By LISA RICHWINE The findings released on Thursday counter a common belief among doctors, academics and investors that new oncology drugs often win approval in Europe first, said researchers from the nonprofit advocacy group Friends of Cancer Research. Each of the 23 cancer drugs cleared by the United States and Europe over a seven-year period…
By RAMSEY BAGHDADI It seems like everyone who sees the results of the CATT comparative study of Roche/Genentech’s Lucentis (ranibizumab) vs. off-label Avastin (bevacizumab) for age-related macular degeneration comes away with a unique interpretation of the results. Top government officials are no different. At a June 8 meeting, Improving Medical Decisions Using Comparative Effectiveness Research…
By RAMSEY BAGHDADI It seems like everyone who sees the results of the CATT comparative study of Roche/Genentech’s Lucentis (ranibizumab) vs. off-label Avastin (bevacizumab) for age-related macular degeneration comes away with a unique interpretation of the results. Top government officials are no different. At a June 8 meeting, Improving Medical Decisions Using Comparative Effectiveness Research…
ONE of the prospects supporters of the Human Genome Project held out was personalised medicine. Knowing which genes were involved in a particular patient’s disease would allow drugs to be deployed with greater precision. That is starting to happen in the field of cancer. Several targeted therapies, aimed at specific cancer-causing mutations, including Gleevec for…
ONE of the prospects supporters of the Human Genome Project held out was personalised medicine. Knowing which genes were involved in a particular patient’s disease would allow drugs to be deployed with greater precision. That is starting to happen in the field of cancer. Several targeted therapies, aimed at specific cancer-causing mutations, including Gleevec for…
By RON WINSLOW New research is signaling a major shift in how cancer drugs are developed and patients are treated —offering the promise of personalized therapies that reach patients faster and are more effective than other medicines. At the heart of the change: an emerging ability for researchers to use genetic information to match drugs…
CANCER is not one disease. It is many. Yet oncologists have long used the same blunt weapons to fight different types of cancer : cut the tumour out, zap it with radiation or blast it with chemotherapy that kills good cells as well as bad ones. New cancer drugs are changing this. Scientists are now…
By DR. ROBERT EPSTEIN Personalized medicine has finally arrived and is poised to deliver significant health improvement and healthcare cost savings. With respect to drug therapy, genetic differences between us can now be easily measured in terms of our ability to break down or metabolize drugs, our ability to ‘ferry boat’ drugs across the gut…
By MICHAEL J. FOX Today, America is waiting expectantly for a new generation of scientific breakthroughs – in cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease and, of course, Parkinson’s disease. Yet we’ve lost sight of a critical element of any success – our own active engagement in the process. As Baby Boomers tumble headlong into their retirement years,…
By PAUL HOWARD There’s growing bipartisan agreement that curbing America’s runaway debt will require reducing spending for government health care programs like Medicare. To that end, President Obama is trying to convince voters that we can cut “unnecessary spending” that won’t have any effect on seniors’ access to care. Indeed, the president’s hallmark domestic policy…
