Taking Control of Castleman Disease: Leveraging Precision Medicine Technologies to Accelerate Rare Disease Research.

Castleman disease (CD) is a rare and heterogeneous disorder characterized by lymphadenopathy that may occur in a single lymph node (unicentric) or multiple lymph nodes (multicentric), the latter typically occurring secondary to excessive proinflammatory hypercytokinemia. While a cohort of multicentric Castleman disease (MCD) cases are caused by Human Herpes Virus-8 (HHV-8), the etiology of HHV-8 negative, idiopathic MCD (iMCD), remains unknown. Breakthroughs in "omics" technologies that have facilitated the development of precision medicine hold promise for elucidating disease pathogenesis and identifying novel therapies for iMCD.