OCE Insights is an occasional department developed for The ASCO Post by members of the Oncology Center of Excellence (OCE) at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In this installment, the OCE’s Steven Cunningham, MD, MLA, FACS, Clinical Reviewer on the Gastrointestinal Cancers Team,...
People with advanced cancer who communicated their symptoms weekly using an electronic survey had about one-third better physical function and over a 15% better control of their symptoms compared to those who were evaluated less frequently via in-person clinical visits, according to findings from a ...
OCE Insights is an occasional column developed for The ASCO Post by members of the Oncology Center of Excellence (OCE) at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In this installment, Julie A. Schneider, PhD, Associate Director for Research Strategy and Partnerships, OCE; Jennifer J. Gao, MD,...
A digital symptom monitoring system in which patients undergoing cancer treatment could report symptoms through weekly at-home surveys resulted in better symptom control and physical function, as well as improved communication with their medical team, according to results from a study by Basch et...
Informed consent is an important part of delivering quality cancer care. Traditional ethical and legal rules require clinicians to disclose three types of information: (1) the patient’s diagnosis; (2) the nature of the proposed intervention and its intended benefits, risks, and adverse effects;...
Medicine is a family tradition for Hanna K. Sanoff, MD, MPH. “I was born and reared in a suburb just outside of Philadelphia and lived there my whole life until after college. I was one of those people who always knew they wanted to be a doctor. There were four generations of physicians on my...
Richard M. Goldberg, MD, an expert in gastrointestinal cancer, has been named the new Director of the West Virginia University Cancer Institute. Dr. Goldberg will be coming to West Virginia University from The Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center, where he currently serves as Klotz Family ...
Cancer takes away millions of lives every year, and in low- and middle-income countries, the high cancer mortality rate can often be attributed to scarce means and a shortage of trained professionals. Hoping to contribute my best in the fight against this disease, I chose to become an oncologist in ...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) met April 12 to consider a New Drug Application by Clovis Oncology for rociletinib, an investigational therapy for epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-mutated non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in patients...
Gastrointestinal cancers are a key therapeutic area in research, and science is moving forward in that arena at a fast clip. But how are those who focus on gastrointestinal malignancies in the clinic supposed to stay on top of it all? One great way is to attend the annual Gastrointestinal Cancers...
Richard M. Goldberg, MD, of The Ohio State University Medical Center, chaired the steering committee of the 2012 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium in San Francisco, which attracted approximately 4,000 registrants who viewed data from some 700 scientific abstracts. The ASCO Post asked Dr. Goldberg...
The results of the CORRECT trial created some degree of “buzz” at the 2012 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium, with experts predicting that regorafenib will become FDA-approved and have strong clinical utility. While numerically, the benefit appeared small, “There is a real difference with this...
Over the past 2 decades, we have seen a substantial increase in the 5-year survival of patients with stage II and III colon cancer, marking an evolving oncologic success story. However, in the postoperative setting, the value of regular CT screening to monitor for recurrence has been greeted with...
Richard Goldberg, MD, Physician-in-Chief of The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute, presented the first Charles G. Moertel Lecture of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology during the plenary session of the group’s recent...
Novel Multikinase Inhibitor Improves Survival in Metastatic Colorectal CancerBy Caroline HelwickThe novel tyrosine kinase inhibitor regorafenib, given as a single agent to patients with treatment-refractory metastatic colorectal cancer, significantly improved overall survival and delayed disease...
The 2013 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium marked the 10th anniversary of the meeting. Richard M. Goldberg, MD, the Klotz Family Chair in Cancer Research, Professor of Medicine, and James Cancer Hospital Physician-in-Chief at The Ohio State University, looked back over the decade to highlight the...
The FIRE-3 investigators did not report the use of salvage treatments, and this may be confounding the results, according to Richard Goldberg, MD, who discussed the paper at an ASCO press briefing. Dr. Goldberg is Professor of Medicine at The Ohio State University, Columbus. “The study shows a...
During the second half of 2013, four new guides to cancer, known collectively as the ASCO Answers Guides to Cancer, were released on Cancer.Net, ASCO’s patient information website. The guides to breast, prostate, lung, and colorectal cancer were completely redesigned and reimagined to help newly...
The information contained in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes details of actively recruiting clinical studies of children and adults with various types of soft-tissue sarcoma, including non-rhabdomyosarcoma, Ewing sarcoma, gastrointestinal stromal tumor, and Kaposi sarcoma. The studies...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) favored the approval of necitumumab in combination with gemcitabine and cisplatin for use in first-line treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic squamous non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). In...
In patients with advanced colorectal cancer who have been heavily treated with a sequence of chemotherapy regimens and/or targeted therapies, the goals of treatment on or off a clinical trial are readily definable. These patients and their managing teams are striving to extend the length of lives,...
In a phase III trial (CONCUR) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Jin Li, MD, and colleagues found that the multikinase inhibitor regorafenib (Stivarga) improved overall survival vs placebo in Asian patients with previously treated metastatic colorectal cancer.1 Regorafenib is approved in the United...
Lieu et al recently analyzed the effect of age on outcome in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer using the ARCAD (Aide et Recherche en Cancérologie Digestive) database. The findings, reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, indicate a U-shaped risk of death and death or...
First-line cetuximab (Erbitux) plus FOLFIRI chemotherapy (leucovorin, fluorouracil [5-FU], irinotecan) offered a roughly 4-month survival advantage over bevacizumab (Avastin) plus FOLFIRI for patients with KRAS wild-type metastatic colorectal cancer in the German phase III clinical trial FIRE-3. A ...