DURHAM, N.C., June 5, 2019 — Premier Research is sponsoring the Orphan & Rare Disease session track at this year’s BIO International Convention, June 3-6 in Philadelphia. Our own Angi Robinson, vice president for clinical development services in rare diseases and pediatrics, will participate in the panel discussion Rare Finds: Innovative Clinical Trial Design for...
In March 2019, the FDA released draft guidance on the design and implementation of natural history studies to support the development of safe and effective treatments for rare diseases. The document, Rare Diseases: Natural History Studies for Drug Development,[1] addresses one of the major challenges sponsors encounter when developing therapies for rare disease: the lack...
Decades of painstaking research have recently begun to yield gene therapy products that are delivering meaningful benefits to human health. The approvals of voretigene neparvovec-rzyl (Luxturna) for inherited vision loss, tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) for lymphoblastic leukemia, and axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta) for lymphoma have ushered in a new era of therapeutics. With the rapid evolution of the...
Over the last two decades, biologics have improved the management of patients with psoriasis and advanced melanoma, many of whom either did not respond to traditional treatments or experienced severe side effects from them. With their success in deadly forms of melanoma and more common chronic inflammatory conditions such as psoriasis, drug developers are now targeting rarer...
In 1976, pop culture icon John Travolta starred in the made-for-television movie The Boy in the Plastic Bubble about a young man with a compromised immune system. The premise of the film is that Travolta’s character has to decide between living in isolation behind a protective bubble or dying engaged with the physical world. Hollywood...
Clinical research certainly has evolved over the past three decades. There are more trials crossing a broader spectrum of indications, and advances in study design and execution have dramatically changed the way drugs and medical devices are evaluated and sold. But perhaps no change has been more significant than the growth in engagement on the...
This episode, we’re proud to share the first part of our conversation with Alan Thomas, patient advocate and founder of Ataxia & Me, ahead of International Ataxia Awareness Day on September 25. Alan talks about his personal journey with ataxia and how he first got started with patient awareness. Follow Alan and Ataxia & Me...
Patient registries and natural history studies are vital tools for orphan drug researchers, who often struggle with limited understanding of diseases and sparse data due to small patient numbers. In the second installment of the Premier Voices podcast with Angi Robinson, Vice President, Clinical Development Services, Rare Disease & Pediatrics, and Juliet Moritz, we...
The inaugural edition of Premier Voices focuses on rare oncology drug development and takes a looks at: Using adaptive design to limit patient exposure to ineffective treatments and increase the overall likelihood of success Making the most of small and geographically dispersed patient populations Dealing with limitations such as a lack of defined biomarkers and baseline...
It’s been 46 years since researchers Theodore Friedmann and Richard Roblin published a landmark paper in the journal Science that posed a provocative question: “Gene therapy for human genetic disease?” And while clinical trials for gene therapy drugs have become much more common in the past 20 years — more than 2,400 had been conducted...