Enhancing access to innovative cancer drugs: Cross-sector consensus on a way forward to benefit patients.

New discoveries and technologies are driving major advances in our understanding of cancer and underpinning a new era of precision medicine and immunotherapy. However, advances in treatment have been uneven: whereas survival rates for some common cancers are improving rapidly, for others there has been much less progress. In addition, healthcare systems are finding it difficult to provide access to expensive new treatments.

From patent to patient: analysing access to innovative cancer drugs.

Analysis of cancer drugs licensed through the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in 2000-2016 shows that the number of authorisations increased over that timeframe. The median number of licensed drugs each year rose from six for 2000-2008 to 13.5 for 2009-2016.

Coexpression of parathyroid hormone related protein and its receptor in early breast cancer predicts poor patient survival.

Purpose: Parathyroid hormone-related protein (PTHRP) is in part responsible for the clinical syndrome of hypercalcaemia of malignancy and has been implicated as an important factor in the development of bone metastases. The aim of this study was to determine the coexpression of PTHRP and its receptor in early breast cancer (EBC) and bone metastases (BM), and correlate these findings to clinical outcome.

Experimental Design: Samples of surgically excised EBC (n = 176) and BM (n = 43) were collected and stored in liquid nitrogen.