As the U.S. federal budget sequester funding cuts kick in, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) is among agencies that are decreasing spending by about 5% for the fiscal year that started October 1.
Janssen Research & Development of Raritan, NJ, and Pharmacyclics of Sunnyvale, CA, announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave “Breakthrough Therapy” designations to their oral agent ibrutinib as a monotherapy for 2 B-cell malignancies. Ibrutinib, designed to target Bruton tyrosine kinase, is one of the first oncology drugs to receive a Breakthrough Therapy designation, given on the basis of at least one clinically significant endpoint, such as substantial treatment effects in early clinical development.
The NCI released draft guidelines aimed to improve practices in the creation and analysis of tests used for genomic-based classification of patients in clinical trials.
The FDA approved the multikinase inhibitor Stivarga (regorafinib; Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals) to treat patients with advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) whose tumors cannot be removed surgically and who no longer respond to other drugs.
Relative survival rates for patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma have not improved in the era of targeted agents, according to data presented by Binay Shah, MD, of Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center in Lewiston, ID, at the American Society for Clinical Oncology Genitourinary Cancers Symposium in Orlando, FL, in February.
In 2012, use and costs for cancer medications increased by 3.4% and 22.3%, respectively, in the United States, reported Express Scripts of St. Louis, MO.
A study by the National Foundation for American Policy revealed that among a group of 1,500 researchers at 7 leading U.S. comprehensive cancer centers, 42% are immigrants.
From 1989 to 2008, California's tobacco control program cost $2.4 billion but reduced health care costs by $134 billion, said researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (PLoS ONE 2013;8:e47145).
For more news on cancer research, visit Cancer Discovery online at http://CDnews.aacrjournals.org.
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