First, Congress should follow through on increasing the NIH budget by $2 billion in fiscal 2017, said Nancy Davidson, president of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Now, President Trump's budget proposal seeks to drop the NIH budget to $25.9 billion. That's $1.2 billion below the FY 2003 level, the year when the doubling was completed. These are absolute numbers. Adjusting for inflation will erode these funds even more.
FDA may have escaped the devastating cuts in President Trump's first budget proposal, while NIH ended up taking the brunt of its fury.
Ronald DePinho announced on March 8 that he will be stepping down as president of MD Anderson Cancer Center.DePinho's five-and-a-half years at the helm of the world's largest cancer center were marked by unprecedented turbulence, questions of conflicts of interest, and unhappiness on the part of the faculty.
Lexicon Pharmaceuticals Inc. said FDA approved Xermelo (telotristat ethyl) 250 mg as a first and only orally administered therapy for the treatment of carcinoid syndrome diarrhea in combination with somatostatin analog therapy in adults inadequately controlled by SSA therapyi.
Merck and Pfizer Inc. said FDA accepted for priority review the BLAfor avelumab for patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma with disease progression on or after platinum-based therapy.
Bristol-Myers Squibb announced that Columbia University Medical Center and Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre joined the International Immuno-Oncology Network (II-ON), a global peer-to-peer collaboration between BMS and academia that aims to advance immuno-oncology science and translational medicine to improve patient outcomes.
Exelixis Inc. and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. entered into a clinical development collaboration to evaluate Cabometyx (cabozantinib), Exelixis' small molecule inhibitor of receptor tyrosine kinases, with BMS's Opdivo (nivolumab), either alone or in combination with Yervoy (ipilimumab).
Exelixis Inc. announced a new collaboration with Roche on a phase Ib dose escalation study that will evaluate the safety and tolerability of cabozantinib, Exelixis' tyrosine kinase inhibitor, in combination with atezolizumab, Roche's anti-PD-L1 immunotherapy, in patients with locally advanced or metastatic solid tumors.
Advaxis Inc. granted SELLAS Life Sciences Group a license to develop a novel cancer immunotherapy agent using Advaxis' proprietary Lm-based antigen delivery technology with SELLAS' patented WT1 targeted heteroclitic peptide antigen mixture (galinpepimut-S).
