DAVOS, Switzerland, Rabi'II 09, 1437, January 19, 2016, SPA -- U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that the United States would speed up the approval of promising new drug combinations in his government's newly announced drive to cure cancer "once and for all", according to Reuters. Biden, who lost his 46-year-old son Beau to brain cancer last year, set out his plans at a World Economic Forum meeting of international cancer experts in Davos, a week after being appointed to lead the initiative by President Barack Obama. So-called combination therapy is increasingly seen as central to fighting tumours, as scientists unlock the different genetic factors driving cancer cell growth, but bringing such cocktails to market can be a slow and costly. Biden said he had hosted a meeting at his home with three unnamed large drug companies and the head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) at which both sides had pledged to do more to get novel cancer drug cocktails to patients. "The head of the FDA made a commitment that everybody would move much more rapidly in approving combinations," Biden said. At the same, the pharmaceutical industry executives had all said they were "open to different way of doing business" in order to ensure that promising drugs from different companies were tested together as early as possible, he added. --SPA 22:52 LOCAL TIME 19:52 GMT www.spa.gov.sa/w