Executive Summary

The FDA has been getting tougher on cancer drugs. Lately, it's been asking drugmakers to provide proof not just that their therapies can shrink tumors, but that doing so actually benefits patients--in a way that matters to those patients, not just their doctors. Matrix Pharmaceutical Inc. thinks it got that proof, by asking patients and physicians to choose, before they began participating in its clinical studies, the clinical endpoints they would most like to realize from treatment with IntraDose, a gel-based formulation of the well-known chemotherapeutic agent cisplatin.