H2AK119ub t1_ixwrb6q wrote on November 26, 2022 at 11:57 PM

Reply to comment by bilyl in Brain cancer vaccine succeeds at prolonging survival in Phase 3 trial by Sorin61

Not sure why you've focused on (mostly) old drugs and kinase inhibitors (known to be very dirty). Vemurafenib (BRAFi) is indicated and used in melanoma not NSCLC (another first for FBDD), Crizotinib (ALKi) is focused on ALK fusions, Trodelvy is a first in class ADC, Trastuzumab makes billions annually and is SOC in HER2+ breast cancer, and cetuximab is an old EGFR mAb that has been mostly supplanted by anti-VEGF mAb's in CRC (with FOLFOX chemo).

bilyl t1_ixxoyi6 wrote on November 27, 2022 at 4:40 AM

I didn’t specify anything about whether newer drugs fall into this category, but it was very routine that older targeted inhibitors (especially kinase inhibitors like you said) were approved in the past 15 years (not that long ago!! I was in graduate school at that time) for very marginal benefits. So yeah, there are way better drugs now but drugs with marginal benefit were being approved “back then” because there was nothing better and because survival was really dismal.