Cancer medicines desperately needed are in short supply, undermining the ability of U.S. doctors to administer treatments, top oncologists warned this week.

Generic chemotherapy drugs are in particularly tight supply at the nation's hospitals, including mainstay cancer treatments such as cisplatin, doxorubicin, cytarabine and leucovorin.

"These are chestnuts. These are not old-fashioned drugs. They remain incredibly important drugs which serve as the backbone for treating many of the most common and treatable cancers," said Dr. Robert Mayer of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and a past president of American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) which held its annual meeting in Chicago this week.
[ reuters.com ]