News

A software known as “DriveSafe DriveAware” can help evaluate if patients with Huntington’s disease still have the cognitive fitness needed to safely drive a car, a pilot study shows. However, to increase the accuracy of the software some improvements should be made to better fit the profile of patients…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a letter of support encouraging sRNAlytics to further develop its sRNA-FIND platform for discovering and monitoring variants of small RNA molecules that may work as biomarkers for tracking progression of Huntington’s disease decades before symptom onset. In addition, these biomarkers may…

Madeline Collin, a 24-year-old activist with Gaucher disease, worries that patients like her will suffer deeply if Britain leaves the European Union (EU), as scheduled, at the end of this month. Collin is an expert on the subject. For her University of Bathdissertation, she analyzed Brexit’s long-term impact…

Analysis of behavior patterns in genetically engineered mini pigs could be a valuable tool for assessing Huntington’s disease symptoms, a study shows. This new animal model may help researchers further explore the progression of the disease, as well as daily symptom fluctuations and new strategies to manage them. The…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted orphan drug designation to MP101, an investigational mitochondrial-targeted neuroprotective agent, to treat Huntington’s disease. Mitochon Pharmaceuticals, the therapy’s developer, expects to begin a Phase 1 clinical trial in healthy volunteers in 2019 and move to Phase 2 studies in 2020. “We are…

With each new advance in medicine comes ethical dilemmas, from fertility treatments and newborn screening, to vaccinations, gene therapies and euthanasia. But rare diseases and the expensive therapies needed to treat them — particularly in an age of scarce economic resources — almost always entail “tragic choices,” warned Avraham Steinberg,…

Encouraging new preclinical data on AMT-130, uniQure’s experimental gene therapy candidate for Huntington’s disease, were presented at the 14th Annual Huntington’s disease Therapeutics Conference. The conference was organized by the CHDI Foundation and held in Palm Springs, California, Feb. 25–28. “Findings from our preclinical studies illustrate…

Rare diseases affect about 30 million Americans — roughly the same number as those with type 2 diabetes. Yet only 5 percent of the estimated 7,000 rare diseases known to science have cures or treatments approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Raising awareness of those illnesses and highlighting…

Researchers have developed a miniature device that can measure the length of disease-related DNA regions in less than five minutes. The technology was tested using DNA samples from myotonic dystrophy type 1 and Huntington’s disease patients. The study, “μLAS: Sizing of expanded trinucleotide repeats with femtomolar sensitivity…

The world’s biggest gathering of rare disease researchers, patient groups, pharmaceutical executives, and government officials is planned for April 10–12 in a Washington, D.C., suburb. Some 1,200 people have already registered to attend the World Orphan Drug Congress (WODC) USA 2019, set to take place at the Gaylord National Harbor…