Category Archives: In the News

A Small Collection of Items on Healthcare

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The president weighs in on plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), what most Americans say is their top healthcare priority, and more on public libraries as partners for public health!

  • In a NEJM perspective piece, President Barack Obama discusses the ACA, calling plans to “repeal now and replace later” irresponsible. “If a repeal with a delay is enacted, the health care system will be standing on the edge of a cliff, resulting in uncertainty and, in some cases, harm beginning immediately.” The President also appeared in a live interview (broadcast on YouTube) about health care with Sarah Kliff and Ezra Klein of Vox.
  • The Kaiser Family Foundation has released of a poll of Americans Health Care Priorities for 2017. According to the poll, only one one in five support repeal of the ACA without a replacement plan established, and the top priority is to lower out-of-pocket healthcare costs.
  • More about the ACA and potential changes is covered by Joseph Burns on the AHCJ site in, Report: Rate of uninsured drops in every state.
  • And, in an opinion for STAT News, Autumn McClintock writes about the health care outreach and education work being done at the Free Public Library of Philadelphia to address public heath issues. This isn’t the first time Philadelphia’s exciting programs have come up in Blog Buzz, I first wrote about them in November, and linked to this article in Health Affairs.

Why Are Minorities Often Left Out of Clinical Trials?

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The New York Times recently detailed the lack of minority representation in a majority of clinical trials to fight cancer. Immunotherapy studies, such as with nivolumab, use patients that are overwhelming white. Participation of minorities was “out of proportion with the groups’ numbers in the general population and their cancer rates.” Research funded by The National Institutes of Health is required by law to include minorities and women to see if they react to treatment differently than others. Unfortunately, very few clinical trials are being paid for by the NIH.


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Happy New Year! What’s been happening at MSK?

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Once again MSK has been named to Glassdoor’s list of best companies to work for in 2016 (and also on the list for the best vacation leave!). Coming in at #22, employees gave MSK a rating of 4.3.  “Very intelligent, friendly and team-oriented group of people,” one employee writes. “I love working for MSK. There is a great sense of pride and responsibility to our patients and ensuring things get done right.”

Chair of MSK’s Cancer Research Center, Dr. Scott Lowe, and Chief of Molecular Diagnostics, Dr. Marc Ladanyi, collaborated with scientists from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and identified p53 “loss of function” mutations that actually promote cancer, rather than inhibit it, by relocating to the mitochrondria. These truncated proteins are most often found in patients with hard to cure cancers, the ones that resist treatment and reappear after surgery.

Nitin H Shirole, Debjani Pal, Edward R Kastenhuber, Serif Senturk, Joseph Boroda, Paola Pisterzi, Madison Miller, Gustavo Munoz, Marko Anderluh, Marc Ladanyi, Scott W Lowe, Raffaella Sordella. TP53 exon-6 truncating mutations produce separation of function isoforms with pro-tumorigenic functions. eLife, 2016; 5 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.17929 Continue reading →