Big Pharma Stomps on Cancer!
“Big Pharma expected to dominate key cancer meeting” screams the headline tonight.
Hey, I thought Big Pharma was our enemy - out to ruin us average Joes with their secret plans to vacuum up all the money in this country. What gives?
It appears that three new treatments against metastatic renal cell carcinoma, all developed by Big Pharma (as compared to teensy-weensy biotech bodegas) are getting publicity at the annual ASCO meeting, where the latest research results are presented urbi et orbi. The three are:
1. Sutent (sunitinib), an oral targeted therapy
2. Nexavar (sorafenib), another oral targeted therapy (Oops! According to the news in this link Wall Street has nixed Nexavar for announcing negligible survival benefits compared with that ancient bane of alchemists known as placebo. Oh well - that’s life in a capitalist economy!)
3. temsirolimus (no brand name yet), an intravenous targeted agent
I’m not certain what is more thrilling about these results (Hey, I’m an oncologist. We hyperventilate over stuff like this) - the fact that we now finally have some new weapons against kidney cancer, a tumor that has been totally resistant to all chemotherapy, or the fact that these new targeted treatments (as well as others) will now be tested in patients with other more common tumors such as lung, breast and colon cancer.
We live in exciting times, don’t we? What will they come up with next?
