For nearly a half century, much of the “war on cancer” has been fought at NCI-designated cancer centers, the 69 major medical schools and free-standing research institutes have this designation.
The UT Health Science Center at San Antonio and MD Anderson Cancer Center announced an affiliation to create a cancer care program in San Antonio.
After four decades of few improvements in the treatment for acute myeloid leukemia, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society has launched a precision medicine trial to identify targeted treatments for patients with AML.
President Barack Obama accepted Vice President Joe Biden and the National Cancer Moonshot Task Force's reports—blueprints for how the federal government should focus on cancer research, oncology bioinformatics, and patient access and care over the next few years.
Vice President Joe Biden and the National Cancer Moonshot Task Force published their final reports Oct. 17, summarizing the moonshot's achievements, and outlining five strategic goals and action plans for the years to come.
Kudos to The Cancer Letter's report on the 803 PD-1 or PD-L1 trials. As Rick Pazdur noted, that is just too many resources chasing the same idea for adult cancer studies.
The NCI Bypass Budget was expected to be made public on Oct. 6.
Question 1: Is there a reason to believe that these drugs are different from each other?Abrams & Sharon: From our estimate, there are more than 700 trials on ClinicalTrials.gov, with the bulk of those trials (approximately 700) involving agents from the five leading PD-1/PD-L1 companies (Merck, BMS, AZ, Genentech, and EMD Serono/Pfizer). There are obviously some subtle differences in terms of agents that target PD-1 versus PD-L1, but by and large, if there is efficacy with one agent seen, then we have generally seen a similar range of efficacy with the other agents.
Pharmaceutical companies are betting big on cancer immunotherapies that rely on the PD-1 protein and its ligands, PD-L1 and PD-L2, to initiate an immune response.
NCI has suspended re-competition of the the $400 million-a-year operations and technical support contract for the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research.
