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Cancer Major Focus of R&D Efforts in California, but Cures Hard to Come By
Submitted on:
09.02.2009
Virtually every large pharmaceutical company and a substantial portion of the smaller biotechnology companies are focused on researching new cancer therapies. About 860 cancer drugs are being tested in clinical trials, more than twice the number of experimental drugs for heart disease and stroke combined, nearly twice as many as for AIDS and all other infectious diseases combined, and nearly twice as many as for Alzheimer's and all other neurological diseases combined. Even with this focus, new cancer drugs rarely make it to the patients who need them--last year there were two new therapies, and this year there has been only one. Cancer is a complicated disease and no two people are affected the same way, so a drug that works for one may not work for another. In this article from the New York Times, which quotes two CHI board members, George Scangos from Exilixis and
Catherine
Mackey from Pfizer, executives explain why they must balance their portfolio of experimental drugs between long shots and some drugs that have a better chance of making it to market in order for their companies to survive and keep innovating new therapies.
Click
here
to read the article in the
New York Times.
CHI-Advancing California biomedical research and innovation
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