September 30, 2008

A man whose wife has suffered for 15 years with a debilitating disease is walking across England to raise £60,000. Andy Monk hopes that his 5,262 mile effort to 722 newspaper offices and radio stations will help scientists to rapidly research a cure for MS – which he has seen take hold of his wife.

Jim Dunlap, a Fort Collins man living with multiple sclerosis, rode in the four-day MS Global ride in Vail last weekend. Money raised at the event will help establish an MS Repository Collection site at the Rocky Mountain MS Center in Denver.

New data from the extension phase of oral laquinimod in (RRMS) demonstrated a reduction in the mean number of gadolinium-enhancing lesions in both patients who switched from placebo to laquinimod and patients who continued with their initial laquinimod dose.

Laquinimod is a novel once-daily, orally administered immunomodulatory compound that is being developed as a disease-modifying treatment for RRMS. Active Biotech developed laquinimod and licensed it to Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Ltd. in June 2004. A Phase IIb study in 306 patients was recently published in The Lancet and demonstrated that an oral 0.6 mg dose of laquinimod, administered daily, reduced MRI disease activity by a median of 60 percent versus placebo in RRMS patients.