To benefit from new cancer drugs, reform the regulatory regime

To benefit from new cancer drugs, reform the regulatory regime

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Dr. David J. Stewart is a professor of medicine and head of the Division of Medical Oncology at the University of Ottawa; John-Peter Bradford is a member of the Research Advisory Group of the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer and the Cancer Care Committee of the Ottawa Regional Cancer Foundation. We are concerned Canadians who have been impacted deeply by cancer. One of us (Stewart) is a cancer physician who has seen far too many patients die; the other (Bradford) is a cancer survivor who has recently lost his beloved wife…

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Redefining cancer: a new paradigm for better and faster treatment innovation

Redefining cancer: a new paradigm for better and faster treatment innovation

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Common cancers may arise from several different mutations, and each causative mutation may require different treatment approaches.  There are also several mechanisms by which malignancies may become resistant to therapy, and each mechanism will also require a different therapeutic strategy.  Hence, the paradigm of devising therapies based on tumor type is suboptimal.  Each common malignancy may now be regarded as a collection of morphologically similar but molecularly distinct orphan diseases, each requiring unique approaches.  Current strategies that employ randomized clinical trials (RCTs) in unselected patients carry a high risk of misleading results.  Available data suggest that…

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