Cancer, Drugs | featured news

More than 100 cancer specialists have banded together to persuade pharmaceutical companies to bring prices down, suggesting that the high prices for medicine needed to keep someone alive is profiteering.

The Food and Drug Administration says it has approved a new form of a best-selling breast cancer drug that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones. The drug Kadcyla (kad-SY'-luh) from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a double-shot of anti-tumor poison.

Shortages of a chemotherapy drug probably led to higher rates of cancer relapse among young patients, hospital records show. The finding raises questions about the impacts of recurring drug shortages.

A comprehensive study of the genetics of a common lung cancer finds that more than half the tumors have mutations that might be treated by drugs that are already in the pipeline or that could be developed.

Medical science efforts to harness the power of the immune system against cancer are beginning to bear fruit after decades of frustration, opening up a hopeful new front in the long battle against the disease.

Prescription sleep medications, also called hypnotics, rank among the most-advertised and most-prescribed drugs in the United States. Might these pills be doing more than helping people get a good night’s sleep?

If you want the FDA to approve more innovative, new drugs based on promising but early clinical results, you have to give the FDA a way to revoke those approvals later on, should larger trials prove that those drugs aren't as safe or effective as they first seemed. This is why the FDA should be congratulated for the way it has handled the Avastin breast cancer saga, and why I hope we will see the FDA handle more cases like this one, not less.

The breast cancer drug Herceptin increases the risk of heart problems in elderly patients, especially those with a history of heart disease and/or ...

Federal health regulators have concerns about bladder and breast cancer seen in patients taking an experimental diabetes pill from Bristol-Myers ...

Doctors and patients have a new tool to prevent breast cancer: A drug that is already approved for the treatment of the disease.