Currently browsing tag

disease, Page 2

Genetic glitch can predict response to new class of cancer drugs

By Julie Steenhuysen CHICAGO (Reuters) – Patients with colon and other cancers who have a specific defect in genes needed for DNA repair are far more likely to respond to a new class of drugs such as Merck & Co’s Keytruda, which enlist the immune system to attack tumors, a new study has shown. The small study, financed not by Big Pharma but by swimmers who raised charitable donations, tested Keytruda in patients with advanced colon and rectal cancers and found 92 percent of patients with the genetic defect had their disease controlled compared with 16 percent who did not carry the defect. The findings, announced on Friday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago, point to a new way to predict who will respond to the treatments, which are known as PD-1 inhibitors and can cost $150,000 a year.

FDA staff say Vertex CF combo works, unclear how

(Reuters) – Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc's combination of an experimental compound and an approved drug significantly improved lung function in cystic fibrosis patients with the most common genetic mutation underlying the disease, FDA staff said. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration staff reviewers, however, were not sure whether Vertex's already approved therapy, Kalydeco, had a positive effect alone. The FDA is trying to ask the panel if the evidence is enough to show that the combination's benefit is significantly better than that of a single component, RBC Capital analyst Michael Yee said. The FDA staff was satisfied with the safety profile of the combination, to be called Orkambi, according to documents released on Friday.

Official: Ebola survivor may have infected new Liberia case

MONROVIA, Liberia (AP) — A woman who tested positive for Ebola in Liberia last week is dating a survivor of the disease, a health official said Tuesday, offering a possible explanation for how she became the country’s first confirmed case in weeks.

Crowds attack Ebola facility, health workers in Guinea

Crowds destroyed an Ebola facility and attacked health workers in central Guinea on rumours that the Red Cross was planning to disinfect a school, a government spokesman said on Saturday. Red Cross teams in Guinea have been attacked on average 10 times a month over the past year, the organisation said this week, warning that the violence was hampering efforts to contain the disease. During the incident on Friday in the town of Faranah, around 400 km (250 miles) east of the capital Conakry, angry residents attacked an Ebola transit centre and set ablaze a vehicle belonging to medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres. A Red Cross burial team was also targeted and forced to flee, said Fodé Tass Sylla, spokesman for the government campaign against the disease.

UK nurse suffering from Ebola in critical condition: hospital

LONDON (Reuters) – The condition of a British nurse being treated for Ebola in a London hospital is critical after deteriorating over the last two days, the hospital said in a statement on Saturday. The Royal Free Hospital has been treating Pauline Cafferkey with blood plasma from an Ebola survivor and an experimental anti-viral drug. She was diagnosed with the disease last week after returning to Britain late on Dec. 28 from Sierra Leone, where she had been working. Cafferkey is the first person to have been diagnosed with Ebola in Britain. …