Cutting pills in half is currently an act of desperation by those who can't afford the full amount their doctor has prescribed. But for some of the most expensive drugs on the market – cancer drugs – there are a number of drugs where cutting the dose by half, or by more, can result in treatment that is just as effective, and cuts financial toxicity and, possibly, other toxicity risks as well.

One of the highlights of the 2019 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) earlier this month were results from the phase III POLO trial, demonstrating that treatment with Lynparza (olaparib, Astrazeneca plc/Merck & Co. Inc.) after platinum chemotherapy nearly doubled the progression-free interval (progression-free survival, PFS) in a group of 154 metastatic pancreatic cancer patients with germline BRCA mutations, from 3.8 months to 7.4 months.

One of the highlights of the 2019 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) earlier this month were results from the phase III POLO trial, demonstrating that treatment with Lynparza (olaparib, Astrazeneca plc/Merck & Co. Inc.) after platinum chemotherapy nearly doubled the progression-free interval (progression-free survival, PFS) in a group of 154 metastatic pancreatic cancer patients with germline BRCA mutations, from 3.8 months to 7.4 months.

Two separate research groups, one at the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology and one at Harvard Medical School, have discovered a way to predict 3D protein structures by focusing on mutated versions of the proteins that affected epistatic interactions. 

AMSTERDAM – Since 2014, approvals and expanding indications for Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitors Imbruvica (ibrutinib, Pharmacyclics LLC/Janssen Biotech Inc.) and Calquence (acalabrutinib, Astrazeneca plc), and Bcl-2 inhibitor Venclexta (venetoclax, Abbvie Inc./Roche AG) have given many chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients chemotherapy-free treatment options. Many cancer patients dread chemotherapy almost as much as they dread their cancer, and frail patients may be unable to withstand the toxicities of chemotherapy and greatly prefer those chemotherapy-free regimens.

AMSTERDAM – Sickle cell disease is "the most frequent red blood cell disorder worldwide," Jo Howard, of King's College London, told the audience at the 24th Congress of the European Hematology Association (EHA) on Friday. And with global migration patterns of the past decades, the disorder has gone from a tropical disease to global problem.

AMSTERDAM – "We are seeing a rapid explosion of new agents in malignancies," Nathan Cherny told the audience at the 23rd Congress of the European Hematology Association (EHA).

Researchers at Columbia University have discovered that Vibrio cholerae has co-opted CRISPR Cas9 systems into transposons for horizontal gene transfer, and that those transposons were capable of site-specific gene editing without the need for double-stranded DNA breaks.

Scientists have discovered a pair of gut microbial enzymes that worked in tandem to convert blood cells of the type A to those of type O by removing the surface molecule alpha-1,3-linked-N-acetylgalactosamine (GalNAc) from the surface of red blood cells.