Is There A Better Place To Decide What’s Right For Patients?
Who should decide when evidence for a drug sufficient to support a patient’s decision to give it a try?
writer, health care advocate, physician
Who should decide when evidence for a drug sufficient to support a patient’s decision to give it a try?
“Medicine is rapidly falling behind business in the accrual of high-quality evidence,” Califf said.
Lynparza—a PARP inhibitor taken as an oral tablet, daily— keeps qualified cases of advanced ovarian cancer in check for two years, as compared to placebo.
The new agent, a monoclonal antibody to CD22 with a toxin attached, is manufactured by Pfizer. It’s called inotuzumab ozogamicin.
Ribociclib is one of several CDK inhibitors being tried in breast cancer and other malignancies.
It was a seemingly innocuous change in the protocol that may have caused this experimental tragedy. Which is all the more reason to be careful, and mind the details.
If these data pan out, this first-in-class antibody might be likened to Herceptin, or Rituxan… a precise treatment that works on malignant cells that have tested positive for the relevant molecule.
Avoiding recurrence is a legitimate goal, but there’s a trade-off.
This paper offers the clearest demonstration, yet, of the value – to patients – of precision medicine in oncology.
Blood specialists reported on practice-changing studies for sickle cell disease, including a large study of bone marrow transplant from matched sibling donors. A preliminary report looked at effects of GBT440, a novel oral agent that augments hemoglobin’s binding to oxygen.
Taken together, the findings raise many possibilities – and questions about strategy, and expense – for testing and prescribing new small drugs and immune-targeting antibodies to patients with kidney and, potentially, other advanced cancer forms.
One problem is that prospective, randomized clinical trials comparing treatments for conditions like “Stage 3 ovarian cancer” fall behind the pace of advances in science and drug development.
In a prospective randomized trial, adding a “shave” to the lumpectomy site reduced positive margins and halved re-operations.
What’s concerning about the preliminary findings is that the median time to response was 18 weeks. For patients to wait four months or longer to see if there’s a benefit seems like a lot; these are women without much time to spare.
The Lung-MAP trial will identify molecular abnormalities in tumors specimens from thousands of patients with squamous cell lung cancer.
It’s precisely because there are effective treatments for early-stage disease that it’s worth finding breast cancer early.