Who invented xolair

Chronic spontaneous urticaria is a hives phenomenon with symptoms of red, swollen, itchy papules which might last for more than six weeks. The cause is unknown, and sometimes it appears periodically and repeatedly, affecting patients' quality of life.

The global prevalence of chronic urticaria is about 1. About 1. For more information, please visit the official. News Releases. Media Reports. Omalizumab is a recombinant humanized monoclonal antibody rhuMAb-E25 labeled for treatment of moderate to severe persistent asthma in persons 12 years or older.

It works by inhibiting binding of IgE to its receptor, located on mast cells and basophils. This action prevents release of mediators of allergic response e.

Studies with omalizumab identified two major safety issues: emergence of malignancies and anaphylaxis. Malignancies are not limited to any one type and, in studies, have occurred in 0. To date, no drug interactions with omalizumab have been identified, although evaluation is limited. Use of omalizumab is associated with several side effects, including injection site reactions 45 percent , viral 23 percent and upper respiratory tract 20 percent infections, headache 15 percent , sinusitis 16 percent , pharyngitis 11 percent , 1 and urticaria.

Urticaria responds to antihistamine treatment. Omalizumab has been studied in children and adults with moderate to severe allergic asthma. Most of the studies lasted less than one year.

There is one meta-analysis of eight trials involving a total of 2, subjects with mild to severe allergic asthma. In a recently published study, omalizumab meaningfully improved disease control as well as asthma-related quality of life QOL , 4 with a significantly greater proportion of patients who took omalizumab achieving a clinically relevant improvement in QOL score of at least 1. The authors in the study defined a clinically meaningful improvement as 0.

In a pooled analysis of three randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies including 1, subjects older than 12 years and subjects ages six to 12 years, treatment resulted in fewer unscheduled asthma-related outpatient visits in the treated group as a whole. One unscheduled outpatient visit was prevented for every seven patients receiving omalizumab rather than placebo over the course of a year Emergency room visits also occurred significantly less often in the omalizumab-treated group, with one visit prevented for every 50 patients teated for one year.

Hospitalizations were decreased as well, with one fewer asthma-related hospitalization occurring for every 50 patients treated for one year. There are no published trials that studied omalizumab in combination with immunotherapy for treatment of allergic asthma. This price is much higher than the cost of conventional treatments for asthma. To qualify for treatment with omalizumab, patients also must have a positive skin test IgE level between 30 IU per mL and IU per mL or in vitro reactivity to a perennial inhaled allergen and their asthma should be uncontrolled with inhaled oral corticosteroids.

The usual dosage of omalizumab is to mg subcutaneously every 2 or 4 weeks, based on patient weight and serum total IgE level measured before treatment is started. The drug should be administered in the office to observe the patient for anaphylaxis.

Among the three students, Chen Jiun-Bo started learning immunology early in his training. In his sophomore year, he already took Prof. Jiun-Bo got his Ph. Wu Pheidias is currently a student working toward his Ph. He studied material and chemical engineering as an undergraduate. Unlike his classmates, he chose to pursue advanced biomedical training instead of landing a relatively richer-paying industrial job. Hung Alfur Fu-Hsing is also a pre-doctoral student, whose undergraduate major was chemistry.

He also followed his own inner call and chose bioscience. He recalls that Prof. Chang required him to thoroughly read a molecular biology and an immunology textbook and took courses in these subjects before accepting him to study in his lab.

They also find that brain storming and knowledge sharing process is an enjoyable and crucial element in their work. He reasoned that such an antibody must be developed with an approach taken previously in the same laboratory. Meanwhile, Alfur was working on expressing and purifying the membrane type IgE, in an effort to provide material for undertaking X-ray crystallographic structure studies in collaboration with Dr. In this B cell differentiation pathway, the B cells go through the B lymphoblast stage and some of those B cells become memory B cells, which potentiate IgE response in repeated antigen exposure.

The antibody humanization task was performed by Wu Pheidias. The goal was to alter all of the constant regions and the framework segments of the variable regions of the mouse antibody 4B12 to corresponding structures of a human IgG1 antibody. Most of the work was done at the level of the genes encoding 4B Pheidias was able to achieve this goal.

Chang expressed that he encourages his students and fellows to do a lot of independent thinking.