Uncovering the financial ties of advocates for cancer drug approval

Public Release: 1-Feb-2016
Uncovering the financial ties of advocates for cancer drug approval
Oregon Health & Science University

Speakers who nominally represent cancer patients at advisory meetings on new drugs often have financial ties with the company seeking marketing approval. And those ties aren't always disclosed, according to an analysis appearing in JAMA Internal Medicine.

"The industry has hijacked that microphone - they're using it as their second presentation at advisory committee meetings," says senior author Vinay Prasad, M.D., M.P.H., a specialist in blood cancers for the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute, an assistant professor of medicine (hematology and medical oncology) in the OHSU School of Medicine, and senior scholar in the Center for Ethics in Health Care.

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