05/14/09 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given its nod to certolizumab pegol (Cimzia), a drug previously approved to treat Crohn’s disease, to also treat moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis.
Certolizumab pegol belongs to a class of biologic drugs that block an inflammatory protein called tumor necrosis factor alpha, or TNF-alpha. Other drugs in this category include etanercept (Enbrel), infliximab (Remicade), adalimumab (Humira) and golimumab (Simponi), which was approved last month.
Cimzia’s molecule is slightly different from the other drugs in its class, however, because it is pegylated, or coated, a process that, in theory, should help it slip by the body’s immune system more easily and may make it less likely to cause an infusion reaction.
Pegylation may also help the drug work more quickly. According to UCB, the Belgian company that makes certolizumab pegol, when used in conjunction with methotrexate, patients in clinical trials for Cimzia reported a reduction in symptoms as early as the first week.
Certolizumab pegol is administered with at-home injections, which can be given every two or four weeks.
UCB also worked with industrial designers OXO Products, the same company behind the Good Grips line of kitchen tools, to redesign the syringe that patients use to administer the drug. Noting that the design of the classic syringe, which is very difficult for some arthritis patients to use, had not changed substantially in a century, UCB worked with OXO to add features like an extra large loop at the top which make it more patient-friendly. The new device has earned the Arthritis Foundation’s Ease-of-Use Commendation.
UCB, in a press release, said the drug would be made available to rheumatoid arthritis patients within a week.
Very interesting how money/funding for research for an RA cure got turned over into funding for more drugs, as drug companies became more powerful.
Some books I found very informative, in addition to Thomas Scammell's: 'Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients' by Roy Moynihan, 'The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Decive Us and What To Do About It'by Marcia Angell, 'On the Take:How Medicine's Complicity with Big Business Can Endanger Your Health' by Jerome P. Kass, 'The Hundred Year Lie: How To Protect Yourself From The Chemicals That Are Destroying Your Health' by Randall Fitzgerald,
'Inside the FDA: The Business and Politics Behind the Drugs We Take and the Foods We Eat' by Fran Hawthorne,'Overdosed America:The Broken Promise of American Medicine' by John Abramson.
I am being been treated with minocyclene for RA and feel more confident and less worred about side effects than with any of the RA drugs. So far the numbers have proven it is effective. At least for me. Who knows what the future holds for me, but for now, I am doing well with it.