These past few weeks in sickle cell news March 1st-15th

By Sean Marshall
Unfortunately for the past few weeks sickle cell news has been light luckily the past few days there has been some recent activity. However there was some major development coming from Gulf News Journal. According to ther medical news site recently “Dilaforette, AGU to collaborate on development of sickle cell disease drug.”

This is big news because Dilaforette is a major Swedish drug company. According to their website they are “developing sevuparin, an innovative, proprietary polysaccharide drug, which has potential to restore blood flow and prevent further microvascular obstruction in sickle cell disease patients.” As well as the AGU or Arabian Gulf University is one of the leading researchers of sickle cell disease. This means the partnership of these two researching giants can only mean great things for the sickle cell community.
According to the article presented on Gulf News Journal “Under the agreement, AGU will give Dilaforette up to $1.2 million in non-dilutive funding and help recruit patients for a phase-two study evaluating the safety of the drug for the treatment of a common painful complication of sickle cell disease known as vaso-occlusive crisis (VOC).”
One of the major issues the aricle touched upon was that “in addition to strengthening AGU's clinical research capabilities, the collaboration deal with Dilaforette also involves the Bahrain-based university receiving royalties on future product revenues.”
What is important isn't the idea of drug companies partnering with universities and other researching institutes in order to fight off diseases isn’t new. What is is the fact that the disease in question is sickle cell. Yes this is ultimately done in the name of profit but at least it's a start.
The original article can be found here: 
http://gulfnewsjournal.com/stories/510700581-dilaforette-agu-to-collaborate-on-development-of-sickle-cell-disease-drug
Dilaforette's site can be found here:
http://www.dilaforette.se/
If there are any comments questions, ideas or concerns email us at thesickleinme@gmail.com