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Takeda Pharmaceuticals logo - 2023

Takeda announces preliminary ERT trial results

Takeda announces preliminary ERT trial results Early results not as positive as hoped for Takeda Pharmaceuticals announced that a preliminary look at the results of their recently completed phase-IIb trial of their TAK-611 ERT (enzyme replacement therapy) for MLD “topline results … did not meet primary and secondary endpoints.” The company is analyzing the results and […]

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Affinia Therapeutics Announces MLD Program

Today MLD Foundation welcomes Affinia Therapeutics to the MLD Family™! Affinia is a US-based biopharma startup working on a new approach to MLD gene therapy. We are excited to share that MLD is their first therapy program! Affinia Therapeutics’ product candidate Anc80L65-ARSA is designed to deliver a functional ARSA transgene via a one-time dose to

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New Year’s Reflections … and Highlights from December Meeting in Boston

Happy New Year!  As we head out of the holiday season and into a new year, it is a time that we reflect on life, cherish family, and count our blessings for all that we hold close to our hearts. Holiday music has been playing everywhere you go for the past month; while I enjoy

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Centers of Excellence for Leukodystrophies and Lysosomal Disease

Earlier last month we had the opportunity to see several presentations about the Leukodystrophy Center of Excellence (CoE) at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), which opened today, May 1st. The mission of the [CHOP Leukodystrophy CoE] center is “to deliver cutting-edge, integrated, multidisciplinary clinical care, diagnostic evaluation, and therapeutics to infants, children and youth with inherited white matter disease.”

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openNHS Manifesto – Meeting Report

A meeting of researchers, clinicians, industry and academia was convened by the MLD Foundation on June 24th in Washington, DC to discuss the openNHS Manifesto we wrote about in this blog post. Since a NHS is not a therapy, NHS participants have historically be giving time, energy, and effort, not to mention exposing their MLD loved ones to occasional invasive

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Rare Disease Advocacy – Behind the Scenes

I ran across this article a few minutes ago. It’s a great insight into the challenges those of us working in rare disease advocacy working encounter. Every person and agency mentioned in this article is someone we at the MLD Foundation regularly come into contact with as we work on behalf of those with MLD.

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Intracerebral Gene Therapy Phase I/II Clinical Trial for MLD

We are pleased to share that a Phase I/II Intracerebral Gene Therapy clinical trial for MLD is now recruiting late infantile MLD patients. Dr. Patrick Aubourg and Dr. Caroline Sevin are the co-Principal Investigators. We have posted complete details of the trial, including inclusion criteria, here. This trial is based on many years of work in

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MLD Newborn Screening – We need your blood & urine!

The MLD Foundation is collaborating with researchers at the University of Washington who are working on developing a newborn screen for MLD that would hopefully address the problems encountered with traditional screening approaches caused by the MLD pseudo-deficiency. For their work they need samples of blood and urine from 15 affected MLD individuals. All samples

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US Announces BRAIN initiative with $100m of 2014 funding

President Obama today announced the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative and an anticipated $100M of US government funding in the next fiscal year. That is part of several hundred million more committed by private partners and foundations to this project to better understand how the brain works. http://www.nih.gov/science/brain/ NIH Director Francis Collins

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RARE Patient Advocacy Summit – 2012

I was pleased to be the organizer and host for the RARE Project | Global Genes RARE Patient Advocacy Summit on September 29th, 2012. The day-long event with 140 in attendance and over 120 viewing via a live webcast.  Videos of the event are available below for viewing.

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