News

Cumbersome security procedures, rising airfares, and shrinking legroom have made commercial air travel difficult enough these days — even for healthy passengers. Imagine how much harder it is for patients with rare diseases who must get to doctors’ appointments or clinical trials that are hundreds of miles away from home.

Merosin-deficient muscular dystrophy, a type of congenital MD, might be diagnosed before birth using immunohistochemistry, an easy and quick lab test that looks for specific markers in cells from a mother’s placenta, according to a small study of pregnant women whose children are at risk for this disease. A misdiagnosis, however,…

Fulcrum Therapeutics announced it has acquired global rights to develop and potentially market losmapimod, an investigational treatment for facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD), and that it plans to open a Phase 2 clinical trial testing the compound’s safety and efficacy this year. The compound was initially developed by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for…

While federal funding for fiscal year 2020 has not been finalized, 79 members of Congress have vowed to back Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) research, patient support efforts and drug development. On its website, Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy (PPMD) heralded results of its annual bipartisan campaign, expressing optimism…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted orphan drug designation to pamrevlumab (FG-3019), FibroGen‘s potential anti-fibrosis treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) patients. Pamrevlumab is a human monoclonal antibody that blocks the activity of the connective tissue growth factor (CTGF), a protein involved in tissue scarring (fibrosis) linked…