FDA Approves Pertuzumab for Advanced, Her2+ Breast Cancer
My opinion is not quite formed on this new antibody. The FDA’s decision was based on results of one trial of 808 patients, half of whom didn’t get the experimental drug…
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 […]
Big Melanoma News: FDA approves Vemurafenib (Zelboraf)
This morning the FDA announced approval of Zelboraf (vemurafenib) for treatment of some patients advanced melanoma. This is the second drug the agency has approved for this disease in recent months, after nearly two decades of a lack of new or effective therapies for melanoma. Zelboraf is a pill. This small-molecule drug is thought to […]
Benlysta, A New Treatment for Lupus
Lupus, an autoimmune disease, turned up on the front page, right side of today’s Wall Street Journal. It cropped up, also, on the first page of the New York Times business section, and elsewhere. Scientific American published a nice on-line review, just now. The reason is that yesterday the FDA approved a new, monoclonal antibody […]