Castleman Disease

Castleman Disease

Though only one treatment is FDA approved for one subtype of Castleman disease, several treatment approaches are well established for the various subtypes of Castleman disease. Castleman disease patients that do not benefit from the only approved therapy, have several drugs that have been identified as potential repurposed treatments and extensive research is underway to uncover more.

 

The CSTL’s drug repurposing approach has led to the successful identification of drug targets and drugs that can help CD patients. The CSTL's founding director, Dr. David Fajgenbaum, also a patient with iMCD, began testing one of these drugs on himself in 2014 and is currently in his longest remission ever. He wrote about his story in his national bestselling memoir “Chasing My Cure.” 

 

Check out these papers describing this work:

Identifying and Targeting TNF Signaling in Idiopathic Multicentric Castleman’s Disease. New
England Journal of Medicine, 2025.

 

Discovery and validation of a novel subgroup and therapeutic target in idiopathic multicentric
Castleman disease. Blood Advances, 2021.

 

Identifying and targeting pathogenic PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling in IL-6 blockade–refractory
idiopathic multicentric Castleman disease. Journal of Clinical Investigation, 2019.
 
 
 

And Dr. Fajgenbaum’s TED talk