New HiCy & Revimmune information

[eileenkq]

Good news for those of us with MS. Yesterday a business agreement was reached that means that HiCy clinical trials will continue.

For years the main ingredient in the high-dose cyclophosphamide autoimmune restart treatment was not patent protected. No patent protection meant that no big drug company would front necessary money for clinical trials. No clinical trials mean no FDA approval. No FDA approval means no insurance payouts for the treatment.

So Yesterday Acentia reached an agreement with Baxter Healthcare “to provide Acentia with the exclusive, worldwide right to purchase Baxter’s cyclophosphamide, which is marketed under the brand name Cytoxan®, for the treatment of designated autoimmune diseases including multiple sclerosis. Cyclophosphamide is the active drug used in Revimmune™ therapy, Accentia’s proprietary system-of-care being developed for the treatment of a broad range of autoimmune diseases.”

(http://www.businesswire.com/news/hom...reement-Baxter)

This is good news for us because it is possible that the hicy treatment is a cure for MS. The treatment restarts the immune system – hopefully without the crazy over zealousness that causes MS.

Acentia (nor John Hopins Hospital who is doing the clinical trials) will not use the word cure because no long-term results have been tracked. I’ve been following this treatment ever since I read about it in Neurology News years ago and I was upset when trials fizzled out. The treatment would cost $25,000 to $30,000 compared to approximately $500,000 for a more dangerous bone-marrow transplant.


*** Moderator's note - line spacing added for easier reading. Many members have difficulty reading large blocks of text.

[jazzgirl]

I'm interested in the HiCy treatment, but please don't label it as a "cure". It's dangerous to make people think that they will miraculously not have MS after they reset their immune systems with this treatment. It's like everything else: some people will benefit, some will not.

I haven't read much about it in quite some time. Thanks for bringing it back to our attention!

[eileenkq]

John Hopkins view of HiCy and the word "cure"

Again, cure was not my word. I don't throw around words like that lightly. Please refer to the brown box on the following John Hopkins page:
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/hmn/w08/feature1.cfm

The word “cure” is a tricky thing. “HiCy is a cure, like bone marrow transplant is a cure,” says Hopkins hematologist Robert Brodsky. “There are aplastic anemia patients who are cured 10, 20, 30 years out after HiCy. If you’re not going to call that a cure, then none of us is cured of anything.” But he’d really prefer to call HiCy a “potential” cure, because, “If you use the word ‘cure,’ people think everyone is cured, though 40-50 percent may not be.”