New drugs are too slow getting to children with cancer
Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of Gleevec in combination with chemotherapy to treat newly diagnosed children with Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphocytic leukemia (Ph+ ALL).
While this is good news, it comes more than 10 years after it was approved in adults and about 8 years after I treated my first pediatric patient with chemotherapy plus Gleevec followed by a stem cell transplant...