NBIA NEWS & INFORMATION

OHSU reports on plans to launch CoA-Z trial with help from grant

Update December 2019:
Clinical trial now enrolling – go to http://nbiacure.org/coaz-clinical-trial for more information

November 2019
NBIA researchers Drs. Susan Hayflick and Penny Hogarth recently announced that, thanks to added help from a federal grant, they will soon launch a clinical trial to test a compound, CoA-Z, in individuals with PKAN, a common form of NBIA.

The grant is from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health.

The CoA-Z compound will be tested in the U.S. and Canada to see if it corrects a metabolic process involved in producing coenzyme A in individuals with PKAN.

READ ARTICLE

Clinical trial of Retrophin drug fails; Shows no benefit for PKAN patients

August 2019

A much-anticipated drug therapy has failed to show any benefit for individuals affected with PKAN, or Pantothenate Kinase-Associated Neurodegeneration, one of the most common forms of NBIA.

The drug’s maker, Retrophin Inc., announced the disappointing results Aug. 22 for its Phase 3 Fosmetpantotenate Replacement Therapy, or FORT, study.

Seventy-eight PKAN individuals had completed the 24-week randomized, double-blind study, meaning that neither the patients nor the doctors knew who was randomly selected to get the drug or the placebo. At the end of the study, 76 patients decided to participate in the open-label program in which all received the drug.

Read Article

Retrophin CEO, Eric Dube, wrote a letter to the NBIA Disorders Association and NBIA community regarding the disappointing results of this clinical trial.

Read Letter

Deferiprone trial results produce positive findings for some with PKAN

August 2019

The long-awaited results from the first international clinical trial for NBIA — testing deferiprone in individuals with PKAN — are in.

They show that the iron-chelating drug slowed the progression of the disorder in older patients with a later-onset, or atypical, form of PKAN, but did not have a similar benefit for younger patients with classic PKAN, which starts in early childhood.

In addition to those findings, the study showed that the drug successfully reduced the amount of accumulated iron in the brain for PKAN individuals, regardless of onset age.

Read More