02/05/2025 Important insight for Castleman disease patients: Idiopathic multicentric Castleman disease (iMCD) is a rare and serious immune disorder that causes excessive inflammation, organ failure, and, in severe cases, life-threatening complications. While the only FDA-approved treatment, siltuximab, helps some patients, many don’t respond to it. In a letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers discovered that a specific immune system pathway (TNF signaling) was elevated in the disease. Using a novel machine learning approach, they identified a potential new treatment—adalimumab, a TNF-blocker already used for other conditions. When given to a patient with severe iMCD who relapsed 5 times on various treatments, adalimumab administration led to a remarkable 24-month remission to date. This breakthrough highlights a new treatment approach for iMCD.
