2016 editions
- December 2016
Joao Incio on mechanisms to explain why obesity promotes cancer. - November 2016
Mike Stratton on how mutational changes in a cancer genome can point to the cause of the cancer. - October 2016
Ruth Muschel on a new target for treatments for colorectal cancer. - September 2016
Freddie Hamdy on the effectiveness of treatments for prostate cancer. - August 2016
Moshe Oren discusses the effects of the microenvironment on cancer cells. - July 2016
Richard Gilbertson on the 'bad luck hypothesis' for the cause of cancer. - June 2016
Key advances in clinical trials. - May 2016
Mark Lemmon on the underlying biochemistry of cancer. - April 2016
Roger Stupp on using alternating electric fields as treatment. - March 2016
Charlotte Vrinten on public perception of deaths from cancer. - February 2016
Guillermo Garcia-Manero on myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). - December 2015/January 2016
Nazneen Rahman on germline genetic screening in ovarian cancer.
EJC News Focus – April 2014
Physicians 'must stand up for affordability in health care'
Cancer now costs Europe 130 billion Euro per year, according to Richard Sullivan (Institute of Cancer Policy, London, UK); a figure generally agreed to be unsustainable but one that continues to increase. At the heart of the problem is the drive by national governments and the pharmaceutical industry to lower the level of evidence required for drugs to be allowed on to the market. But physicians must take their share of the blame, he says, for failing to make it clear when new drugs offer little clinically meaningful benefit. Irrational prescribing – not just of drugs but of imaging and radiotherapy – is allowing costs to spiral out of control.
Ajay Aggarwal (Institute of Cancer Policy, London, UK) believes that physicians can make effective advocates, influencing both the research and the political agenda, and he calls for stronger leadership from within the profession.
Both Sullivan and Aggarwal spoke at the recent Oncology at the Limits event (13-15 February, 2014; Heidelberg, Germany). In this month's EJC News Focus, Helen Saul asks them what progress is being made in the affordability debate.