Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has begun to support the reporting and use of patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) of symptoms as secondary end points in clinical trials for oncology treatment. These outcomes measures are likely to become increasingly important for oncology patients as they will hopefully become part of the drug label. [...]
The exciting thing about Provenge is not only the real survival advantage that it offers with minimal side effects, but that it is a proof of concept treatment that is heralding in the potential future of many other immunotherapies. Today, we have two new possible treatments in active phase 3 trials, Prostvac and Yervoy. [...]
There have been many potential targets identified for the treatment of advanced prostate cancer. Many of these targets are being actively explored with clinical trials designed to test some inhibitors of the targets. Antisense oligonucleotides (OGX-011) targets clusterin, a chaperone protein and OGX-427 which targets heat-shock protein 27 are among the inhibitors being evaluated. OGX-011 [...]
Barvarian Nordic (BN) released some outstanding news a few days ago. According to BN they hope to complete the enrollment in their phase 3, double blind, randomized, placebo controlled, international clinical trial of their cancer vaccine, Prostvac VF. The trial known as PROSPECT is scheduled to be completed with in the next 12 months, unless [...]
One of the most common gripes I hear (and one that I often express) is that Medical news changes often. How often do we hear of a "breakthrough" only to be disputed the next week. It is confusing and it is difficult to know what news to believe and whether we should change a practice, [...]