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As conservative legislatures take the cue from the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade by enacting abortion restrictions, oncologists in many states are scrambling to figure out how to best care for their pregnant patients, said Alice Mims, a hematologist-oncologist at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – James.
By Alice Tracey
Free
When Jill Hawkins realized that she was six weeks pregnant this March, her oncologist gave her two options.
By Alexandria Carolan and Alice Tracey
Capitol Hill
The House of Representatives on June 22 voted 336-85 to pass legislation that would establish the authorities of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Health (ARPA-H), President Joe Biden’s proposed high-risk, high-reward biomedical research agency.
By Alice Tracey
NCI is moving forward with a plan to evaluate multi-cancer early detection tests, a technology that is rapidly making inroads into the healthcare system.
By Paul Goldberg and Alice Tracey
The NCI Board of Scientific Advisors unanimously approved eight new concepts and nine reissued concepts at a meeting June 13-15.
By Alice Tracey
NCI and Cancer Research UK have awarded $100 million in total funding through the Cancer Grand Challenges program, supporting research into solid tumors in children, cachexia, extrachromosomal DNA, and tumor development.
By Alice Tracey
NCI Director's Report
In the next phase of the Cancer Moonshot, NCI will focus on investing in the development and testing of new modalities, including multi-cancer early detection assays, and fostering diversity in oncology, NCI Acting Director Douglas R. Lowy said at a joint meeting of the Board Of Scientific Advisors and the National Cancer Advisory Board.
By Alice Tracey
Clinical
All fourteen rectal cancer patients in a small phase II study of dostarlimab, an anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody, saw their cancer completely disappear—with no progression or recurrence at follow-up six to 25 months later. None of the patients required further chemotherapy, radiation, or surgery.
By Alice Tracey
NCI must make a bigger investment in new cancer therapies and expand the clinical trials system that tests them, the institute’s Acting Director Douglas Lowy said in his remarks at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting June 4.
By Alice Tracey
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
Cancer organizations and pharmaceutical companies have formed a coalition that seeks to develop licensing agreements to improve access to essential cancer drugs in low- and lower-middle income countries (LLMICs).
By Alice Tracey
Capitol Hill
In a letter addressed to FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, Republican leaders of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and two of its subcommittees raised questions about the increasing number of clinical trials conducted in China by companies seeking FDA approval for “me-too” checkpoint inhibitor drugs.
By Alice Tracey
Capitol Hill
In testimony before the House Labor HHS Appropriations Subcommittee May 26, cancer organizations recommended FY23 appropriations of $49 billion for NIH, $7.76 billion for NCI, and $426.6 million for the CDC’s Division of Cancer Prevention and Control.
By Alice Tracey
Capitol Hill
The same House appropriators who, with bipartisan resolve, oversaw years of dramatic funding increases for NIH expressed equally bipartisan misgivings about President Joe Biden’s proposal to boost funding for the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health while giving NIH a meager raise—and cutting funds for NCI.
By Alice Tracey
Regulatory News
Getting the dose right is not a mere formality but a fundamentally important first step that can mean the difference between success and failure of a drug development program, Richard Pazdur, director of the FDA Oncology Center of Excellence, said at a workshop focused on the issue of dose optimization.
By Alice Tracey
Clinical
For decades, pinpointing the highest dose of a drug that cancer patients could tolerate was the first step investigators were required to take before moving into phase II and III clinical trials.
By Alice Tracey
Regulatory News
As more targeted cancer therapies hit the market, the maximum tolerated dose approach to cancer drug development no longer makes sense, said Brian Booth, director of FDA’s Division of Cancer Pharmacology I, at the April 21 meeting of the FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee.
By Alice Tracey
Although there are more than 11 million LGBTQ+-identifying individuals in the U.S., this population remains “invisible in the research”—presenting a problem for cancer centers trying to better serve their catchment areas, said Zul Surani, associate director of community outreach and engagement at Cedars-Sinai Cancer.
By Alice Tracey
Free
A care hotline and resource hub for Ukrainian cancer patients established by the American Cancer Society, the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center – Jefferson Health has recruited several hundred volunteers as the organizations work to develop a lasting infrastructure to support those displaced by the crisis.
By Alice Tracey
Free
More than 850 children with cancer have been evacuated or are in the process of evacuation from Ukraine, 45 days after a collaboration of international organizations began transporting pediatric cancer patients out of the country.
By Alice Tracey
Free
Chemotherapy at Ukraine’s National Cancer Institute in Kyiv no longer has to be administered in underground bomb shelters.
By Alice Tracey
The NCI Board of Scientific Advisors approved nine new and reissued concepts at a meeting held March 28-29.
By Alice Tracey
White House
In a move that appears to prioritize biomedical engineering over cancer research, President Joe Biden’s proposal for fiscal year 2023 cuts NCI funding by $199 million, a 2.9% percent cut from the current year’s level.
By Alice Tracey and Paul Goldberg
Capitol Hill
The FY22 spending bill increases NCI’s budget by $159 million—but according to NCI officials, this boost isn’t sufficient to raise paylines for R01 grants for established and new investigators.
By Alice Tracey
Cancer mortality fell by 2.1% between 2018 and 2019, compared to a 2.4% relative decrease in the year prior, according to the American Cancer Society’s 2022 Cancer Statistics report.
By Alice Tracey
Free
The war in Ukraine is trapping cancer patients in their homes and forcing doctors to provide treatments in bomb shelters. Those patients who make it across the borders to nearby countries show up without medical records—or with records that need to be translated.
By Alice Tracey
Free
Oleksandr Stakhovskyi, a urologist and oncologic surgeon at Ukraine’s National Cancer Institute, is staying in Kyiv to treat cancer patients as the Russian invasion continues.
By Alice Tracey
Free
As the war rages around them, Ukraine’s oncologists are scrambling to get cancer patients the treatment they need.
By Alice Tracey
Free
A panel convened by the Cancer History Project for Black History Month started with a discussion of mentorship, and concluded with a big underlying concept—justice.
By Alexandria Carolan and Alice Tracey
COVID-19 & Cancer
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted cancer screening and treatment and exacerbated health disparities, but also created unexpected opportunities in cancer research and care, a recent report from the American Association for Cancer Research states.
By Alice Tracey
Regulatory News
In a 14:1 vote, ODAC nixes a PD-1 drug developed in China; data not generalizable to U.S. population
The FDA Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee expressed decisive support for the agency’s view that data from trials of checkpoint inhibitors performed in mainland China aren’t applicable to the U.S. population.
By Paul Goldberg and Alice Tracey
White House
The White House has announced an expansion of the Cancer Moonshot’s mission beyond its initial focus on accelerating research and data sharing in oncology—with promises of renewed funding for an array of ambitious presidential initiatives.
By Alice Tracey and Matthew Bin Han Ong
Clinical
NCI has issued a Request for Information seeking input from developers of multi-cancer early detection liquid biopsy tests, with the goal of launching an NCI-sponsored randomized controlled screening clinical trial of these tools.
By Alice Tracey
Starting next week, NIH will require grantees to make more specific and timely disclosures of financial and resource contributions from outside sources.
By Alice Tracey
COVID-19 & Cancer
As omicron infections and hospitalizations continue to peak in the U.S., a high-stakes battle over the national public health response is being fought in the rafters of political Washington.
By Matthew Bin Han Ong, Alexandria Carolan and Alice Tracey
In the morning of Nov. 10, 2020, Daniel V.T. Catenacci, director of the GI oncology program at the University of Chicago, did some trading, court documents say.
By Alice Tracey
Free
After consulting with women in oncology, The Cancer Letter has created a guide to help whistleblowers think strategically as they report gender bias and confront institutional resistance.
By Alice Tracey
Free
The NCI Board of Scientific Advisors approved 11 new and reissued concepts at a joint meeting of the BSA and the National Cancer Advisory Board Dec. 7-9.
By Alice Tracey
Capitol Hill
Congress has extended FY22 spending talks once again, leaving the proposed Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H)—a key piece of President Joe Biden’s cancer agenda—in limbo.
By Alice Tracey
Regulatory News
Here is an update on the FDA effort to cull the backlog of what the agency has colorfully dubbed the “dangling indications” of cancer drugs: two indications taken off the market by sponsors; one facing an uncertain future.
By Alice Tracey
A 1990 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded to E. Donnall Thomas for his discoveries in bone marrow transplantation has been put up for sale by his family.
By Alice Tracey
With growing evidence that molecular characterization of a tumor helps predict a patient’s prognosis and response to specific treatments, biomarker testing has been required or recommended for more than half of the 62 oncology drugs introduced over the past five years. However, health insurance policies don’t always cover tests, thus denying their clients access to precision medicine.
By Alice Tracey
Capitol Hill
President Biden has been describing the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a DARPA-like biomedical research agency, as the centerpiece of his effort to “end cancer as we know it.”
By Alice Tracey
NCI Director's Report
The National Cancer Act of 1971 established an unprecedented government-wide plan to eradicate a major disease, creating institutions that have no equivalent in other therapeutic areas and galvanizing the nationwide conversation about cancer.
By Alice Tracey
Conversation with The Cancer Letter
The pandemic has accelerated the development of mRNA vaccines, which could have significant implications for cancer research, said Danny Milner, chief medical officer of the American Society for Clinical Pathology, and adjunct associate professor of immunology and infectious diseases in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
By Alice Tracey
Capitol Hill
Congress needs to increase the FY22 base budgets of NIH and NCI by $3.2 billion and $1.1 billion, respectively, over FY21 levels, the American Association for Cancer Research said in its 2021 Cancer Progress Report.
By Alice Tracey
Free
Vinay Prasad might well have made his contrarian points without invoking the specter of the Third Reich. He didn’t have to go there—but he did. Voluntarily.
By Alice Tracey
On Dec. 8, 2020, a month after losing the election, then-president Donald Trump announced his intent to name 26 people to advisory boards across the federal government. Among them were three would-be members of the National Cancer Advisory Board, and in the months following, these three appointments—which have been blocked and ultimately terminated by the...
By Alice Tracey and Paul Goldberg