News

Diacomit (stiripentol) is an effective add-on oral therapy to reduce the frequency and duration of seizures in patients with Dravet syndrome, a review study has found. The study, “Stiripentol: A Novel Antiseizure Medication for the Management of Dravet Syndrome,” was published in the journal…

The first patient has been enrolled in the BUTTERFLY study, which aims to characterize features of Dravet syndrome in children and adolescents. The announcement was made in a press release by Stoke Therapeutics, the company that is funding the study. BUTTERFLY is an observational study, which means…

Rare diseases deeply affect not only the children who experience them, but also their healthy brothers and sisters, as their parents can attest.    Two entries in November’s “Disorder: The Rare Disease Film Festival” will focus on what siblings go through, according to the San Francisco festival’s co-founder,…

Developing gene therapies for rare diseases is one thing. Creating gene-edited “designer babies” is quite another. German legal expert Timo Minssen outlined the potentially explosive ethical landmines surrounding such issues during a recent talk at the New York Genome Center. Minssen directs the Center for Advanced Studies in…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted orphan drug designation — allowing various development incentives — to Stoke Therapeutics’ STK-001 for the treatment of Dravet syndrome. The company now intends to test STK-001 in a Phase 1/2 clinical study in the first half of…

The Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP), an arm of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), is recommending approval of GW Pharmaceutical’s oral cannabidiol solution as an add-on to clobazam (Onfi and Sympazan) for treating seizures in children and adults, ages 2 and older, with Dravet syndrome or  Lennox-Gastaut syndrome. The…

Imagine living your whole life with a painful disease so rare that only 25 others worldwide have what you have. And that you’re one of just six such people who’ve made it to adulthood. Neena Nizar doesn’t have to imagine. The 41-year-old English professor at Metro Community College in Elkhorn,…

Planning for a Phase 1 clinical trial to explore the safety and tolerability of escalating doses of EPX-100, a potential oral treatment for Dravet syndrome, is underway, Epygenix Therapeutics, the investigative therapy’s developer, announced. After completion of this first study in healthy individuals, the company plans to initiate…

Oklahoma suffers more tornadoes than any other state, has the highest per-capita rate of women in U.S. prisons, ranks second in the number of teen births per 100,000 teenage girls, and has the nation’s third-highest rate of uninsured residents — with 13.9% of all Oklahomans lacking health coverage. As if…

Screening newborns for genetic diseases with treatments that can prevent crippling or deadly progression, especially for rare disorders, has a ways to go in the United States. No state today tests for all 35 disorders recommended under a federal screening panel, and even in those that come close, rare…