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STAT+: Drug may make chemotherapies less effective in cancer patients with obesity — but many doctors are in the dark

STAT

This means chemotherapies may be less effective when interacting with the medicine, but some clinicians, and their patients, are unaware of that possibility. A drug used to combat fungal infections in cancer patients comes with a big caveat — research shows the medicine can last twice as long as in people with obesity.

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STAT+: Merck, Daiichi Sankyo to partner on targeted chemotherapy drugs in deal worth up to $22 billion

STAT

MADRID — Merck is paying billions of dollars to partner with Daiichi Sankyo on a series of cancer drugs, underscoring the excitement around targeted chemotherapy treatments.     The deal includes a $4 billion upfront payment and an additional $1.5 billion over the next two years.

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STAT+: Hair loss is one of the most hated chemotherapy side effects. A new biotech hopes to prevent it

STAT

The chemotherapy Christine Ko was prescribed for her breast cancer is pretty much a guarantee for losing your hair. The company is currently developing an antibody that might reliably protect the head’s hair follicles from chemotherapy damage — if it works. But, to her, it wasn’t much of an option.

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STAT+: Jazz Pharmaceuticals to acquire Chimerix and its experimental brain cancer drug

STAT

It responds poorly to chemotherapy and is usually driven by a mutation that can’t be drugged with traditional approaches. The tumor, known as diffuse midline glioma, or DMG (and sometimes as DIPG depending on where it’s found), has flummoxed researchers for decades. Median survival is generally cited as less than a year. 

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STAT+: FDA will allow troubled chemotherapy maker to resume distribution of cancer drugs in short supply

STAT

After finding a “cascade of failures” at a manufacturing plant run by a key chemotherapy supplier, the Food and Drug Administration will not allow the company to resume distribution in the U.S. beyond some   cancer medicines that are in short supply.

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STAT+: Incyte’s checkpoint inhibitor staves off disease progression in anal cancer trial

STAT

  The Phase 3 trial tested the PD-1 targeting antibody retifanlimab in combination with chemotherapy versus chemotherapy alone in patients with recurrent or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the anal canal. In the study, adding retifanlimab to chemotherapy cut the risk of disease progression or death by more than a third.

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STAT+: BMS immunotherapy improves responses in lung cancer, setting up Phase 3 study

STAT

BARCELONA, Spain — Adding a second immunotherapy from Bristol Myers Squibb to an existing checkpoint inhibitor and chemotherapy improved responses for certain patients with a type of lung cancer, steering the approach into a Phase 3 study.