Over the past three months, three pharmaceutical companies voluntarily withdrew three cancer indications for drugs that had previously received accelerated approvals from FDA, but ultimately failed to meet agreed-upon endpoints in confirmatory trials required for regular approvals.
In the absence of the federal funding, cancer research will be leaning on private funders. But few private funders have the freedom to ask fundamental questions—questions whose answers may not have an immediate clinical impact but can dramatically advance scientific knowledge.
