The generic drug manufacturing company from India, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to sell a generic version of AstraZeneca's prostate cancer drug Casodex. Casodex (bicalutamide) is an anti-androgen that block the ability of androgens (testosterone) to access the prostate cancer cell and “fuel” them. Used [...]
Selenium is one of those supplements that were are told is good for us and then we are told it is bad for us. Every six months to a year the story and the recommendations seem to change. According to a study by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute the University of California, San Francisco higher [...]
The FDA did introduce its Critical Path initiative in 2004. But, even these expedited processes have become bogged down. The FDA has responded to the political winds and become cautious after the negative publicity it received from the withdrawals of drugs like Rezulin and Vioxx. The best and most recent delay in the prostate cancer [...]
Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) introduced S. 914, the Cures Acceleration Network and National Institutes of Health Reauthorization Act of 2009. The bill has three main components: 1. Establishes a new, independent federal agency, to be known as the “Cures Acceleration Network” (CAN), which would award grants and contracts to accelerate the development of cures and [...]
A presentation at the ASCO conference in Florida reconfirmed the fact that increased levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) is associated with adverse outcomes (earlier death) in men with castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) treated with docetaxel (taxotere). The study analyzed the baseline serum samples from 119 castrate resistant (CRPC) men enrolled in 6 phase I or [...]
So how long does it usually take for men undergoing hormone therapy (ADT) to progress from being hormone dependent to hormone independent? Clearly, we should always remember that this is a very individual, case-by-case time. However, there was a recent time analysis published in the February 2009 edition of Urology. These researchers found that after [...]
When diagnosed I was told that I had a Gleason score of 7, calculated by adding the first number, a descriptor of the most prevalent cancer cells in the biopsy sample, to the second number, a descriptor for the second most prevalent cancer cells. In my case the actual Gleason score was 4+3 or a [...]
Why do we need an Office of Men’s Health and why do we need more emphasize put on men’s health awareness? Studies like this one in the UK answer these simple questions: A recent study published this week by the National Cancer Intelligence Network (NCIN) and Cancer Research UK, concluded that men are almost 40 [...]
Prostate cancer awareness might be ready to take a major step in the United Kingdom (UK) and we all can help it along. I was sent an interesting web page by my wife Wendy about a battle in the advertising agency world in London. A prostate cancer awareness advertisement has been submitted as a "wild [...]
The fairness of increasing cancer research funding in FY2010 comes into question during House and Senate hearings. See my post of May 23, 2009: Senator Harkin and the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Hold Hearings on the Budget Allocations to the NCI for Cancer Research Two leading appropriators in [...]
