I am very excited to share with you an email I received today from one of my readers. It’s about a new clinical trial for Vitiligo Cure Research June 2017.
I’m writing to let you know about a multicenter vitiligo clinical trial that is coming soon. The study will be conducted by Incyte, and will test their drug ruxolitinib as a topical cream for vitiligo. This is the same drug that we tested in a single patient with vitiligo as an oral treatment, which had a rapid beneficial effect – you can read more about that patient here: http://www.umassmed.edu/vitiligo/blog/blog-posts1/2015/12/ruxolitinib-jakafi-for-vitiligo/. And you can read more information on using this family of drugs, called JAK inhibitors, for vitiligo here: http://www.umassmed.edu/vitiligo/blog/blog-posts1/2016/12/vitiligo-jak-inhibitor-update/
This same drug formulated into a topical cream was recently found to be effective for a small number of vitiligo patients in a preliminary study. Because the treatment was most effective on the face of patients with vitiligo, the study will require participants to have some of their vitiligo on their face (a total area about the size of your palm without fingers when added together), as well as additional spots on other areas of the body (a total area about the size of 3 palms with fingers). Eligible patients for the study will be between the ages of 18-75 yrs old, be diagnosed with vitiligo, and will be required to stop all current medications used for their vitiligo.
This trial will be a randomized, controlled trial, which means participants are not guaranteed to get the medicine right away. But there will be multiple doses of the cream tested, so there will be an 80% chance of getting some concentration of the drug when you enroll. After 26 weeks of treatment, participants who received placebo will be given some concentration of the drug to try as well. After 1 year in the trial, all participants will receive the highest concentration of the drug to use for another year.
We are still completing the paperwork for the trial, and are not yet recruiting patients. But I will send out a follow up newsletter when we are ready, and include contact information for all of the study sites, so you can see if there is an opportunity near where you live. So far we know that there will be sites in Worcester (our site), Boston, and Dallas, but there will be others as well. If you are interested in reading more of the details, you can find them listed here: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03099304
We are very excited to start clinical trials in vitiligo patients, and believe that this is just the tip of the iceberg. So if you don’t qualify for this trial for some reason, there will be more to come! Keep an eye out for more notices, which will come through additional newsletters.
If you contact them and/or do this trial please let me know your experience!