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NEWS:
'Very active' flu season continues as a second wave could be coming
The 2019-20 flu season continues to be more active than normal, with Influenza B the leading type of virus among patients nationwide. But patient visits were down compared to the previous week in much of the country, indicating the early Influenza B wave may reach a peak and start declining in the coming weeks, according to researchers at the Biocomplexity Institute at the University of Virginia who work in a research partnership with AccuWeather.
However, those researchers expect that eventually an Influenza A wave will arrive and cause considerable infections later in the season.
The percentage of visits for influenza-like illnesses (ILI) dropped over the last week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Nationwide, 3.2 percent of patient visits reported through the U.S. Outpatient Influenza-like Illness Surveillance Network (ILINet) were due to influenz
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Backed by Yale research, FDA approves new drug for advanced bladder cancer
The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to the drug enfortumab vedotin (EV) to treat adult patients with advanced urothelial or bladder cancer. The approval is the direct result of a multi-institutional clinical trial led by Yale Cancer Center (YCC) and Smilow Cancer Hospital researchers, which demonstrated EV is an effective treatment for this deadly disease.
“This is very exciting progress as we haven’t had another therapy option for patients whose urothelial or bladder cancer has progressed after chemotherapy or immunotherapy,” said Daniel P. Petrylak, M.D., professor of medicine (medical oncology) and urology and co-director of the Cancer Signaling Research Program at YCC. “To my knowledge, this is most active single drug in urothelial cancer.” Petrylak was the senior investigator of a phase II clinical trial that studied the efficacy of EV for patien
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Clinical Guideline on Disorders of Hepatic and Mesenteric Circulation
The American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) is pleased to announce the publication of a new ACG Clinical Guideline on Disorders of Hepatic and Mesenteric Circulation, which was published online in The American Journal of Gastroenterology.
Disorders of the mesenteric, portal, and hepatic veins and mesenteric and hepatic arteries have important clinical consequences and may lead to acute liver failure, chronic liver disease, noncirrhotic portal hypertension, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. These common disorders play an important role as precipitating factors for the development and progression of complications in patients with existing chronic liver diseases.
The guidelines offer evidence-based recommendations on the following clinical challenges: bleeding and thrombotic risk in cirrhosis, portal and mesenteric vein thrombosis in patients with and without cirrhosis, Budd-Chi
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Precigen Receives FDA Orphan Drug Designation for PRGN-3006 UltraCAR-T™ in Patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML)
Precigen, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company specializing in the development of innovative gene and cellular therapies to improve the lives of patients, announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted orphan drug designation (ODD) to PRGN-3006, a first-in-class investigational therapy using Precigen's non-viral UltraCAR-T™ therapeutic platform for patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML) (clinical trial identifier: NCT03927261). Precigen announced in Q3 2019 that it had completed enrollment for the first cohort of this clinical trial and expects an initial data readout in the second half of 2020.
The FDA grants ODD status to medicines intended for the treatment, diagnosis or prevention of rare diseases or disorders that affect fewer than 200,000 people in the US. Medicines that receive the ODD designation may qualify for a number of incentive
