We dodged a bullet… for now! I’m pleased to report that the House just approved the FY12 DoD Appropriations Bill by a vote of 331-83. No amendments were offered to reduce or eliminate CDMRP (the Department of Defense Medical Research Program) funding. At this time we have managed to maintain the funding for the Prostate [...]
Yesterday there was an amendment passed on the House floor to restore the Prostate Cancer Research Program's 2012 funding to $80 million. The Department of Defense (DoD) Appropriations Bill (H.R. 2219) originally was slated to allocate only $64 million to the Prostate Cancer Research Program (PCRP), a 20% reduction from last year’s funding. Restoring these [...]
Things are looking up for our European readers. It must be frustrating for people outside of the United States to read this blog and learn about the many advances we now have in the US which are not available to them. The good news is that Sanofi has just launched Jevtana (cabazitaxel) in the UK [...]
My personal belief is what does it matter since all of our goals really should be finding ways to live our lives to the fullest, gain all possible life extensions while also maintaining a decent quality of life. There are things that are just out of our personal control, those we just need to accept. [...]
Yesterday Dendreon, the producers of Provenge, received word from the FDA that their plant in California had been approved to manufacture Provenge. This afternoon they received a positive response from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that a final National Coverage Decision (NCD) for Provenge has been issued requiring Medicare contractors to cover [...]
Early this evening Dendreon received the nod from the FDA to use their new manufacturing plant in Seal Beach, California. The approval of this plant will allow the company to now service the men with advanced prostate cancer in Hawaii as well as more efficiently service those in Western United States with Provenge. When coupling [...]
Darryl, the Malecare Executive Director, posted an organizational response to yesterday's New York Times Article on the newly approved advanced prostate cancer drugs and their economic impact. I thought that I would share his insightful post with everyone. "We can easily price commodities and drugs to whatever the market will bare, but how do we [...]
Dev has recently become my biggest fan asking me why I haven't posted anything recently, giving me ideas on what to write about, and basically telling me that I am not popular enough and I need to take this thing to another level. I working on that, which is why I am not as prolific [...]
Today’s New York Times carried a front page article about the high cost of the new prostate cancer treatments. This article seems to be the talk of the town and the talk (based on the comments that have been entered on-line) has been anything but positive. Unfortunately, many of the comments have made with the [...]
Yesterday, Amgen announced that it had submitted a supplemental Biologics License Application (sBLA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to expand its license for XGEVA® (denosumab) to treat men with castrate-resistant prostate cancer to reduce the risk of developing bone metastases. If approved, XGEVA would be the first therapy licensed to prevent or [...]
