Patient Services
FDA Approves New Drugs for Cancer
In the last 2 weeks of August, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved three new cancer drugs: vemurafenib (Zelboraf), for patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma whose tumors harbor a specific genetic mutation in the BRAF gene; brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris), for some patients with Hodgkin lymphoma and anaplastic large cell lymphoma; and crizotinib (Xalkori), for patients with locally advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors have a gene fusion caused by a chromosomal translocation involving the ALK gene.