Pfizer: New cancer pill gives hope, new strategy
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Pfizer Inc.'s just-approved drug Xalkori, the first new medicine in more than six years for deadly lung cancer, proves the value of precisely targeting rare diseases linked to gene variants, cancer specialists and Pfizer executives said Tuesday.
The drug was approved Friday in the U.S. along with a companion diagnostic test for just a small subset of lung cancer patients. It epitomizes drugmakers' new strategy of developing very expensive but effective medicines for relatively few patients to replace the blockbusters for the masses now getting competition from generic drugs.
It's also in the vanguard of long-awaited personalized medicine, in which doctors identify patients with gene changes or variations that fuel their disease and then try to match them with new medicines that specifically target those genes.
"This is a paradigm shift," Dr. Paul A. Bunn Jr., a University of Colorado professor and cancer researcher involved in testing Xalkori, told journalists during a conference call hosted by Pfizer. "It used to be that everybody with cancer was treated the same," with surgery and chemotherapy.
@ Good! Did he suffer at all from the chemo? Like sickness, 
@ I had minimal hair loss thankfully. but my chemo is oral not iv. I still have 4wks radiation 5x's a wk, but thats 
Models can be: men or women, hair loss or shaved due to chemo. Have scars from a single or double masectomy and not ashamed to show it!
Berkshire County breast cancer walks: After a long uphill battle with chemo, hair loss, exhaustion and the best ... 
@ she still cuts peoples hair and is chatting away and has come to terms with the loss of her breast!! And the chemo...amazing
