To Ease Shortage, F.D.A. Lets 2 Cancer Drugs Be Imported

WASHINGTON — Dire shortages of two critical cancer drugs — shortfalls that have threatened the lives and care of thousands of cancer patients — should be resolved within weeks, federal drug officials said.

The two drugs are doxorubicin and methotrexate, and in both cases supplies in the United States are being bolstered by shipments from abroad. Shortages of scores of other drugs continue.       

We’re not out of the woods,” said Dr. Sandra L. Kweder of the Food and Drug Administration’s drug center. “But these two particular shortages have been very, very upsetting to patients and to us.”        Dr. Peter C. Adamson, chairman of the Children’s Oncology Group , which is financed by the National Cancer Institute , said he was pleased that the immediate threat of a methotrexate shortage had passed. “But this is at best a Band-Aid approach to the problem,” he said.        Shortages of both drugs developed when Ben Venue Laboratories temporarily closed its manufacturing facility in Bedford, Ohio, because it could not guarantee product safety