Chemo Shortage Fuels Price Gouging; MDS Misdiagnoses; Risky Accelerated Approvals?

The shortage of key chemotherapy drugs has led to price gouging, forcing some hospitals to pay as much as 10 times the usual cost. (NBC News)

The shortage of carboplatin disproportionately affects patients with ovarian cancer. (STAT)

Mindful-based interventions — stress reduction, yoga, meditation — to reduce cancer patients’ anxiety and depression received support in a new clinical guideline from the American Society of Clinical Oncology and Society for Integrative Oncology.

Patients with pancreatic cancer had worse outcomes if they used the benzodiazepine drug lorazepam (Ativan) to treat anxiety and depression. (Clinical Cancer Research)

NIH will make available a comprehensive proteogenomic dataset that cancer researchers worldwide can access for help in unlocking the molecular mysteries of cancer.

About one third of myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) diagnoses turned out to be incorrect upon further review, contributing to inappropriate therapy in some cases. (University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, Blood Advances)

The University of Texas System’s medical footprint will expand considerably with the construction of a multispecialty hospital and a cancer hospital in Austin affiliated with UT’s MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Arcellx announced that the FDA has lifted a partial clinical hold on the phase II clinical development program for the company’s B-cell maturation antigen-targeted CAR T-cell therapy for relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma.

ALX Oncology ended clinical trials of its CD47 inhibitor in MDS and acute myeloid leukemia for lack of efficacy, following a recent similar decision by Gilead Sciences for a different CD47 inhibitor. (Biopharma Dive)

Policies that favor high-volume hospitals, usually located in urban areas, may disadvantage rural cancer patients, who often prefer to receive care closer to home for less complex types of cancer. (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center)

A protein expressed by cytomegalovirus, which is found in more than half of all adults, may trigger the growth and progression of some glioblastomas. (Science Signaling)

Does the FDA’s accelerated approval program pose a risk to cancer patients worldwide? (Nature)

Seagen announced that the combination of tucatinib (Tukysa) and ado-trastuzumab emtansine (Kadcyla) improved progression-free survival in patients with previously treated metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer.

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