Articles

Researchers at Espicom Business Intelligence, a medical and pharmaceutical market analysis company, predict that the development of novel biologic approaches to drug therapy will bring "a sea change" to the approach to cancer therapy, by focusing on controlling solid tumors and the introduction of new drugs that target new pathways.

San Francisco, CA—A personalized form of immunotherapy added to sunitinib (Sutent) treatment prolonged survival to beyond 30 months in almost half of patients with newly diagnosed, unfavorable-risk metastatic renal-cell carcinoma (mRCC), according to the results of an open-label phase 2 study presented at the 2012 Genitourinary Cancer Symposium.

San Francisco, CA—The dosage of axitinib, the standard second-line treatment for metastatic renal-cell carcinoma (mRCC), should be uptitrated in those patients who fail to achieve therapeutic blood levels on the standard 5-mg daily dosage, according to a new analysis of an international randomized trial presented at the 2012 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.

San Francisco, CA—More than 1 in 10 patients with metastatic prostate cancer never receive anticancer treatment for their disease, according to an examination of the National Cancer Database.

San Francisco, CA—A large number of patients with metastatic renal-cell carcinoma (mRCC) are ineligible for clinical trials and their clinical outcomes are inferior to those of patients who are trial eligible, according to a study presented at the 2012 Genitouri nary Cancers Symposium.

San Francisco, CA—Nonpharmacologic strategies for prevention of cancer are potentially attractive and costeffective, but success stories are few.

San Antonio, TX—In a retrospective utilization and cost analysis, nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane) therapy was associated with substantially lower total use of prophylactic colony-stimulating factor (CSF) than docetaxel (Taxotere) and paclitaxel (Taxol) in the treatment of breast cancer.

San Antonio, TX—Assessing all eligible patients with breast cancer for recurrence risk with the 21-gene Oncotype DX assay at diagnosis could save $330.8 million annually by avoiding ineffective chemotherapy, according to data presented at the 2011 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Grapevine, TX—A New Jersey research team is making the case for relying less on the Oncotype DX test for breast-cancer prognosis and instead focusing on conventional pathological analyses.

San Antonio, TX—Women with estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer are unlikely to benefit from dosedense chemotherapy, but many are receiving this type of treatment, which involves the use of colonystimulating factors (CSFs), that is, growth factors. Limiting the use of these therapies in a population that is unlikely to benefit from it, would save nearly $40 million annually, suggests a study presented at the 2011 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.