• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Celgene's Abraxane (paclitaxel protein-bound particles for injectable suspension) to treat patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer, in combination with Eli Lilly's gemcitabine.

  • Amgen announced plans to buy Onyx Pharmaceuticals of South San Francisco, CA, for $10.4 billion. Onyx's Kyprolis (carfilzomib) is approved by the FDA for treating multiple myeloma. The company's other assets include partnerships with Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals on Nexavar (sorafenib), approved for treating liver cancer and kidney cancer, and Stivarga (regorafenib), approved for treating colorectal cancer and gastrointestinal stromal tumors.

  • Roche decided to relinquish patent rights to its breast cancer drug Herceptin (trastuzumab) in India, opening the market to generic versions. The move, which follows months of debate about the cost of Herceptin, precludes the Indian government from issuing a compulsory license to another manufacturer. Herceptin currently faces no competition in India.

  • The median cost to bring a drug to market was $350 million for companies that launched one drug in the past decade, but rose to $5.5 billion per drug for companies that brought more than eight drugs to market in that time, according to an analysis in Forbes.

  • With every daily drink of alcohol a girl or woman consumes before her first full-term pregnancy, she increases her lifetime risk of breast cancer by 13% (JNCI 2013 Aug 29. [Epub ahead of print]). The analysis is based on a review of the health histories of 91,005 mothers enrolled in the Nurses' Health Study II from 1989 to 2009.

  • The X Prize Foundation cancelled its Genomics X Prize competition, explaining that genomic sequencing technologies have advanced so quickly that the prize no longer offered a suitable goal. Announced in 2006, the competition offered a $10 million reward for accurately and rapidly sequencing 100 whole human genomes at a cost of $10,000 or less per genome.

For more news on cancer research, visit Cancer Discovery online at http://CDnews.aacrjournals.org.

©2013 American Association for Cancer Research.
2013