That is likely to make both investors and doctors nervous until the presentation of survival data for the drug on Wednesday morning.
However, Demetri says that focusing on harder evidence, like survival data, does not have to mean it will take longer for drugs to be developed.
The FDA might be amenable to approving drugs for more complicated cancers without survival data if scientists can show they understand the cancer particularly well.
The survival data might look compelling, he wrote, but because the trial had not been designed to prove Provenge extended lives, there was a big risk that the results were a fluke.
"It's very unfortunate that they did not go forward with the planned front-line study in 2001 and 2002, because that would have given us survival data, " says Leonard Saltz of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
Of course creating more than one of these discs with the same information and putting those discs in different spots in the world will further increase the odds of data survival.
However, unlike Xinlay, he emphasizes, the Provenge data show a survival benefit.
Since there is little scientific data on the survival within estuary and ocean habitat, conservationists say recovery efforts should target the migration corridor, which has been greatly impacted by the four lower Snake River dams.
Avastin was approved in breast cancer without any proof it extends survival at all, based on data that it slowed the growth of the disease.
But the data showing the drug increases survival has made him cautiously optimistic.
Data shows that for cancer survival, the UK ranks behind many countries, including the five other nations looked at in the study.
Dendreon's treatment, Provenge, failed in two clinical trials, but a second look at the data revealed a four-month survival benefit in one of them.
Dendreon's (nasdaq: DNDN - news - people ) treatment, Provenge, failed in two clinical trials, but a second look at the data revealed a four-month survival benefit in one of them.
Last summer, researchers presented data showing that another vaccine could extend survival for prostate cancer patients.
Is the survival benefit significant enough for the FDA to accept the data?
Both Xtandi and Zytiga, which are pills, have similar overall survival benefit relative to placebo, and quality-of-life data.
Data collected would provide "essential scientific evidence of the unknown survival and breeding success rates of hedgehogs rehabilitated at the centre", the charity said.
No drug has ever extended survival in very sick liver cancer patients, but Bayer and Onyx Pharmaceuticals will present data showing that their Nexavar pill does just that.
Urdal: It was really the nature of the data and how strong the evidence was that we were actually having an impact on survival.
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If it is positive, as the Duke data proves, then we know that 4 months is low end of the median survival benefit of Provenge.
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"We are hopeful that our breeding efforts will be successful this year, and we're encouraged by all the behaviors and hormonal data we've seen so far, " said Dave Wildt, head of the Center for Species Survival at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.
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