Ebb & Flow Focus

The American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting is on the horizon, with the first spate of corporate press releases pouring forth last week to coincide with posting of abstracts for the May 30-June 2 conference in Chicago.

Although ASCO still generates attention, the oncology space has not provided the source of low-hanging fruit that once enticed investors attracted by the prospect that FDA would provide accelerated approval for cancer drugs based on preliminary evidence of efficacy from non-survival endpoints in small Phase II trials. Reality has been far different, as competition made it harder to enroll trials and FDA has raised the efficacy threshold and is consistently requiring robust evidence of effects on endpoints that clearly correlate with clinical benefit...