FDA’s Orphan Drug Designation

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted orphan drug status to Arch Oncology‘s experimental immune-modulating therapy AO-176 as a potential treatment for relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma. This designation, given to therapies with the potential to improve care for conditions that affect fewer than 200,000 people…

Riney Foundation’s $40M Gift to Further Research at Dana-Farber

The Paula and Rodger Riney Foundation continues to support the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in its efforts to advance multiple myeloma research, this time with a $40 million grant. This gift — the largest single award to myeloma research in Dana-Farber’s history — brings the foundation’s donations to the institute…

Japan OKs Abecma as 1st CAR T-cell for Heavily Treated Myeloma

Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare has approved Abecma (idecabtagene vicleucel) as its first CAR T-cell therapy for adults with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma who received at least three prior therapies. This includes patients treated at least with one immunomodulatory drug (IMiD), one proteasome inhibitor…

Model May Better Classify Multiple Myeloma and Relapse Risks

A model that may better classify multiple myeloma (MM) using genetic sequence data from hundreds of patients has been developed. The model can identify specific genes and genetic alterations responsible for disease subtypes related to a risk of relapse, and it may contribute to the identification of targeted therapies,…