BioCentury
ARTICLE | Targets & Mechanisms

Anemia's Gas6 pedal

March 6, 2008 8:00 AM UTC

A relatively large percentage of anemic patients who receive therapy with erythropoiesis-stimulating agents are either hyporesponsive or resistant to erythropoietin. Researchers at the University Hospital Center and University of Lausanne may have found a new way of treating these patients' anemia using a protein called growth arrest-specific gene 6, but much work still needs to be done to see if it avoids the problems caused by erythropoiesis-stimulating agents.

Until now, hyporesponsive or resistant patients have typically been treated with higher doses of erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESAs), which can raise the risk of mortality and cardiovascular events. Over the past 12 months, an increasing amount of clinical data have shown the problems with this strategy.1-3 As a result, the FDA and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have moved to limit the use of ESAs...