Author Archives: Marta Figueiredo PhD

The team of researchers who discovered and developed Evrysdi (risdiplam) — the first at-home oral therapy for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) — was selected as the winner of two prestigious treatment discovery awards. These are the Society for Medicines Research (SMR)’s 2021 Award for Drug Discovery and the British Pharmacological…

Scholar Rock announced the full design of the upcoming Phase 3 clinical trial testing apitegromab, its experimental muscle-directed therapy for spinal muscular atrophy, in children and young adults with types 2 and 3 SMA who are unable to walk. Apitegromab will be given as an add-on therapy to…

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has recommended that Roche’s Evrysdi (risdiplam) be covered by England’s national health service (NHS) and provided at low or no cost to eligible spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) patients as part of a managed access agreement. The current recommendation and its…

The blood levels of neurofilaments — a marker of nerve cell damage — and the results of a nerve-muscle test called compound muscle action potential (CMAP) may serve as a biomarker of disease onset and treatment response in infants and children with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) up to 3…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has added acute liver failure to the list of safety concerns with use of Zolgensma (onasemnogene abeparvovec-xioi) in children with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). The therapy’s label has been updated to contain a boxed warning highlighting the risk of higher-than-normal…

Motor function and stabilizing or improving breathing — along with oral administration — are the factors that adult patients and caregivers of children with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) type 2 or 3 who cannot walk value most when deciding on available treatments, a U.K. survey study shows. Avoiding…

In infants with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) type 1, lower blood levels of phosphorylated neurofilament heavy chain (pNF-H) — a marker of nerve cell damage — before starting treatment with Spinraza (nusinersen) are significantly associated with greater motor gains over time. These findings, based on data from the Phase…

Biogen is continuing to actively recruit patients for its Phase 4 RESPOND trial, which is evaluating the benefits of Spinraza (nusinersen) in infants and children with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) who responded poorly to the gene therapy Zolgensma. Participants are now being enrolled at 10 sites in the U.S. and one in Italy,…

Blood levels of neurofilament light chain (NfL) — a marker of nerve cell damage — in children and adolescents with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) are significantly higher than those of age-matched healthy peers and associate with disease severity, a study found. NfL blood levels also reliably reflect levels in…

Treatment with two distinct molecules targeting the “backup” SMN2 gene resulted in higher levels of SMN — the protein lacking in spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) — and longer survival in a mouse model of type 1 disease relative to the use of a single therapy. Notably, these benefits, which included the…