Although the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has identified adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with cancer as a distinct patient population from children and older adults with the disease, research into the diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship specific to this patient population has not kept pace with research on childhood and adult cancers. There is also little research to help understand the unique biologic and genomic characteristics of malignant tumors in adolescents and young adults—defined by the NCI as those between the ages of 15 and 39—and how those characteristics may be hindering greater survival improvement in this patient population compared with younger children or older adults with cancer.

By the time my non–small cell lung cancer was diagnosed in 2004, it had already reached stage IIIB, and I was told there was little that could be done for me. I was 56, a wife, the mother of 3 children, and at the peak of my career as president of Olympian Oil. Although my aunt, brother, and grandfather had all died of lung cancer, I knew very little about the disease, and the diagnosis came as a shock. In fact, the symptoms I had been experiencing—shortness of breath and a pulsating feeling in my chest—were initially believed to be caused by a heart problem but were actually the result of a tumor in my left lung, which had wrapped itself around my aorta, making the cancer difficult to treat.

In relapsed or refractory B-cell lymphomas, bispecific T-cell engager antibodies are finding a place in the treatment algorithm, said Christopher Flowers, MD, MS, FASCO, Professor and Chair of the Department of Lymphoma/Myeloma at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston.

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