The term Digital Health has the potential to come to symbolize compassionate support for cancer patients all along their treatment journey, the freeing of health care providers from tasks that can be automated, and more time for a richer patient-physician relationship. Read More
Targeting the immune system instead of the cancer cells, these new drugs are revolutionizing the treatment of cancer.
More specifically, proteins of the immune-checkpoint pathways on the surface of T cells play important roles in the development of immune tolerance. Cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen 4 (CTLA-4) signaling for instance, inhibits T-cell activation. Thus CTLA-4 blockade using anti-CTLA-4 monoclonal antibody therapy has great potential because suppression of inhibitory signals results in the generation of an antitumor T-cell response. Other important immune-checkpoint proteins are Programmed cell Death protein 1 (PD-1), and Programmed Death-Ligand 1 (PD-L1), its ligand.
Breakthroughs in the understanding of the progression of genomic events and inflammatory microenvironment that drive premalignancy provide unprecedented possibilities to transform cancer detection and prevention and ultimately reduce cancer incidence, morbidity, and mortality. Evidence for effective drugs and vaccine strategies to prevent cancer are also mounting.
In 2015, the European Medicines Agency (EMA)’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) recommended approval of 39 new active substances. One third of those were for the treatment of cancer. Like in the US, Non Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) and Melanoma benefited the most from new drugs approvals. Of the 4 new drugs approved in the US for relapsed and refractory multiple myeloma in 2015, however, only one was approved in Europe. We review here in more details newly approved oncology drugs.
There were 17 new drugs approved in oncology by the FDA in 2015 representing 38% of all new drugs approved last year, a very significant share. 65% of new oncology drugs benefited from priority review, and 30% from Breakthrough designation. This is a clear signal of the intensity and quality of novel therapeutic approaches submitted and the fruitful collaboration between the FDA and Industry. We review here the cancers with the most new approvals.
Recognizing that patients and physicians are generally willing to accept greater risks and side effects from treatment of life-threatening and severely debilitating diseases than they would for other diseases, the FDA established four programs: Fast Track Designation, Breakthrough Therapy Designation, Accelerated Approval, and Priority Review Designation. They are widely used in Oncology. Read More
On October 15th, 2014, Aptel Research CEO Michele Derai will be moderating a panel discussion for the Boston chapter of the Healthcare Business Women’s Association (HBA). The topic of the discussion is The Impact of Digital Health and Mobile Technology on Patient Engagement and will feature speakers representing the key stakeholders in healthcare. Read More
Aptel Research CEO, Michele Derai, was featured in a recent article, Social Media: Connect, Inform, Empower on EyeForPharma. The article focuses on the pros and cons of the increasing use of social media among patients. “As patients are getting more information online, pharma companies need to realize that now there are more sources of information about their product than just the leaflets [pharma] themselves provide,” explained Michele Derai, CEO, Aptel Research.
Cambridge, MA and Seattle, WA (PRWEB) September 03, 2014
Aptel Research, a respected healthcare market research firm, and Patient Power, a leading producer of online educational content for cancer patients, have announced key results from the Patient Power Summer 2014 Survey, a comprehensive online survey of almost 700 US-based cancer patients’ and caregivers’ use of and experience with online health information and its impact. The key findings of the survey demonstrate the high level of online engagement of cancer patients and their frequent reliance today on online patient communities as a primary source of credible and up-to-date health information.
Continuing the July series of blog posts discussing some of the key issues from the Patients Summit in London June 17th and 18th.
True patient centricity incorporates the patient perspective throughout the whole process of drug development and commercialization, from R&D and clinical trial design to marketing and communication. At the Patient Summit in London last month, two speakers, Paul Humphries of Genzyme and Andy Jones of AstraZeneca, discussed the challenges and opportunities in patient-centric drug development.
© 2025 Aptel Research | Global Pharmaceutical Marketing Consultants. Design by EYE/I Creative.
