- In his January 14 editorial in the NYTimes, MSK’s Dr. Peter B. Bach questioned the wisdom of legally requiring insurance companies and government programs to include coverage in their policies for all drugs, even prohibitively expensive ones, as we do in the United States. He described how just saying “no” has led to lower drug costs in other countries and even in a few cases in the US, in which a company, or in the case of MSK, a hospital, has taken a stand.
- MSK recently partnered with Enumeral Biomedical Holdings, Inc. on a two-year project supported by a $999,967 Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract from the National Cancer Institute. In the project, Dr. Jedd D. Wolchok and his team will use an advanced, automated prototype system for human tissue immuno-oncology profiling developed by Enumeral.
- At last week’s annual Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium, Dr. Philip Paty presented data on a study reviewing 145 cases of MSK rectal cancer patients who underwent chemotherapy/radiation treatment. About half of these patients went on to undergo immediate surgery while the rest just had their disease progression rigorously tracked. Subsequent relapse and survival data showed that watchful waiting may be a viable option for some patients.
- HemOnc Today highlighted a recent Cancer paper of MSK’s Dr. Nancy Kemeny and her group in which they demonstrated that patients with RAS-mutant metastatic colorectal cancer fared worse than those with RAS wild-type metastatic disease in terms of incidence of metastases in the lung, bone, and brain, and in terms of overall survival.