On September 14, a bipartisan coalition of Representatives introduced the Priority for Pediatric Cures Act, which would make the Rare Pediatric Disease Priority Review Voucher (PRV) Program permanent.

Original title: “Bipartisan Bill Aims to Make the Rare Pediatric Disease PRV Program Permanent”

cutting edge organization a consensus informed framework in surgical oncology

Original title: “Cutting-edge organization: A consensus-informed framework in surgical oncology.”

Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Original title: “HR 10359: To amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to permanently extend the authority of the Secretary of Health and Human Services to award priority review vouchers for rare pediatric disease products.”

Some rare cancers may have genetic changes that are being studied in clinical trials. Learn more about these trials and who’s eligible for them. Smaller studies can make it hard to collect enough data about how well a treatment works. “Healthcare providers, patients, and families often didn’t know what trials existed for rare cancers,” Dr. Weigel said. “Someone who wanted to join a clinical trial might have to travel long distances to places with expertise in those conditions.” · New approaches to cancer research are expanding clinical trial opportunities for some people with rare cancers. These include tumor-agnostic therapies and basket trials. This study design allows people with rare cancers and those with more common cancers to take part in the same clinical trial. If the treatment is shown to be safe and effective, it can be approved to treat several different cancers with that genetic change. “Tumor-agnostic basket trials have transformed cancer care and accelerated new targeted therapies,” said Dr. Every new cancer medication must go through clinical trials before it can be approved for use in the United States. Clinical trials are studies that involve people. They test whether new medicines, procedures, devices, and other treatments are safe and work as intended. “Clinical trials help cancer researchers develop new therapies faster,” said Brenda J. Not every rare cancer has a genetic change that can be targeted with current therapies, so basket trials may not be an option. “Your cancer care team can help determine whether you’re eligible to join a basket trial. If you are, they should be able to help you enroll in the study or connect you to the right people,” Dr. Weigel said. You can also find support with clinical trials matching through ACS ACTS (Access to Clinical Trials & Support).

Original title: “Are There Clinical Trials for Rare Cancers? | American Cancer Society”

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA or the Agency) is announcing the fee rate for using a priority review voucher for fiscal year (FY) 2027. The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act), as amended, authorizes FDA to determine and collect priority review user fees for certain applications for review of human drug or biological products when those applications use a tropical disease, rare pediatric disease, or material threat medical countermeasure (MCM) priority review voucher. These vo

Original title: “Fee Rate for Using a Priority Review Voucher in Fiscal Year 2027”

Every rare disease community deserves a curated trial finder. The barriers to building them have dropped substantially. Trial navigation is itself a clinical access problem, one that should receive the same care and thoroughness we bring to developing the therapies those trials are designed to test. Clinical trial navigation is treated as an awareness problem, but in rare cancers the tools themselves are the barrier. See what a subtype-level finder fixes. But none of these efforts have fully solved the subtype-level navigation problem for rare lymphoma subtypes, partly because the source data in ClinicalTrials.gov is not structured in a way that supports it. What would a purpose-built solution look like? It would organize trials by specific disease subtype, not broad diagnostic categories. It would provide plain-language summaries alongside technical details. It would allow filtering by treatment stage, newly diagnosed versus relapsed or refractory, because patients at different points in their treatment journey need different trials. There is no prioritization to help distinguish a landmark phase 3 randomized trial from a small phase 1 dose-escalation study at a single academic center. This is not a criticism of ClinicalTrials.gov. It serves its intended purpose as a comprehensive registry. But a registry is not a navigation tool, and we have been treating it as both. The gap is particularly significant in rare cancers for two reasons. First, the signal-to-noise ratio is worse. A search that returns 300 results for a disease affecting 9,000 patients per year will contain a high proportion of tangentially relevant listings. The solutions proposed tend to follow accordingly: educate patients, remind physicians, mandate trial discussions as part of standard care, embedded directly within NCCN treatment algorithms. According to a landmark landscape report by the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN), a substantial portion of eligible cancer patients never enroll simply because their doctor never brought it up. When patients actually are asked to participate, more than 50 percent agree to enroll. The bottleneck is rarely patient refusal; it is the lack of an initial provider offer.

Original title: “Clinical trial navigation is a clinical access problem”