This Week IN SICKLE Cell News November 16th to the 22nd

By Sean Marshall 
​It was announced by Street Insider.com that Mast Therapeutics also known as NYSE:MSTX today released information explaining that their “nonclinical studies investigating vepoloxamer, its lead product candidate, will be featured in three poster sessions at the 57th Annual American Society of Hematology (ASH) Meeting and Exposition.” For those who need an update “The ASH Meeting is being held at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida, December 5 through December 8, 2015.”
The ASH meetings are all about the sharing of information around hematology, the study of blood. According to ASH's website these meetings are conducted help spread research knowledge as well as “the meetings provides an invaluable education experience and an opportunity to review thousands of scientific abstracts highlighting updates in the hottest topics in hematology.”

What this all means is that if NYSE:MSTX is willing to come forward publicly and announce that they have made some sort of breakthrough with hematology treatments it must be a big deal.

According to the report “the studies to be presented demonstrate the anti-adhesive effects of vepoloxamer on sickle red blood cells (RBC) as well as its protective effects on the membranes of red blood cells and platelets.”It was later expained by the report that vepoloxamer “was shown to result in statistically significant reductions in the number of adherent sickle RBC to immobilized vascular cell adhesion molecule (VCAM) and reductions in hemolysis in blood from patients with sickle cell disease.”

The last part of good news was that “in other studies, vepoloxamer was shown to preserve platelet function under extended storage conditions as well as prevent exposure of a marker of platelet damage (phosphatidyl serine) in blood samples from patients with SCD.”

So to summarize Mass Therapeutics newest drug Vepoloxamer is being shown off for what feats it can perform for the sickle cell community. This is great news. It means that people are one step closer to riding the world of sickle cell anemia.
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Mind you there will always be side effects to every drug and with the amount of publicity generated from these events it means that the drug is most likely not cheap. Either way a cure for sickle cell disease is closer then ever.
The original article can be found here: http://www.streetinsider.com/Corporate+News/Mast+Therapeutics+(MSTX)+Announces+Vepoloxamer+Data+Selected+For+Presentation+at+ASH+Meeting/11076025.html
ASH's site can be found here: http://www.hematology.org/Annual-Meeting/
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