The FDA announced Breakthrough Therapy Designation (BTD) for acalabrutinib (Calquence) as a single agent to treat chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)
Vice–President Joe Biden gave the plenary address at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research or AACR on April 20 in New Orleans. It was broadcast live and is archived here.
Truthfully, the last 20 minutes or so are by far the most interesting and forward looking, at least to my ears.
That’s when he really starts talking about realigning incentives, and getting at what’s broken in the way we currently perform cancer research.
He argues for breaking down silos, sharing big data, involving patients sooner in research, better measurements of meaningful patient outcomes, removing the pay walls that block access for so many to research, and the critical importance of rewarding not just new research, but verifying others’ data which sadly too often turns out to be impossible. That lack of ability to verify is a scary but ironically well-verified fact.
The vice-president’s whole package aims to put us patients first.
Give a listen here, at least to the last 20 minutes.
Brian Koffman, MD April 25, 2016
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