Cancer Drug Spending Hits $100 Billion
May 6th 2015Earlier diagnosis, longer treatment durations, and increased effectiveness of treatments helped to boost spending on cancer medicines to the $100 billion threshold in 2014, a rise of 10.3% for the year, and up markedly from $75 billion five years earlier.
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Clinical Development of Prostate Cancer Vaccines Continues
May 6th 2015The field of prostate cancer vaccines remains an area of active exploration, with clinical trials into sipuleucel-T continuing even amid a corporate restructuring and a phase III study into PROSTVAC reaching full enrollment.
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Obama Signs SGR Repeal, Heralding New Era in Medicare Reimbursement
April 16th 2015With the flourish of a pen, President Obama put an end to a yearly nightmare of congressional budget wrangling when he signed the Medical Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, otherwise known as the Sustainable Growth Rate formula repeal.
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ASH Report Carves Out a New Role for Hematologists
April 3rd 2015The American Society of Hematology is calling for the creation of a new clinical hematology specialty that would be based in a medical center or health system and would focus primarily on patients with benign blood disorders, while also helping to manage genomic testing and pathways-centered care.
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ASCO Report Says Patient Survival Improves But Costs and Administrative Burden Also Climb
March 17th 2015Patients with cancer are living longer thanks to new treatments, but the US oncology care system is burdened by growing administrative responsibilities, difficulties obtaining payment, and runaway costs.
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Report Calls for Drug Pricing Reforms
March 16th 2015A new report has called for broad changes in the way drugs are priced in the United States, saying the law of supply and demand is not doing an effective job of bringing the cost of cancer drugs down to a level comparable with other countries.
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Noted Astronaut Addresses Importance of Teamwork at Prostate Congress
March 14th 2015In a similar fashion as astronauts, physicians can mitigate risks and improve outcomes with advanced planning and teamwork, four-time space shuttle commander Tom Henricks said during his keynote address at the Interdisciplinary Prostate Cancer Congress.
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Excitement Building for PARP Inhibitors in BRCA-Mutated Breast Cancer
February 27th 2015The FDA's recent approval of the first PARP inhibitor suggests that this new class of targeted therapy has great potential to help not only patients with ovarian cancer for whom the agent is indicated but also individuals with breast cancer.
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Bringing CARs to Market: Novel T-Cell Therapies Make Rapid Progress Despite Challenges
November 18th 2014When Marcela V. Maus, MD, PhD, thinks of the challenge of bringing chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) therapies to market in the battle against cancer, she is reminded of the auto industry's first days.
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