Lack of cancer patients headache for drug firms

The success of US drugmakers in generating drug candidates for cancer risks is being held back by a shortage of patients on whom to test the potential remedies, according to a local media report.

Richard Shilsky, a researcher at the University of Chicago, USA, told the Missouri-based, Lexington Herald Leader newspaper that "there are more drugs flooding in, but you don't have any more patients. The evaluation process is taking longer than it ever has."

Baltimore, Maryland-based researcher Jennifer Tam-McDevitt, from the Geriatric Oncology Consortium, found that the 259 clinical trials for breast cancer treatments in the USA last year, would have required almost 124,000 patients or 58.7% of the country's total cases diagnosed in 2005. Prostate cancer and lung cancer drug candidates would require 20% and 15% of the USA's new patients, respectively.