Evaluation of Certain Cancer Drugs Illustrates Risk/Reward Balance
The FDA is conducting an industrywide evaluation of drugs with indications given accelerated approval in an effort to determine whether confirmatory clinical trials verified the therapies’ clinical benefits. Manuf...
Collaboration Is Needed on COVID Vaccine Dosing, Specialty Drugs
Many people taking specialty medications, such as people with cancer, are immunocompromised, and specialty drugs themselves can cause drug-induced immunosuppression. As COVID-19 vaccines roll out, it may be unclear ...
Oncologists Say They Expect To Prescribe Fotivda for RCC
The renal cell carcinoma (RCC) therapeutic class boasts multiple agents, but a recent entrant is offering a new tool for certain patients. A Zitter Insights survey shows that the majority of oncologist respondents a...
DMT Adherence While Pregnant Is Tied to Lower Medical Costs
Women diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) and being treated with disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) who become pregnant often discontinue those agents, as none are approved for use during pregnancy. But a recent ...
News Briefs
✦ Spending on specialty medications accounted for more than half of total drug spend for the first time last year. That’s according to the Evernorth 2020 Drug Trend Report, released in March, which noted that le...
New FDA Specialty Approvals
March 3: The FDA expanded the label for Pfizer Inc.’s Lorbrena (lorlatinib) to include the first-line treatment of people with anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC...
FDA Approval Makes Breyanzi Third CAR-T Therapy in NHL
With the FDA’s approval of Bristol Myers Squibb’s (BMS) Breyanzi (lisocabtagene maraleucel) last month, there are now three chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) therapies to treat a certain type of non-Hodgk...
CVS-CTCA Pilot Offers In-Home Infusion of Cancer Therapies
As the U.S. surpasses 500,000 deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic, people with cancer continue to unsurprisingly be hesitant to visit a provider office or hospital for treatment. So, Cancer Treatment Centers of Americ...
New Long-Acting HIV Regimen May Help Patient Adherence
The FDA recently approved the first long-acting regimen for the treatment of HIV in adults. The dosing schedule could help with adherence in a condition where that is particularly crucial. However, some potential ch...
Evolution of Medicine Has Produced Novel New Treatments
Therapeutic interventions have evolved from people taking a pill every day to treat a condition to the one-time cell and gene therapies aimed at halting disease progression or even curing a disease. The rise of thes...