KANTAR HEALTH BLOG

On February 4 we observe World Cancer Day, a day created by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) aimed at making people all around the world talk about the disease and take actions that can help reduce the impact and weight of diagnosis in families.

Oncology Conference Insight: ASCO GI 2017 --- It is an exciting time for patients and their doctors fighting advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). In mid-2016 the HCC community witnessed the first randomized trial to successfully improve survival outcomes in Nexavar® (sorafenib, Onyx/Amgen/Bayer)-pretreated HCC when the multikinase inhibitor Stivarga® (regorafenib, Bayer) demonstrated a 38% reduction in the risk of death compared with placebo in the Phase III RESOURCE trial.

Oncology Conference Insight: ASCO GI 2017 --- Before Cyramza® (ramucirumab, Eli Lilly and Co) was approved by the FDA in 2014, there were no targeted therapy regimens approved for use in relapsed/refractory gastric cancer. Cyramza’s approval as a monotherapy or in combination with paclitaxel after prior fluoropyrimidine- or platinum-containing systemic therapy was based on the positive results of two Phase III studies in relapsed gastric patients.

Instead of understanding “the patient,” pharma will need to see “the person who happens to be living with a disease.”

Oncology Conference Insight: ASH 2016 --- Immunotherapies such as checkpoint inhibitors have had a dramatic impact on treatment paradigms for many tumor types over the past few years, and their full potential is far from being realized. Hot on the heels of checkpoint inhibitors are engineered, adoptive T-cell therapies that represent another promising advancement.