Immunotherapy
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Systemic lupus erythematosus is a chronic autoimmune disease with various clinical manifestations, organ involvement and laboratory findings. The disease can involve any organ including skin, joints, kidneys, central and peripheral nervous system, cardiovascular system and more. ⋯ Intravenous belimumab was the first and only biologic drug to be approved by the US FDA and Health Canada for lupus over the last 50 years, and recently was studied in subcutaneous form. This paper will review the major belimumab trials with a focus on the subcutaneous form.
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Review Case Reports
Nivolumab-induced cytokine-release syndrome in relapsed/refractory Hodgkin's lymphoma: a case report and literature review.
Hodgkin's lymphoma is a common malignant disease, especially among children in America. Although chemotherapy and radiotherapy are mainstay treatments for Hodgkin's lymphoma, a small portion of patient experiences relapsed or refractory diseases. Nivolumab provides an option for patients who experience relapsed or refractory disease, but adverse effects may occur. ⋯ The patient eventually experienced complete remission after his fifth dose of nivolumab. Cytokine-release syndrome might reflect good efficacy during treatment of relapsed/refractory Hodgkin's lymphoma with nivolumab. However, health care providers, should stay alert and take appropriate measures if adverse effects, such as cytokine-release syndrome, occur.
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A marked heterogeneity is exhibited by asthma both clinically and at the molecular level with different phenotypes driven by diverse mechanistic pathways that require specifically targeted treatments. Biologics aimed at IL-4/13, IL-5 or IgE are proven or potentially effective treatments for patients with difficult to treat eosinophilic asthma. ⋯ Such asthma phenotypes have been identified by reproducible and straightforward discriminatory biomarkers. This short review discusses recent studies of the effectiveness of the anti-IL-5 reslizumab in relation to the use of simple reproducible biomarkers in eosinophilic asthma.
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Multicenter Study
Ruxolitinib for the treatment of patients with steroid-refractory GVHD: an introduction to the REACH trials.
For patients with hematologic malignancies and disorders, allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation offers a potentially curative treatment option. Many patients develop graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), a serious complication and leading cause of nonrelapse mortality. ⋯ Here we review the role of JAK1 and JAK2 in acute and chronic GVHD. We also describe the study designs of the Phase II REACH1 (NCT02953678) and the Phase III REACH2 (NCT02913261) and REACH3 (NCT03112603) clinical trials that are currently recruiting patients to evaluate the JAK1/JAK2 inhibitor ruxolitinib in patients with corticosteroid-refractory acute or chronic GVHD.