November 2012, Vol 3, No 8

Vienna, Austria—The identification of genetic mutations and tumor biomarkers to select the right drug for the right patient are not enough to satisfy the need for personalized cancer care, according to Kathy Redmond, MSc, RN, Editor of Cancer World magazine, a publication of the European School of Oncology and former president of the European Oncology Nursing Society, who addressed the topic of personalized medicine at the 2012 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress.

Phoenix, AZ—Using the paradigm of individualizing drug therapy based on a patient’s genetics, a group of oncologists and genomic experts have designed a genomic prescribing system that they hope will significantly reduce the staggeringly high rate of adverse drug reactions associated with prescription drugs in the United States.

With the fanfare of a New York Times Op-Ed piece by Peter B. Bach, MD, and colleagues, the announcement was made that Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) would exclude the new colorectal cancer drug ziv-aflibercept (Zaltrap) from its formulary.

The cost of cancer care is staggering. Global sales of cancer drugs alone are forecast to grow at a rate of 12% to 15% annually, reaching $75 billion to $80 billion by the end of this year, according to IMS Health.

San Francisco, CA—In patients with breast cancer with bone metastases, skeletal-related events (SREs) are associated with high treatment costs. For example, the cumulative cost of treating 1 spinal cord compression exceeds $100,000, according to a new cost analysis presented at the 2012 Breast Cancer Symposium.

The cost of cancer care matters; in fact, it matters so much that Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York City has decided not to include in its formulary the newly approved drug ziv-aflibercept (Zaltrap), which was recently approved for use in patients with progressive metastatic colorectal cancer.

A study presented at the 2012 American Society for Radiation Oncology annual meeting found few differences in toxicity between the 2 techniques, but demonstrated that PBRT was associated with a 57% increase in median cost per patient.

Researchers in Denmark set out to investigate whether statin therapy can help to reduce cancer-related mortality by limiting cancer-cell proliferation in patients who have used statins before they were diagnosed with cancer (Nielsen SF, et al. N Engl J Med. 2012;367:1792-1802).

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved omacetaxine mepesuccinate (Synribo; Teva Pharmaceutical) to treat adults with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), a hematologic disease. An estimated 5430 Americans will be diagnosed with CML in 2012, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Boston, MA—In the United States right now, intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) has largely replaced 3-dimensional conformal radiation therapy as the technique of choice for most patients with organ-confined prostate cancer that is being treated with radiation as the primary therapy.