Vice President Joe Biden called on cancer researchers and health organizations to set aside individual goals in treatment and research to work together on fighting the second-leading cause of death in the U.S. Advances against the disease that kills more than half a million Americans every year will come faster if doctors, researchers and groups…
A Visual Explanation of the Collective Efforts Against Cancer: Past, Present, and Potential Future Breakthroughs Genentech recently published a groundbreaking visual explanation focusing on recent medical breakthroughs in the fight to end cancer. Highlighted in this rich history is Friends of Cancer Research (Friends) chairperson and founder, Ellen Sigal, for her contribution as a patient advocate and…
The time is right for the FDA to reorganize in a stepwise, structural, disease-oriented manner to align its regulatory science with major advances in medicine, according to a panel at a Senate briefing on Capitol Hill. At a meeting sponsored by the advocacy group Friends of Cancer Research (FOCR), speakers discussed the FOCR’s concept of…
ASCO and Friends of Cancer Research have launched a collaborative effort to modernize eligibility criteria to promote greater patient participation in cancer clinical trials. Eligibility criteria are standards that determine who can participate in a particular trial and often exclude individuals based on characteristics such as type and stage of disease, previous treatment history, age,…
Friends of Cancer Research (Friends) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have been working together for many years on an idea known as breakthrough therapy, and it has produced results beyond anyone’s hopes. Said Ellen Sigal, PhD, Friends Chair and Founder, “When we were first talking about what the breakthrough designation could do,…
The White House moonshot to accelerate progress in cancer research directs FDA to consolidate its oncology portfolio. However, oncology insiders say the manner in which the presidential initiative will be implemented could make the difference between political balderdash and genuine improvement in FDA regulation of cancer therapies. The entire controversy boils down to the interpretation…
The Food and Drug Administration intends to move forward with plans to partner officials in different agency centers with expertise in products affecting cancer in an effort to streamline the review process. President Barack Obama’s proposed fiscal year 2017 budget includes a request for $75 million as part of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s…
Targeted immunotherapies have added an important new treatment approach to oncologists’ armamentarium, especially for melanoma, lung cancer, and blood cancers. Cancer immunotherapy is considered such an exciting area that the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) chose this field as its cancer advance of the year for 2016. But many challenges remain in bringing treatments…
Cancer patients have traditionally been treated based on where their tumors originate — lung tumors with treatments for lung cancer, breast tumors with therapies developed specifically for breast cancer. But what if doctors started caring less about where a tumor first emerged and more about the genetic mutations that caused it to appear in the…
