Cancer medicines that cost more than $100,000 a year aren’t morally justifiable and may keep patients from getting life-saving treatments, a group of more than 100 leukemia doctors said. Of the 12 cancer medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration last year, 11 cost more than $100,000 annually, the physicians said in an article in Blood, the journal…
Earlier this year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted its first ‘breakthrough therapy designations’ to a pair of cystic fibrosis drugs (see Nat. Med. 19, 116–117, 2013). But since then, it’s been all about the cancer agents. The New Jersey drug giant Merck announced this morning that its investigational cancer drug lambrolizumab…
Electric fans growl like airplanes taking off and banks of green lights wink in a basement at Mount Sinai’s medical school, where a new $3 million supercomputer makes quick work of huge amounts of genetic and other biological information. Just a couple of miles away, a competitor, Weill Cornell Medical College and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell…
More than 50 Nobel laureates are urging Congress to spare the federal science establishment from the looming budget cuts known as the sequester, saying that research has endured years of budget reductions and that additional cuts could endanger “the innovation engine that is essential to our economy.” The open letter was written by Burton Richter, a 1976 Nobel…
Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-N.C.) has just introduced legislation that would reverse the sequester cuts that have led some cancer clinics to turn away Medicare patients. Medicare has already said it doesn’t have the authority on its own to reverse the automatic reductions, which federal law specifies must hit all programs equally. That essentially leaves it in Congress’s hands—legislators passed the…
A cancer drug being jointly developed by Pharmacyclics and Janssen has been awarded a third breakthrough designation, the companies announced Monday (April 8). FDA in February granted the drug, ibrutinib, two breakthrough designations for the treatment of two types of lymphoma. The third breakthrough designation for ibrutinib is for the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia or small…
The recently released Sunshine Act rules on disclosing physician-drug industry ties could hamper medical innovation and education, one doctor warned at an event here on the topic. When the reporting and collection of doctor compensation data from drugmakers, device companies, and group purchasing organizations starts later this year, some physicians may be less likely to…
A decade ago, as I was beginning my time as Senate majority leader, bipartisan consensus in Washington helped launch a new era of progress in global health just when it was sorely needed. Twenty years had passed since I first saw AIDS patients in Boston, though at the time we didn’t even have a name…
The incidence of advanced breast cancer among younger women, ages 25 to 39, may have increased slightly over the last three decades, according to a study released Tuesday. But more research is needed to verify the finding, which was based on an analysis of statistics, the study’s authors said. They do not know what may…
Michael Weitz was out of options. The Californian had endured chemotherapy, radiation and surgery but his lung cancer still spread to his bones and brain. With time running out, the emergency room physician entered a Phase I study – the earliest stage of human testing for a new medicine – of crizotinib. The drug works…
