Related Jobs
-
CTA - Belgium - Brussels
Job Type: Contract
Salary: Excellent rates
Location: Belgium - Brussels -
CRA I
Job Type: Permanent
Salary: Salary on application
Location: Belgium
New auto-inflammatory drug is 'highly effective'
18 Jun 2009
Clinical Research
A therapy which treats a rare infant form of auto-inflammatory disease has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration.
Ilaris was designed to treat cryopyrin-associated periodic syndrome (Caps) and achieved remission in more than 90 per cent of patients in a test carried out by developer Novartis.
The drug is the first treatment approved for patients as young as four years old suffering from forms of Caps.
Hal Hoffman, who worked with Novartis and is associate professor of pediatrics and medicine at University of California, said: "Until now, treatments for Caps patients have been limited to traditional inflammatory-disease medications that work by suppressing the entire immune system."
He added that Ilaris differs from other Caps treatments because it is only given every two months, which is a significant drop compared to other therapies.
In other Novartis news, the company recently completed the first batch of a new swine flu vaccine using its egg-based manufacturing technique.
