Posts tagged cancer

Push-back on costs of cancer drugs. WellPoint is increasing the amount it pays for less expensive generic cancer drugs as an incentive for doctors to use them.

America’s favorite dietary supplements, multivitamins, modestly lowered the risk for cancer in healthy male doctors who took them for more than a decade, the first large study to test these pills has found.

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston is launching a massive “moonshot” effort against eight specific forms of the disease, similar to the all-out push for space exploration 50 years ago.

Oncology Care in the Miami Area Continues to Evolve. In the latest development, Florida Blue, Baptist Health South Florida and Advanced Medical Specialties jointly announced a new collaboration.

Cancer Drug Shortages Impacting the Pittsburgh Market. UPMC recently notified 12 patients that their bladder cancer treatment has been temporarily halted due to the shortage of cancer drugs.

A Health Affairs article by Ubel et al. reveals that while oncologists are sensitive to price in the abstract, they tend to yield their cost-effectiveness notions when considering treatment for individual patients.

Two Boston-area teams have assembled massive encyclopedias that predict the vulnerability of hundreds of different subtypes of cancer to dozens of drugs.

Many patients taking a widely prescribed class of oral cancer drugs are also using a variety of medications that could reduce the effectiveness of the cancer treatment or increase its toxic side effects, according to research by Medco Health Solutions Inc.

Forty years after the National Cancer Act launched the “war on cancer,” the battle is not just finding cures and better treatments but also being able to afford them.

New drugs often cost $100,000 or more a year. Patients are being put on them sooner in the course of their illness and for a longer time — sometimes for the rest of their lives. The latest trend is to use these drugs in combination, guided by genetic tests that allow more personalized treatment but also add to its expense.

The maker of the widely prescribed cancer drug Avastin is warning doctors and patients about counterfeit vials of the product that have been distributed in the U.S.

Roche’s Genentech unit said Tuesday that the fake products do not contain the key ingredient in Avastin, which is used to treat cancers of the colon, lung, kidney and brain. The drug is a huge money-maker for Roche, generating about $6 billion a year.