January 2010

The motto for Onyx Pharmaceuticals is "Changing the Way Cancer is Treated." With a successful 2009 behind it and a busy 2010 ahead, Onyx is staying true to its word.

The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) has issued new practice guidelines for managing certain patients with prostate cancer.

On January 12, 2010, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake rocked Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, for 35 to 40 seconds.The island country's capital of Port-au-Prince was hardest hit, with heavy damage to buildings and infrastructure and major loss of life.

The FDA concludes that the cholesterol-lowering drugs simvastatin (Zocor),ezetimibe (Zetia), and Vytorin (ezetimibe/simvastatin) are not likely to increase cancer risk.

Jianfeng Xu, MD, professor of epidemiology and cancer biology, Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, North Carolina, and colleagues discovered a variant predictive of aggressive prostate cancer.

In 2009, we covered several long-term studies investigating the use of aromatase inhibitors (AIs) alone or sequenced with tamoxifen. This includes the Intergroup Exemestane Study (IES), the TEAM trial, and the BIG 1-98 trial, all of which presented new or updated data at the 2009 SABCS in December.

Bisphosphonates have been a hot topic at the past several SABCS meetings. This year was no exception. In addition to bisphosphonates' protective effects on bone, researchers have been looking at whether they have anticancer effects.