FDA Approves Adcetris for Refractory Hodgkin’s Disease and a Rare T-Cell Lymphoma

Late Friday afternoon, the FDA announced its approval, upon accelerated review, of a new drug, Adcetris (brentuximab) for patients with Hodgkin’s lymphoma that has relapsed after bone marrow transplant and for some patients with T-cell anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL). This interests me for a lot of reasons, among them that I used to work in the field of lymphoma immunology […]

Posted in cancer treatment, Communication, Medical News, Oncology (cancer)Tagged , , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment on FDA Approves Adcetris for Refractory Hodgkin’s Disease and a Rare T-Cell Lymphoma

Reducing Cancer Care Costs: Why Not Offer Neulasta in Smaller Vials?

This is the fifth in a series of posts on how we might reduce the costs of cancer care, based on 10 suggestions offered in a May, 2011 NEJM sounding board. We’re up to point 4:  oncologists should replace the routine use of white-cell-stimulating factors with a reduction in the chemotherapy dose in metastatic solid cancers. In […]

Posted in cancer treatment, health care costs, Oncology (cancer)Tagged , , , , , , , , , 6 Comments on Reducing Cancer Care Costs: Why Not Offer Neulasta in Smaller Vials?

Reducing Cancer Costs by Giving One Drug at a Time, Sequentially

This is the third in a series of posts on Bending the Cost Curve in Cancer Care, based on the late-May NEJM health policy piece. Today we’ll consider the second of the authors’ suggestions: to limit second and third-line treatments to sequential monotherapies for most solid tumors. This particular suggestion, one of the few proposed with which I […]

Posted in cancer treatment, health care costs, Oncology (cancer)Tagged , , Leave a Comment on Reducing Cancer Costs by Giving One Drug at a Time, Sequentially
newsletter software