Blinded by the light: Irofulven chemotherapy trials

By JACQUELINE STRAX December 16, 2005 /PSA Rising/ The chemotherapy drug Irofulven, a drug based on a poison in the jack o’lantern fungi, is in clinical trials in the USA, Canada and Europe for prostate, ovarian, hepatic and other cancers. A surprising side effect is retinal damage.

Forbes has a story this month about a Cox-II inhibitor, Celebrex. While mostly used for arthritis pain, this drug is of high interest to cancer patients as a possible tumor inhibitor (for background on the cancer connection see
Cancer Patients … and Celebrex in Anti-Cancer Trials Nov 2004
(full story…)

By GARDINER HARRIS
Published: December 21, 2005
WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 - Despite promising discoveries and multibillion-dollar investments, cancer research is quietly undergoing a crisis. Federal drug regulators will soon announce several initiatives that they hope will help salvage the field.

Few drugs are being marketed, and most of those that have been introduced are enormously expensive and provide few of the benefits that patients expect. Officials of the Food and Drug Administration suggest that the failures may result from an obsolete testing system.

There is growing evidence that X-rays, long the standard, may not accurately assess a patient’s disease. The drug agency is creating collaborations to develop imaging, blood and other tests that better signal the progression of cancer.

“We need to develop cancer drugs differently,” the chief operating officer of the agency, Dr. Janet Woodcock, said in an interview. “The tools we have to develop these treatments are not what we need in cancer.”
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