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A panel of Food and Drug Administration advisers has voted to endorse an experimental stool test that uses DNA to detect colon cancer and precancerous growths.

Results of a phase II trial of the PARP inhibitor olaparib, presented at the meeting of the Society of Gynecologic Oncology, showed that maintenance therapy with olaparib significantly improved PFS in ovarian cancer patients.

Drug development is a risky business, with an estimated 90 percent of compounds that enter clinical trials ultimately failing to reach the market.

The House of Representatives passed a controversial bill that will extend the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula for physician payments for 1 year.

AstraZeneca's Phase III pipeline is growing ahead of plan, chief executive Pascal Soriot told a recent media briefing, and cancer drugs make up a major chunk of the pipeline.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' proposal to mandate broader provider networks in public insurance exchanges could have the unintended consequence of discouraging insurer participation, according to analysts at Moody's.

The effectiveness of radiation treatments for patients with squamous cell cancer of the head and neck has been reviewed by an international team of researchers. They identified two biomarkers that were good at predicting a patient's resistance to radiation therapy. "While our findings are encouraging, and a step toward personalized medicine, we hope to do more of this research with a larger, randomized trial," the authors conclude.

Ceritinib, which received a 'breakthrough therapy' status from the FDA last year, was highly active in patients with advanced, ALK-rearranged NSCLC, including those who had had disease progression during crizotinib treatment, regardless of the presence of resistance mutations in ALK.

Health information technology (HIT) system advancements, including medical device improvements, could account for more than $30 billion per year in savings.

Despite opposition from doctors' groups, on a voice vote Thursday, the House of Representatives passed a one-year patch for Medicare's unpopular sustainable growth-rate formula for physician payments and, in the same bill, extended the implementation deadline for ICD-10 diagnostic and procedural codes for at least a year.

Enrollment of Phase 3 study in first-line advanced liver cancer is expected to begin by mid-2015. The companies also plan to initiate several additional Phase 1/2 trials for different cancers during 2014.

In the treatment of lung cancer, immunotherapy has come of age and is here to stay expert says at the 4th European Lung Cancer Conference.

Facing heavy bipartisan opposition on Capitol Hill as well as from patient groups, businesses, insurers and others, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said Monday it did not plan to move ahead at this time with several proposed changes to the Medicare prescription drug program.

The House Ways and Means bill to temporarily prevent Medicare physician payment cuts also would deliver an Easter gift to hospitals-a six-month extension to comply with a controversial new inpatient payment rule for hospitals.

The bundled payment model encourages health systems to provide high quality, better-coordinated care at a lower cost for Medicare beneficiaries. It's no wonder, then, why the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) has developed a colonoscopy bundled payment model to help gastroenterologists achieve value-based health outcomes.

Another temporary 12-month patch will be enacted for the doc fix prior to the scheduled March 31 expiration of the current patch, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) indicated Wednesday.

With a new study of Independence Blue Cross members, evidence on the effectiveness of the patient-centered medical home is swinging back towards the positive.

With less than a week remaining to sign up for private health insurance under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more than half of the uninsured don't know that March 31 is the deadline.

Pfizer Inc's Xalkori delayed progression of lung cancer longer than chemotherapy in patients who had never previously been treated for the disease, according to results of a late-stage study released on March 25.

Biomedical engineers in Germany have developed a tool that uses magnetic beads to detect proteins, potential biomarker, in blood or urine samples in a one-step process.

Scientists from Weill Cornell Medical College and Houston Methodist have found that a gene previously unassociated with breast cancer plays a pivotal role in the growth and progression of the triple negative form of the disease, a particularly deadly strain that often has few treatment options.

Patients covered by exchange-based insurance are more likely than those in employer-sponsored plans to face utilization management controls-such as prior authorization and step therapy-in filling their prescriptions, a report Monday from healthcare consultancy Avalere Health contends.

New rules for Medicare Advantage (MA) plans would protect elderly citizens who might otherwise lose access to their preferred network of doctors.

Patients want physicians to provide high-quality care and the health system requires good value for physician work. To help gastroenterologists achieve these goals, the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) has developed a colonoscopy bundled payment model.

The AURELIA trial comparing the efficacy of bevacizumab plus chemotherapy, versus chemotherapy alone, presented encouraging results in platinum-resistant ovarian cancer patients.

The prospects for a permanent doc fix prior to the March 31 deadline are looking increasingly remote.

Some health systems are moving beyond surgery in serving back pain patients.

If mobile medical devices had greater interoperability, which means they could better communicate with each other, the nation could avoid more than $30 billion a year in wasteful healthcare spending.

Myriad Genetics, Inc. today announced that Tesaro, Inc. will use Myriad's novel HRD (homologous recombination deficiency) test to identify tumor types that may respond to its investigational poly-ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor, niraparib, currently in Phase 3 clinical development.

A retrospective study has shown that two targeted therapy drugs achieved similar outcomes among people with metastatic or recurrent non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) harboring an EGFR mutation.