Usually, when Brianna Commerford misses school, her mom has to write a note to her principal that says ‘doctor’s appointment’ or ‘sick.’ This one said ‘speaking on Capitol Hill.’ “When I was nine years old, I was diagnosed with stage four Hodgkins’ Lymphoma,” the 14-year-old told the third annual Childhood Cancer Summit Thursday. When Commerford was diagnosed in 2007, she was taken out of school for a year of chemotherapy treatments. Instead of participating in cheerleading or soccer, she had nine surgeries, as well as blood fusions, infusions, and transfusions. “It wasn’t the cancer...
President Obama signed a bill today that will provide incentives to drug companies to research and develop drugs for rare diseases. The Creating Hope Act grants pharmaceutical companies that create drugs for diseases like childhood cancers a voucher giving speedier review of any other drug they submit for approval. The Oval Office signature was a hard-fought victory for children like Mollie Ward, 11, who survived a rare form of pancreatic cancer thanks to an experimental drug, and for other families who have fought childhood cancers. Nancy Goodman, founder of Kids v. Cancer, which is...
WASHINGTON - When all else failed, the promise of corporate profits for pediatric cancer drugs did what cajoling to save children could not. Legislation by Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, soon to be signed by President Barack Obama, will offer drug companies multimillion-dollar incentives to pioneer medications for rare childhood diseases that afflict too few kids to make a profit. The legislation is meant to remedy a chronic mismatch in which the FDA has approved dozens of new drugs to combat adult cancers since 1980 - and only one for the treatment of childhood cancer. "We're...
This is the saddest story you will ever read about how a bill becomes law. It should also make you feel better about our dysfunctional political system. The story begins on a Sunday in February 2007, when a doctor suggested that Jacob Froman, then 8, had brain cancer. An MRI on Monday confirmed the grim diagnosis: metastatic medulloblastoma. Jacob was in surgery at 7 the next morning. 84 Comments Weigh InCorrections?Recommend Tweet Personal Post Ruth Marcus An editorial writer specializing in politics, the budget and other domestic issues, she also writes a weekly column and...
This was supposed to be the year for Jacob Froman's bar mitzvah, except that a rare and fatal brain cancer reached out for him first. Just 10, Jacob died in 2009, two years after a diagnosis of medulloblastoma, a rare brain cancer with no drug designed specifically to treat it. During the arduous months of ultimately unsuccessful treatments, his mother, Nancy Goodman, discovered that few pharmaceutical companies are fully invested in developing drugs specifically targeted toward children's cancer and other rare diseases. She established Kids v. Cancer, her hope for children...
Last week, Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX), along with Reps. G.K. Butterfield (D-NC), Sue Myrick (R-NC), and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), introduced H.R. 3059, the Creating Hope Act of 2011. The bill is a companion bill to S. 606, which was introduced in the Senate earlier this year by Senator Robert Casey (D-PA), along with co-sponsors Sens. Scott Brown (R-MA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Al Franken (D-MN), and Johnny Isakson (R-GA). Both the House and Senate versions of the Creating Hope Act of 2011, which are almost identical, are substantially similar to the 2010 version of the bill, S. 3697...
Imagine your child fighting for his life, taking massive doses of highly toxic radiation, chemotherapy to kill the cancer in his body before it kills him. After years of pain and uncertainty, he beats the disease, only to find out that he will likely develop serious medical conditions related to the treatment that saved him. While survival rates are up for some types of pediatric cancer, for more than half who beat the odds and proudly call themselves “survivors,” the fight is not over. Three out of five are later afflicted with life-altering and life-threatening conditions, including...
At age five, some kids have won pee-wee sports championships or perhaps a class spelling bee, but for Luke Fochtman of Okemos, Mich., his fifth birthday marked his victory over a much larger foe -- in a life-or-death battle with childhood cancer, Luke has come out on top. "Through 72 weeks of treatment, chemotherapy, 105 fevers, he never said 'no' to us," says Luke's mom Monica Fochtman, 36. "That to me was very inspiring and humbling. To be in the presence of that kind of grace gave me the courage to keep going," she says. Though Luke's type of...
WASHINGTON - 8-year-old Ryan Darby marched right up on a stage in the Capitol Visitor's Center, stood on a ladder and talked about his dream. "Maybe one day, every kid that gets diagnosed with leukemia will beat it, like me." Ryan has beaten leukemia, but one in five kids with cancer do not survive. "There are 13,500 children that are diagnosed with cancer each year. That sounds like a lot, but actually there are a lot of different types of childrens' cancer, so when you start to break it down, individual types of cancer are so rare that there is not a lot of...
Imagine your child fighting for his life, taking massive doses of highly toxic radiation and chemotherapy to kill the cancer in his body before it kills him. After years of pain and uncertainty, he beats the disease, only to find out that he will likely develop serious medical conditions related to the treatment that saved him. Though survival rates are up for some types of pediatric cancer, for more than half of those who beat the odds and proudly call themselves "survivors," the fight is not over. Three out of five are later afflicted with life-altering and life-threatening...
Leaders from NCI and FDA address the third annual Childhood Cancer Summit to discuss federal efforts to combat childhood cancers.
This month, we pay tribute to the families, friends, professionals, and communities who lend their strength to children fighting pediatric cancer.
Incentivizes Drug Companies to Develop New Treatments for Children with Rare Pediatric Diseases
