The Biden administration on Monday announced major chemotherapy drug, cisplatin, is back “to near 100% of pre-shortage levels,” according to a memo first obtained by Scripps News.
In June, the FDA announced it would allow the importing of cisplatin to help alleviate the strain. “Ensuring every American has access to the tools and interventions that exist today to prevent, detect, and treat cancer—and to the breakthroughs we are advancing in the Biden-Harris Administration—is essential to achieving the Biden Cancer Moonshot goal of ending cancer as we know it,” a new blog post from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy says.
The administration says the FDA has worked closely with manufacturers to find ways to increase manufacturing capacity and bring companies back to the U.S. market. The administration says work with manufacturers of generic methotrexate for injection helped increase supplies, adding actions have helped bring the cisplatin supply to nearly pre-shortage levels and are helping with shortages of carboplatin.
The Association for Clinical Oncology said in a July letter to members of Congress that the drug shortages are among the worse seen in decades.