Perspectives
TAPUR Marks a Decade of Innovation
In 2013, during the ASCO Annual Meeting, Richard L. Schilsky, MD, FACP, FSCT, FASCO, then ASCO’s Chief Medical Officer, presented a bold clinical trial concept during an educational session on the challenges of delivering precision medicine services in an oncology community care setting. The idea ...
Physician-Complementing Artificial Intelligence in Oncology
JUNREN CHEN, MD, PhD, MBA, AND ROBERT PETER GALE, MD, PhD, DSc (hc), FACP, FRCP, FRCPI (hon), FRSM
Use of artificial intelligence (AI) in oncology is advancing rapidly. AI was first used for reading radiology images and analyzing pathology slides. More recently, use of AI has expanded to analyzing large clinical data sets (big data). The next envisioned role for AI in oncology encompasses man...
Weighing the Evidence Supporting Aspirin vs GLP-1 RAs in Colorectal Cancer Prevention
ANDREW T. CHAN, MD, MPH
A study by Jones et al offers a provocative contribution to the landscape of colorectal cancerprevention by directly comparing two pharmacologic strategies with markedly different historical roles in prevention (see sidebar on page 47).1 Aspirin has long served as the benchmark for primary preventio...
Coming Out in the Exam Room
ASH B. ALPERT, MD, MFA
Preparing for a patient I was going to see in breast oncology clinic, I noticed she was single and that her partner was female. The information system at the hospital I was working in included a patient photograph along with the usual demographic and clinical information. The photograph had caught...
Daraxonrasib in KRAS-Mutant Pancreatic Cancer: A First Step in Shifting the Paradigm of Treatment
AJAY PRAKASH, MD, PhD, and EMIL LOU, MD, PhD, FACP, FASCO
Wolpin and colleagues have demonstrated in the global randomized Phase III RASolute 302 trial that daraxonrasib, an oral RAS(ON) inhibitor, nearly doubles median overall survival in previously treated metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, producing a median overall survival of 13.2 months...
Using Artificial Intelligence to Prescribe Cancer Drugs and Perform Other Tasks
JUNREN CHEN, MD, PhD, MBA, AND ROBERT PETER GALE, MD, PhD, DSc (hc), FACP, FRCP, FRCPI (hon), FRSM
In a recent article in The ASCO Post, we discussed increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in oncology and how physician-complementing AI can empower oncologists to be even better at what they do.1The reason AI is needed is that increasingly many variables need to be considered in cancer ...
Better Together: The Case for True Physician-AP Partnership in Oncology
AMY PIERRE, RN, MSN, ANP-BC AND TAMMY TRIGLIANOS, DNP, ANP-BC, AOCNP
At 8 am, the infusion chairs are already full. The oncologist is in a room seeing a new patient consult, the pharmacist is adjusting doses based on new lab values, and the advanced practitioner (AP) is sitting with a patient—reviewing symptoms, discussing how to manage treatment side effects, an...
Another Point of View: Reefer Madness!
STACY D’ANDRE, MD, AND DONALD ABRAMS, MD
The conclusions drawn from the study by Johnson et al1 appear overstated and should be interpreted with caution. In the study discussed in this issue of The ASCO Post, investigators compared breast and testicular cancer incidence trends in American states that had or had not legalized the use of...
‘The Science and Practice of Translation: Improving Cancer Outcomes Worldwide’
2025-2026 ASCO PRESIDENT ERIC J. SMALL, MD, FASCO
“Good morning, and welcome to the 62nd Annual Meeting of ASCO! ¡Buenos días, y bienvenidos a la sexagésima segunda reunión anual de ASCO! This is the world’s largest cancer research conference and the premier global platform for oncology innovation! But what brings us together today is not just di...
After the Founder: What a Cervical Cancer Program in Haiti Teaches About Sustaining Prevention
DANTA BIEN-AIMÉ, BSN, RN, MMSc-GHD
In 2016, The ASCO Post published an article titled “An Oncologist Battles a Preventable Epidemic: Cancer of the Cervix,” highlighting the work of Robert D. Hilgers, MD—now deceased—and the Women’s Global Cancer Alliance (WGCA) in building a cervical cancer screening and prevention program in Haiti...
Uniting Science, Practice, and Purpose for Better Cancer Care
ERIC J. SMALL, MD, FASCO
Growing up as an American in Mexico City, I couldn’t have grasped how that upbringing would eventually shape my professional identity. While a career in oncology was far from my mind then, that cross-cultural foundation deeply influenced my approach to medicine and my leadership as ASCO’s 62nd Pre...
Patient Care Is Not What We Do, But What Patients Perceive
MUHAMMAD RAFIQUL ISLAM, MBBS, MD, MSPH, FACP
In modern health care, patient care is often defined by clinical actions such as diagnoses made, treatments delivered, and protocols followed. Clinicians are trained to prioritize technical accuracy, evidence-based interventions, and measurable outcomes. However, an equally critical and often unde...
Curing Most Leukemias on the Horizon: A 5-Decade MD Anderson Perspective on Leukemia Research
HAGOP KANTARJIAN, MD, FASCO, AND EMIL J. FREIREICH, MD, FASCO*
With the accelerating pace of research progress in leukemia comes the challenge of timely translation of discoveries into clinical practice. This is particularly relevant in subtypes characterized by many exciting therapeutic advances. These disease entities include Philadelphia chromosome (...
‘Prostate Screening Saved My Life’—Is That Really True in Most Cases?
DEREK RAGHAVAN, MD, PhD, FACP, FASCO, FRACP
Prostate specific antigen (PSA) screening remains one of the most controversial of “standard” medical practices. As recently as the 2026 Super Bowl, one of the more unusual TV advertisements, sponsored by a pharmaceutical company with an interest in prostate cancer treatments, extolled the virtues...
Forgotten Lessons From South Africa
Jame Abraham, MD, FACP
On March 10, 2000, it was a cold Friday morning in Washington, DC. As usual, we the oncology fellows and faculty crowded into a conference room at the NIH Clinical Center in Building 10 for our weekly conference. Before the session formally began, a senior faculty member walked in holding the New ...
A Paradigm Shift in Treating Adult AML?
FARHAD RAVANDI, MD
The scientific revolution in determining the genetic basis of cancer is finally bearing fruit in hematologic neoplasms such as acute myeloid leukemia (AML), where over the past decade a number of effective new drugs have expanded our armamentarium and provided effective—and in some cases potentially...
A Battle With My Blood
Tatiana Schlossberg
Editor’s note: On November 22, 2025—the 62nd anniversary of her grandfather President John F. Kennedy’s assassination—Tatiana Celia Kennedy Schlossberg published an essay in The New Yorker detailing her diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia with chromosome 3 inversion, a rare and aggressive subtype fo...
Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the Head and Neck: Current Status and Future Directions
Dan P. Zandberg, MD
Although head and neck cancers include multiple histologies and primary sites, squamous cell carcinomas (SCC) originating in the oropharynx, oral cavity, larynx, or hypopharynx are the most common. Today, we recognize different types of head and neck cancers, primarily those that are human papilloma...
JAVELIN Head and Neck 100 Trial: When Failure Seems Fatal, Hope Is Not Lost
Francis Paul Worden, MD, and Michelle Lynn Mierzwa, MD
Data from KEYNOTE-048 showed that the combination of the checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab with platinum-containing therapy improved overall survival vs cetuximab plus chemotherapy in patients with recurrent or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC).1 The findings provided hope th...
The Diagnosis I Couldn’t Deliver: An Oncologist’s Journey Between Roles
Filipe Coutinho, MD
As a medical oncologist and palliative care physician, I have spent years preparing for difficult conversations. I’ve guided patients and families through the uncertainty of cancer, helped them navigate complex decisions, and sought meaning amid shifting prognoses. As an academic, I teach future c...
Kindness, Mercy, Empathy, Compassion: Are They Relevant in the Era of Robotics and AI?
Raj Mohan, MS, DNB, MCh, FEBS
It’s a fast-paced world, no two ways about it. People move on from one event to another. We have to move on either for our own sake or the sake of someone near and dear. In the medical field, patients come and go, surgeries are performed, treatments are given, and everybody moves on. Being kind to ...
Integrating Mental Health Into Cancer Care: A Community Oncology Imperative
TYLER G. JONES, MD, MBA, FAPA; ELIZABETH CLEARY, PhD; RAMY SEDHOM, MD, FASCO; BARBARA L. McANENY, MD, MACP, FASCO
When Julie began chemotherapy for breast cancer, her oncologist adjusted antiemetics weekly and carefully tracked neutrophil counts. Still, no one asked about the panic attacks that kept her awake at night. She told herself this was just part of cancer. It was not until she stopped showing up for tr...
My 50 Years in Lymphoma: Lessons Learned?
BRUCE D. CHESON, MD, FACP, FAAAS, FASCO
In the 50 years now since my fellowship training, there have been major advances in the diagnosis, staging, prognostic scoring, treatment, and response assessment of lymphomas. To conjure up the future, we must first appreciate the present by understanding how it arose from the past.1 So, a trip in ...
How to Adapt to the Era of AI and the Changing Interactions With Patients: Lessons From a Low-Resource Setting
MUHAMMAD RAFIQUL ISLAM, MBBS, MD, MsPH, FACP
After 2 decades of practicing medicine across multiple disciplines and health systems, I’ve witnessed the dramatic transformation of patient-physician interactions, and none more dramatic than what I’m seeing in this era of artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on cancer care. Early in my care...
Realizing the Full Potential of Patient Engagement in Clinical Research
BEVERLY CANIN
Nothing about us without us is a centuries-old value that is a cornerstone of meaningful patient engagement in clinical research. Such engagement has not been automatic and is still largely absent in geriatric oncology research, where older patients traditionally have been excluded from clinical t...
Diminishing the National Cancer Institute Threatens Americans
RICHARD J. BOXER, MD, FACS
In an effort to reduce the size of government, the current administration has proposed an across the board 37% reduction1 in funding for the National Cancer Institute (NCI). This will result in approval of only 4% of applications2 from scientists at universities and cancer centers, with 96% of all...
Alcohol and Cancer Risk: Is a Drop Too Much?
LAURA TENNER, MD, MPH, FASCO
In 2022, Congress requested a scientific review from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to study the associated risks of cancer and other health conditions and the use of alcohol. The concern was that the health risks associated with low-to-moderate consumption of ...
A Young Hematologist’s Take on ICML 2025
KHUSHALI JHAVERI, MD
From Dr. Bruce Cheson’s electric speech on how it all started with pentostatin in hairy cell leukemia, to the introduction of bendamustine in indolent lymphoma, to the development of R-squared (an innovative chemotherapy-free approach to treating lymphoma)—the nostalgia at the International Conferen...
Considerations on Cancer Drug Development
DAN L. LONGO, MD, MACP, AND JAMES O. ARMITAGE, MD, FASCO
In the 1940s, the first drugs proven to cause objective responses in human cancers were developed. Mechlorethamine was discovered as a possible treatment of lymphoid cancers after autopsies on military personnel exposed to mustard gas found destruction of lymphatic tissue and bone marrow. Mechlo...
Bridging the Gap in Geriatric Oncology Education: A Global Imperative
FILIPE COUTINHO, MD
As the global population ages, oncology faces an urgent challenge: ensuring that health-care professionals are adequately trained to address the unique complexities of cancer care for older adults. Despite the increasing prevalence of cancer in this demographic, geriatric oncology education remains ...
The Implications of the Results From CARTITUDE-1 for Future Research and Care in Multiple Myeloma
KENNETH C. ANDERSON, MD, FASCO
The results from the CARTITUDE-1 study showed the remarkable efficacy of ciltacabtagene autoleucel, a B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA)-directed chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, when used in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma after four or more prior lines of therapi...
Do the Results From CARTITUDE-1 Represent a Cure for Patients With Multiple Myeloma? We Need Longer Follow-Up to Know for Sure
S. VINCENT RAJKUMAR, MD
The results of the CARTITUDE-1 clinical trial demonstrate outstanding and unprecedented long-term efficacy with ciltacabtagene autoleucel, a B-cell maturation antigen–directed chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy in relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma.1 (See the July 2025 issue of The ...
What We Wish We Knew During Fellowship
JASMINE KAMBOJ, MD, FASCO; NOHA SOROR, MD, MSc; AND CHADI NABHAN, MD, MBA, FACP
July marks a significant transition for many professionals, particularly those beginning structured training programs on July 1. This article is designed to support new and current hematology-oncology fellows and trainees in making the most of their training experience. Although not all suggestions ...
JCO Authorship Guidelines Are of Benefit to Those Caring for Older Patients
STUART M. LICHTMAN, MD, FACP, FASCO
The aging population, now the largest group of patients with cancer and cancer survivors, requires a rigorous and focused approach to clinical trial reporting, a need highlighted by the recent author guidelines from the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO; Table 1).1 The guidelines are an important ...
The Future of Cell Therapy: Optimizing the CAR to the Disease in B-Cell Malignancies
NIRAV N. SHAH, MD, MSHP
Over the past 20 years, increased understanding of the biological mechanism of disease has led to improved treatment options for all malignancies. Within each disease subtype, we have molecularly characterized tumors and developed specific treatment algorithms to optimize patient outcomes. Among B-...
Is This the End of Cancer Research as We Know It?
JENNIFER W. PEGHER, MA, MBA; EMILY E. STIMMEL, MA; AND ROBERT A. WINN, MD, FAACR
Ongoing efforts to rein in government spending have been described as a “chainsaw for bureaucracy.” It’s an apt metaphor for the haphazard budget cuts that many federal agencies are still experiencing. On February 7, 2025, the chainsaw made its way to facilities and administrative (F&A) c...
To Advance Health Equity, Put Real-World Cancer Data to Work
ROBERT S. MILLER, MD, FACP, FASCO, FAMIA
Despite decades of scientific progress against cancer, access to treatment remains highly unequal. Some of the reasons—like institutional racism and poverty—are a reflection of our broader society. Other inequities may go unrecognized but are no less damaging. People with underlying health condition...
How I Discuss the Current Political Chaos When Patients Ask Health-Related Questions About It
Derek Raghavan, MD, PhD, FACP, FASCO, FRACP, FAAAS
I’ve been a physician for several decades, seeing patients and functioning as a medical teacher; clinical, translational, and bench researcher; and administrator. Adapting to medical practice in three nations and several U.S. states has been quite challenging at different times, but I really think t...
Silence Is Complicity
CORAL OLAZAGASTI, MD, AND NARJUST FLOREZ, MD, FASCO
On January 20, 2025, newly sworn-in President Donald J. Trump signed Executive Order 14151, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,”1 effectively eliminating all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, preferences, and activities across the federal governm...
Therapy With a Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitor for EGFR-Variant Lung Adenocarcinoma: Lessons From Chronic Myeloid Leukemia?
Robert Peter Gale, MD, PhD, DSc (hc), FACP, FRCP, FRCPI (hon), FRSM
There has been remarkable progress in treating EGFR-variant lung adenocarcinoma with tyrosine kinase inhibitors such as gefitinib, erlotinib, osimertinib, and afatinib. However, several important issues remain unresolved, including whether there remains a role for chemotherapy, who should receive a ...
Mark Cuban Does It Again: Reshuffling the Deck of Front-Line CML Therapy
HAGOP M. KANTARJIAN, MD, FASCO; SHILPA PAUL, PharmD, BCOP; AND FADI G. HADDAD, MD
With the currently available BCR::ABL1 tyrosine kinase inhibitors, chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) has transformed from an invariably fatal disorder (10-year overall survival < 10%) to an indolent one, associated with a near-normal life expectancy on optimal tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy...
Together, We’re Building a Better Future for People With Cancer and for Our Profession
ROBIN T. ZON, MD, FACP, FASCO
For more than 25 years, my goal as a community oncologist has been to ensure that all patients have access to the highest-quality cancer care. This is the future I stood for when I became ASCO’s 61st President and what I know our more than 50,000 members stand for. And I believe we will get there ...
Cancer, Aging, and Meaning: Navigating Psychosocial Challenges
Ramy Sedhom, MD
I’ve learned a lot about medicine over the years, but one thing I wasn’t taught was how to guide someone through the existential weight of dying. My education centered on diagnosing, curing, or at least managing disease—not on the delicate art of helping people and their loved ones cope with what ca...
Hyperefficient and Super-Digitized Health Care: Where Is the Smile?
CHANDRAKANTH ARE, MBBS, MBA, FSSO, FRCS, FACS
A few weeks ago, a family member underwent a minor outpatient operative procedure. From a few weeks before the scheduled date of the procedure, multiple text messages and e-mails were forwarded to provide preparatory instructions for the procedure. The day before the procedure, another confirmator...
Ageism and Its Role in the Treatment of Cancer
Sincere McMillan, DNP, MS
Age discrimination, often referred to as ageism, is an increasingly pressing issue within society. Although it can impact individuals across all age groups, older adults are particularly vulnerable. According to the U.S. Census Bureau projections, by 2040, individuals aged 65 and older will represen...
The Importance of Diversity in Clinical Research
JOHN F. SMYTH, MD
The Cancer Drug Development Forum (CDDF) held its annual conference in the Netherlands from February 3–5, 2025. Under the title “Challenges, Advances, and Open Questions in Global Cancer Drug Development and Clinical Trials,” the workshop focused on diversity and real-world evidence in anticancer cl...
Two Decades of Collaboration: The Accelerating Anticancer Agent Development and Validation (AAADV) Workshop
H. KIM LYERLY, MD, FACS; RENZO CANETTA, MD; THOMAS FLEMING, PhD; AND RICHARD L. SCHILSKY, MD, FACP, FSCT, FASCO
Over the past 20 years, the investment in research and development of cancer therapies has been unprecedented, and the pace of new drug development has been accelerating. To illustrate this trajectory, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved 71 treatments for solid cancers in adults bet...
Lung-MAP 3.0: Simplifying the Process to Meet Patients’ Needs
KAREN L. RECKAMP, MD, MS
The Lung Cancer Master Protocol (Lung-MAP) is an innovative clinical trial designed to efficiently address the unmet needs of patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) following front-line therapy. This pioneering effort was the first biomarker-driven umbrella master protocol initi...
The Problem of Heterogeneity Within Stage
Murray F. Brennan, MD, and Mithat Gönen, PhD
The more senior of this duo grew up with prognostication by disease stage and was taught that all stage IV cancers behaved the same. In the past 3 decades, we have become much more cognizant of the heterogeneity in outcome within stage. Individual Kaplan-Meier plots by stage separate well but hide t...
My Cancer Diagnosis and Renewed Commitment to Fight for Patients
Ellen V. Sigal, PhD
Over 40 years ago, I lost my dear sister, Gale, to cancer. She left behind a beautiful 4-year-old daughter and a grieving family. Driven by this profound loss, I was determined to ensure that no other family would face that same heartbreak. That resoluteness led to the founding of Friends of Cance...
