President Obama is proposing "a major new initiative to develop drugs tailored to the genetic characteristics of individual patients, but he expresses deep concern about the costs of such specialty medicines for consumers and for the Medicare program," reports Robert Pear in April 27 New York Times. ...continue reading Obama Proposes That Medicare Be Given the Right to Negotiate the Cost of Drugs

Implantable device could allow doctors to test cancer drugs in patients before prescribing

PSA Rising-- April 24, 2015,   More than 100 drugs have been approved in the USA to treat cancer, but predicting which ones will help an individual patient is an inexact science. Patients may undergo weeks of noxious side effects before scans reveal that for this patient a particular drug is not working--even though it  works for the patient in the next chair. A new implantable device, about the size of a grain of rice, may change that. ...continue reading A Step Toward Personalized Chemotherapy