New FDA Comissioner

I don't know if this will have an impact on cancer-fighting drug approvals but the newly-appointed FDA commissioner, Dr. Andrew C. von Eschenbach, is the director of the National Cancer Institute as well as a melanoma survivor.

Excerpt from the Associated Press:

Crawford's replacement, von Eschenbach, is a urologic surgeon. A Philadelphia native, he took over the National Cancer Institute, the government's lead agency in researching cancer treatments, in 2002. Prior to that, he served as chief academic officer of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Von Eschenbach wrote in 2004 that he has survived three cancer diagnoses: melanoma in 1989, and more recently, prostate cancer and basal cell carcinoma.

In published articles, von Eschenbach has laid out an ambitious — some would say unrealistic — goal of eliminating suffering and death due to cancer by 2015, turning it into a manageable disease.