James Dewey Watson, PhD, died on November 6, 2025 at the age of 97. His passing made headlines around the world. After all, Watson—co-discoverer with Francis Crick of the double-helix structure...
Personalized Medicine Precision oncology is defined as the “molecular profiling of tumors to identify targetable alterations.” Scientists have designed targeted drugs to attack mutations in...
Best Selling Cancer Drug in 2019 Keytruda® (pembrolizumab) is toxic, expensive, and not as effective as one would wish. But at $7.2 billion, it was the best-selling cancer drug in 2019. At the...
Stunning Reversal In a stunning rebuke to the former director of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), an advisory panel has recommended removing the approval of the drug Avastin (bevacizumab)...
Glee Over GleevecAfter the announcement of herceptin, work accelerated on many other targeted agents for cancers. In that same year, clinical trials began for a new drug for chronic myeloid...
A Study ShowedHow effective is bevacizumab (Avastin®)? A study of advanced colorectal cancer showed that progression-free survival went from 6.2 months with chemo to 9.2 months when Avastin was...
The Main Hope of Conventional OncologyFor the past dozen years, drugs that inhibit the growth of new blood vessels—a strategy called anti-angiogenesis—have been the main hope of conventional...
A Great Success Story?Let us look at a drug that is considered one of the great success stories of the precision medicine approach, Xalkori (crizotinib). The story of Xalkori illustrates some of...
Conflicts of InterestAlmost every study of a new cancer drug is riddled with conflicts of interest. Let us focus on one of these drugs, crizotinib (Xalkori®). But we could conduct the same sort...
A Top Selling Cancer DrugIn 2008, the FDA approved Avastin (bevacizumab) as a treatment for advanced breast cancer. This approval was based on a small trial called E2100, which showed a...
The Cancer Genome Landscape The journal Science published a revealing report on the work of Charles Swanton, MD, showing that “tumors are a mosaic of different cells” (Gerlinger 2012)....
Pivotal Results? Two studies published in October 2005 in the New England Journal of Medicine have sparked a triumphant reaction from both the media and the medical profession. The studies...
A Huge Growth Advantage Mutations in cancer cells are divided into two kinds: driver and passengers. The drivers are the ones supposedly causing cancer in the first place. Having a large number...
Abnormalities Are Characteristic of Cancer Cancer genome sequencing means the analysis of all the genes in a cancer cell. Scientists first isolate tissues from the primary tumor, from metastatic...
A Revocation In a stunning rebuke to a former director of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), an advisory panel has recommended removing the approval of the drug Avastin® (bevacizumab) for...
Revealing Report Science described a revealing report on the work of Charles Swanton, MD, of the Francis Crick Institute, of the U.K. showing that “tumors are a mosaic of different cells”...
Poly ADP Ribose Polymerase The acronym PARP stands for “poly ADP ribose polymerase.” For the past few years, a great many hopes have been riding on the alleged effectiveness of this...
What does Perjeta Add to Herceptin for Breast Cancer? If you use the Predict nomogram from the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS), created by Cambridge University scientists, you get a...
Blood Supply Tumors require a constant blood supply in order to support their growth. The development of new blood vessels is governed by a process called angiogenesis. In cancer, this is called...
Breast Cancer GenesSome years ago, the BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 genes [pronounced “Bráck-ah) were widely heralded as the definitive “breast cancer genes” (in fact, the abbreviations BR = breast, CA =...
The Imminent Cure? You may remember how the New York Times once proclaimed the imminent cure for cancer. Judah Folkman, MD, a professor at Harvard University, had propounded a theory that tumors...
Targeted Therapies I attended the 2013 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). Some of my journalistic colleagues there were excited about the latest findings...
Vemurafenib (Zelboraf®): A Cause for Celebration? An item that is causing “celebration” among melanoma patients is the experimental drug vemurafenib. Data on this was presented at ASCO’s annual...
Immunotherapy Prostate cancer is one of the most common cancers. Each year in the U.S., around 230,000 men are newly diagnosed with prostate cancer, and 30,000 die of the disease. A new form of...
An Instructive Look It is instructive to look at endostatin, a much-touted angiogenesis inhibitor treatment. The New York Times once ran a front-page story in which prominent scientists virtually...
Top Cancer Drug Bevacizumab (Avastin®) is, economically speaking, the top cancer drug in the world. Sales in 2010 topped $6.9 billion. One of the reasons for this financial success has been its...
Big News from AACR (2006)The big news at the Spring 2006 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) meeting was that the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug celecoxib (Celebrex®)...
Targeting Brain Cancer In June of 2013, I undertook a pilgrimage to the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). I was happy to have an abstract included in the...
Early Treatment In 2011, Johnson & Johnson (J&J) claimed that its new drug for prostate cancer, Zytiga abiraterone acetate (Zytiga®) is effective in men early in their treatment. It was...
Avoid Secondary Sources Hardly a week goes by that one does not read of some new breakthrough in the treatment of cancer of the colon and rectum (colorectal cancer). Since I published...
A Targeted Therapy Another type of targeted therapy is the “monoclonal antibody.” Normal antibodies are naturally produced by our B-type lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell). They are...
“Targeted” therapies are those drugs that attack specific molecules present in or around cancers. These are mostly classified as “kinases.” This type of therapy tries to avoid the indiscriminate...
Oldest Targeted Drugs Anti-angiogenic drugs are the oldest category of targeted drugs. They are aimed at a tumor’s ability to either generate new blood vessels or recruit already existing vessels...