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Tuesday, June 6, 2017
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Here's the latest from STAT on research discoveries, drug development, treatment costs, and patient care, along with occasional opinion pieces. For more, visit
statnews.com and follow us on
Facebook and Twitter. And
sign up for our upcoming newsletter, BIO in 30 Seconds, a quick daily dispatch from the BIO International Convention in San Diego from June 18-22.
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By
Max Blau
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Chris Howell/The Herald-Times/AP
Taxpayers in Louisiana are helping to subsidize construction of two health care centers offering a divisive cancer treatment — even as state lawmakers prepare to cut millions from basic health services.
The treatment is called proton therapy, and this spring, the state’s economic development department promised up to $10.6 million to two companies, one to build a center in Baton Rouge and the other in
New Orleans.
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By
Damian Garde
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Alex Hogan/STAT
As this year’s American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting draws to a close, take a break from your flight, train ride, or Twitter binge for a look at who’s leaving Chicago with a skip in their step
and who might be dragging their feet all the way home.
Winners
The whole CAR-T cohort. Bluebird Bio stoked hopes that CAR-T will be more than a one-trick cell therapy with
promising early data in multiple myeloma. A virtually unknown Chinese entrant, vividly named Nanjing Legend Biotech, came through with
intriguing results of its own. And even the beleaguered Juno Therapeutics
had good news to report in the form of positive results in lymphoma. The read-through: Hot-wiring cells to fight cancer is difficult, but scientists are gradually wrapping their heads around the idea. CAR-T sentiment is
nowhere near 2014’s hysteria, but it’s on the mend after hitting a nadir last summer.
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By
Associated Press
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NIH
CHICAGO — Doctors are reporting unprecedented success from a new cell and gene therapy for multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that’s on the rise. Although it’s early and the study is small — 35 people —
every patient responded and all but two were in some level of remission within two months.
In a second study of nearly two dozen patients, everyone above a certain dose responded.
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Sponsor content by Cancer Research Institute
CRI scientists highlight ASCO’s top cancer immunotherapy research takeaways
Cancer immunotherapy continues to show us that it has tremendous potential to transform cancer care. Data presented at the ASCO Annual Meeting demonstrate that there is continued promise in cancer immunotherapy,
but more research remains to be done if we aspire to find a cure to all cancers through immunotherapy. As ASCO 2017 comes to a close, the Cancer Research Institute looks back on the
highlights and key takeaways on their blog.
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By
Casey Ross
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APStock
A flick of the prescriber’s pen could save $825 million a year on lung cancer care in the U.S.
That’s the finding of a new study on the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab, marketed commercially as Keytruda by Merck. By switching to weight-based dosing — instead of a fixed dose of 200 mg — doctors
could quickly reduce costs of the intravenous therapy without compromising its effectiveness, the study concludes.
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By
Liz Szabo — Kaiser Health News
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Win McNamee/Getty Images
Less and less of the research presented at a prominent cancer conference is supported by the National Institutes of Health, a development that some of the country’s top scientists see as a worrisome trend.
The number of studies fully funded by the NIH at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) — the world’s largest gathering of cancer researchers — has fallen 75 percent in
the past decade, from 575 papers in 2008 to 144 this year, according to the society, which meets Friday through Tuesday in Chicago.
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By
Damian Garde
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NIH
Connecticut biotech Loxo Oncology is hoping to upend decades of Food and Drug Administration dogma with its cancer drug, seeking what would be a pioneering approval to treat a wide array of tumors with
one pill. And, judging from an early peek at Loxo’s clinical data, experts say the plan just might work.
Loxo’s drug, larotrectinib, is designed to kill off tumors by attacking a protein called TRK, which becomes hyperactive in people with certain genetic mutations. But where most drugs are studied in one
cancer type at a time, Loxo aims to market its therapy for any tumor that expresses the TRK protein, and it’s building up evidence to convince the FDA.
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By
Ed Silverman
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Alex Hogan/STAT
In the latest attempt to examine financial ties between physicians and drug makers, a new study finds that oncologists who received payments for meals, travel, and consulting were more likely to prescribe
medicines sold by the companies who provided the largesse.
Specifically, the odds were 78 percent greater that oncologists would prescribe certain brand-name drugs for treating renal cell carcinoma if they had received some type of payment from one of the manufacturers.
And the odds were 29 percent higher they would prescribe certain brand-name medicines for treating chronic myeloid leukemia if they had received a payment.
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By
Ed Silverman
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Chris Hondros/Getty Images
The growth in the price of cancer medicines in the U.S. averaged 3.6 percent last year, a drop from 4.7 percent in 2015, after accounting for rebates and discounts that drug makers paid to health insurers,
according to a new report.
Meanwhile, the plethora of new cancer drugs is projected to generate increased spending of 6 percent to 9 percent annually through 2021, when global costs are forecast to exceed $147 billion, which is
in keeping with the nearly 9 percent compounded annual spending growth rate that was seen over the past five years, according to the market research arm of QuintilesIMS.
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