Oncology

Saladax Biomedical's MY5-FU blood test will help personalize and optimize 5-fluorouracil dosing in cancer patients.

Patients with resected non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) are at risk for recurrence of disease, but currently there are no tools to predict which patients are at highest risk. The authors set out to create a risk model incorporating both clinical data and biomarkers.

Rates of new cancer cases in the United States have fallen slightly in recent years, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A new oral angiogenesis inhibitor for the treatment of lung cancer could be edging closer to the market: Approval application for nintedanib (Boehringer Ingelheim) has been filed in Europe and is being prepared for the United States.

The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN) will host Designing Clinical Trials in the Era of Multiple Biomarkers and Targeted Therapies on April 25, 2014 in Bethesda, Maryland, as part of the NCCN Oncology Policy Program.

A panel of Food and Drug Administration advisers has voted to endorse an experimental stool test that uses DNA to detect colon cancer and precancerous growths.

Results of a phase II trial of the PARP inhibitor olaparib, presented at the meeting of the Society of Gynecologic Oncology, showed that maintenance therapy with olaparib significantly improved PFS in ovarian cancer patients.

Drug development is a risky business, with an estimated 90 percent of compounds that enter clinical trials ultimately failing to reach the market.

AstraZeneca's Phase III pipeline is growing ahead of plan, chief executive Pascal Soriot told a recent media briefing, and cancer drugs make up a major chunk of the pipeline.

The effectiveness of radiation treatments for patients with squamous cell cancer of the head and neck has been reviewed by an international team of researchers. They identified two biomarkers that were good at predicting a patient's resistance to radiation therapy. "While our findings are encouraging, and a step toward personalized medicine, we hope to do more of this research with a larger, randomized trial," the authors conclude.

Ceritinib, which received a 'breakthrough therapy' status from the FDA last year, was highly active in patients with advanced, ALK-rearranged NSCLC, including those who had had disease progression during crizotinib treatment, regardless of the presence of resistance mutations in ALK.

Enrollment of Phase 3 study in first-line advanced liver cancer is expected to begin by mid-2015. The companies also plan to initiate several additional Phase 1/2 trials for different cancers during 2014.

In the treatment of lung cancer, immunotherapy has come of age and is here to stay expert says at the 4th European Lung Cancer Conference.

Pfizer Inc's Xalkori delayed progression of lung cancer longer than chemotherapy in patients who had never previously been treated for the disease, according to results of a late-stage study released on March 25.

Biomedical engineers in Germany have developed a tool that uses magnetic beads to detect proteins, potential biomarker, in blood or urine samples in a one-step process.

Scientists from Weill Cornell Medical College and Houston Methodist have found that a gene previously unassociated with breast cancer plays a pivotal role in the growth and progression of the triple negative form of the disease, a particularly deadly strain that often has few treatment options.

The AURELIA trial comparing the efficacy of bevacizumab plus chemotherapy, versus chemotherapy alone, presented encouraging results in platinum-resistant ovarian cancer patients.

Myriad Genetics, Inc. today announced that Tesaro, Inc. will use Myriad's novel HRD (homologous recombination deficiency) test to identify tumor types that may respond to its investigational poly-ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor, niraparib, currently in Phase 3 clinical development.

A retrospective study has shown that two targeted therapy drugs achieved similar outcomes among people with metastatic or recurrent non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) harboring an EGFR mutation.

The Food and Drug Administration is weighing the benefits and risks of two experimental colon cancer screening tests which use DNA from a patient's stool to detect dangerous tumors and growths.

Despite ACA stipulations, patients with cancer may face new barriers to care as they shop for healthcare plans on the state and federal insurance exchanges.

Cancer patients relieved that they can get insurance coverage because of the new health care law may be disappointed to learn that some the nation's best cancer hospitals are off-limits.