Tucatinib (ONT-380) progressing in pivotal demo against HER2+ breast cancer
Stage 1 clinical trial data published this week in the journal Clinical Malignancy Research show early promise from the investigational anti-cancer agent tucatinib (formerly ONT-380) against HER2+ breast cancer. The particular 50 women treated had advanced despite a median 5 earlier treatment regimens. Twenty-seven percent of the heavily pretreated patients saw scientific benefit from the drug, with at least “stable disease” at 24 or more days after the start of treatment. These data led to two subsequent Phase Ib studies, resulting in tucatinib earning FDA fast-track status and the enlargement of this study on...
Source: My Irritable Bowel Syndrome Story - January 11, 2017 Category: Gastroenterology Authors: Ken Tags: IBS News Source Type: blogs
You Don’t Have to Walk the Journey Alone
Stories like Melissa’s are why it’s more important than ever for LIVESTRONG to continue providing free programs and services to people facing cancer. Your generous support makes it all possible. And, when you make a gift today, your dollars will DOUBLE thanks to a matching gift challenge from the Shine Foundation. Your $25 gift becomes $50…your $100 gift becomes $200…even your $1,000 gift will become $2,000, all the way up to $25,000! Please donate now and share Melissa’s story with your friends and family.
My name is Melissa Gilley and I am 58 years old. I’ve been married to my husband, Gary, for 41 y...
Source: LIVESTRONG Blog - April 17, 2016 Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: LIVESTRONG Staff Source Type: blogs
Data Simplification: Hitting the Complexity Barrier
Conclusions have no value until they are independently validated. Anyone who attempts to stay current in the sciences soon learns that much of the published literature is irreproducible (8); and that almost anything published today might be retracted tomorrow. This appalling truth applies to some of the most respected and trusted laboratories in the world (9), (10), (11), (12), (13), (14), (15), (16). Those of us who have been involved in assessing the rate of progress in disease research are painfully aware of the numerous reports indicating a general slowdown in medical progress (17), (18), (19), (20), (21), (22), (23...
Source: Specified Life - March 5, 2016 Category: Information Technology Tags: complexity computer science data analysis data repurposing data simplification data wrangling information science simplifying data taming data Source Type: blogs
A Year in Review: FDA 2015 New Drug Approvals
The approval of first-of-a-kind drugs rose last year to forty-one, resulting in the highest level of newly approved U.S. drugs in nineteen years. The total number of new drugs approved last year was even higher at sixty-nine. The rising figures reflect an industry-wide desire to research and develop drugs for rare and hard-to-treat diseases.
The newly approved drugs serve to advance medical care and the health of patients suffering from many ailments, including various forms of cancer, heart failure, and cystic fibrosis. Additionally, more than 40% of the new therapies were approved for treatment of rare or "orphan" dise...
Source: Policy and Medicine - January 13, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan - Policy & Medicine Writing Staff Source Type: blogs
What ‘Next Year’ Means When You Have Stage 4 Breast Cancer
Last year, I said I would attend this year’s San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. Instead, I’m sitting here in Michigan telling myself I’ll go next year. I’d better start making plans, because with metastatic breast cancer — also known as stage 4 breast cancer — I might start running out of “next years.”
The symposium, which was initiated in 1977 and takes place in San Antonio, Texas, was developed with the mission of providing state-of-the-art information about breast cancer, as well as a collaborative forum for researchers and physicians. This year’s meeting runs December 8 – 12.
I’ve ...
Source: Life with Breast Cancer - December 10, 2015 Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: Kathy-Ellen Kups, RN Tags: Breast Cancer research Source Type: blogs
Why reform needs to start at cancer care
Recently, the clinically positive results from the CLEOPATRA oncology trial were released, showing that pertuzumab, when added to docetaxel and trastuzumab as first-line chemotherapy, produces an average survival benefit of 15.7 months in HER2 positive breast cancer patients.
That good news notwithstanding, the authors calculated that Genentech’s price for adding pertuzumab to gain one quality adjusted life year is a breathtaking $713,219. In dry academic language, the authors dropped a bombshell conclusion. “The addition of pertuzumab to a standard regimen … for treatment of metastatic HER2-overexpressing breast can...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - October 29, 2015 Category: Journals (General) Authors: Brian Klepper, PhD Tags: Meds Cancer Source Type: blogs
Top stories in health and medicine, September 30, 2014
From MedPage Today:
Data Confirm Anti-ALK Activity in Rare NSCLC. Objective responses occurred in 72% of patients with mutation-specific non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with crizotinib (Xalkori).
Case Reports: PET Imaging in Dementia. In two cases of progressing dementia, PET imaging with amyloid and tau tracers helped to clarify the diagnosis by ruling out Alzheimer’s disease.
Screen for Pre-Diabetes, Experts Say. Four prominent diabetes experts have called on physicians to screen essentially everyone for pre- and early diabetes and to initiate treatment in those with these conditions.
A New Standard of...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - September 30, 2014 Category: Journals (General) Authors: MedPage Today Tags: News Cancer Diabetes Endocrinology Neurology Source Type: blogs
Top stories in health and medicine, September 12, 2014
From MedPage Today:
Price Tag on Old Insulin Skyrockets. Retired nurse Mary Smith was having trouble controlling her type 2 diabetes on her regular insulin regimen, so her doctor decided to put her on something stronger.
Bedside Ultrasound: Sorting Shadows. In medicine, we frequently propagate half-truths and unsubstantiated certainties. Thus, truth is a relative experience, dependent primarily upon how we choose to define it, rather than any concrete state of reality.
Medicare GME $$$: What Should They Buy? Should Medicare start paying for health economists’ PhDs if they result in a better healthcare system?
Early...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - September 12, 2014 Category: Journals (General) Authors: MedPage Today Tags: News Cancer Endocrinology Radiology Source Type: blogs
Real Time Big Data Analytics for Clinical Care
Over the summer, I’ve given many lectures about SMAC - social media, mobile, analytics and cloud computing.The most popular analytics topics are business intelligence, big data, and novel data visualizations.Recently, Dr. Chris Longhurst, chief medical information officer at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, and colleagues wrote an article in the Big Data Issue of Health Affairs, that suggests a very practical approach for enabling real time analytics within an EHR. They call it the Green Button.The Blue Button is for patient view/download/transmit of medical records.The Green Button is for instant access to out...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - July 30, 2014 Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs
Neratinib Comes Through For Puma
Yet another entry in the "Why do people keep investing in biopharma?" files. Take a look at the case of Puma Biotechnology. Their stock was as high as $140/share earlier in the year, and it gradually deflated to the high 50s/low 60s as time went on. But yesterday, after hours, they reported unexpectedly good Phase III results for neratinib in breast cancer, and as I write, they're at $228 or so, up about $167 per share.
It's another HER2/EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor (like Tykerb/lapatinib in the small molecule space, although neratinib is an irreversible inhibitor) and would be targeted at patients who are now taking H...
Source: In the Pipeline - July 23, 2014 Category: Chemists Tags: Cancer Source Type: blogs
Medical errors - and what if they didn't tell us?
Massachusetts General Hospital archivesDr. Ernest Amory Codman. We all are aware that, unfortunately, medical errors can and do occur. A recent example is of this New Zealand woman who was never told of her Her2 positive diagnosis for two years and didn't receive the correct treatment until it was too late. But what if doctors never told us about treatment outcomes and what their error rates were? That would be pretty damn scary. No one likes to admit they made a mistake but as 'to err is human', it does happen.But that's the way things used to be:"Dr. Ernest Amory Codman was in his mid-40s when his golden career as a sou...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - July 22, 2014 Category: Cancer Tags: change medical errors Source Type: blogs
Trastuzumab and cardiotoxicity
Trastuzumab is useful for the chemotherapy of breast cancers which are HER2 (human epidermal growth factor receptor-2) positive, which constitute about one fifth of cases of breast cancer. Untreated, HER2 positive cases have a poorer prognosis than negative cases [Moja L et al. Trastuzumab containing regimens for early breast cancer. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2012 Apr 18; 4:CD006243]. Adding trastuzumab as an adjuvant chemotherapeutic agent for one year has a significant impact on improving survival in HER2 positive breast cancer [Smith I et al (HERA Study team). 2-year follow-up of trastuzumab after adjuvant chemotherap...
Source: Cardiophile MD - July 11, 2014 Category: Cardiology Authors: Johnson Francis Tags: General Cardiology Source Type: blogs
Major Driver Mutations in Adenosquamous Lung Carcinomas
The June 2014 issue of Journal of Thoracic Oncology (abstract) features a thorough study of major known driver mutations (EGFR, KRAS, ERBB2, BRAF, PIK3CA, AKT1, RET, and ALK) in a series of 76 patients from Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center with resected adenosquamous lung carcinoma (AdSqLC) by Wang et al. and compared this group with a group of 646 patients with resected adenocarcinoma (ADC) during the same study period. This is a nifty paper that will serve well as a useful contemporary reference when you next encounter a patient with adenosquamous lung carcinoma.
From their "Table 1" data, it is o...
Source: The Daily Sign-Out - June 23, 2014 Category: Pathologists Authors: Mark D. Pool, M.D. Tags: Lung Cancer Non small cell lung cancer Source Type: blogs
not as simple as it would seem
As someone living with metastatic breast cancer, I pay keen attention to the development of new cancer drugs. And of course I pay particular attention to the drugs that are likely to one day benefit me.I have been on Herceptin for 7.5 years. My response was rapid and complete and there is no sign that the drug has stopped working. That doesn't mean, however, that I don't worry about the future and how I will proceed once I come to the end of the line with this miracle drug.Enter trastuzumab emtansine, or TDM-1, as it was more commonly known. Over the last couple of years, I watched with great interest as clinical trials oc...
Source: Not just about cancer - June 2, 2014 Category: Cancer Tags: brain metastasis breast cancer cancer blog chemotherapy community fear good stuff health care herceptin lucky show and tell Source Type: blogs
For Immediate Rewording. Uh, Release.
Here's a nice look at why you should always think about the source of the financial and business information you read. It details the response to a recent Pfizer press release about palbociclib, a CDK inhibitor that's in late clinical trials.
Someone at The Wall Street Journal wrote that it had "the potential. . .to transform the standard of care for post-menopausal women with ER+ and HER2- advanced breast cancer." Problem is, that phrase was lifted directly out of the press release itself (and sure sounds like it), and you really would hope for better from the WSJ. What we're seeing here is actually Pfizer's own spin on ...
Source: In the Pipeline - February 25, 2014 Category: Chemists Tags: Cancer Source Type: blogs
