AACR Annual Meeting 2022
Expert Point of View: David Paul Carbone, MD, PhD
“Progress in lung cancer happens by slow steps punctuated by quantum leaps. In the age of perioperative therapies, we are moving one step closer to curing more patients. Surgery is still the intervent...
CheckMate 816: Neoadjuvant Nivolumab Plus Chemotherapy Improves Event-Free Survival Over Chemotherapy Alone in Resectable NSCLC
The combination of neoadjuvant nivolumab plus chemotherapy achieved statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in event-free survival vs chemotherapy alone (P = .005) in patients...
Expert Point of View: Edward B. Garon, MD
Invited discussant of the NeoCOAST trial, Edward B. Garon, MD, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Thoracic Oncology Program at David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California Lo...
Novel Neoadjuvant Therapy May Boost Response in Resectable NSCLC
Use of multiple immune pathway inhibitors appears to be superior to checkpoint inhibitor therapy alone as neoadjuvant therapy for resectable non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to the result...
Combination Therapy of Olaparib, Cyclophosphamide, and Metformin Under Study in Advanced Endometrial Cancer
A triplet regimen consisting of the PARP (poly [ADP-ribose] polymerase) inhibitor olaparib, metronomic (the chronic administration of low, equally spaced doses of) cyclophosphamide, and metformin demo...
Mario Sznol, MD, and Stefania Scala, MD, on Improving Responses to Immunotherapy in Patients With Melanoma
Invited study discussant of the use of ipilimumab plus nivolumab in resistant melanoma, at the AACR Annual Meeting 2022, Mario Sznol, MD, of Yale University Cancer Center, indicated that the substanti...
Approaches to Potentiate Immune Response in Patients Who Do Not Respond to Anti–PD-1 Therapy for Melanoma
A sizable proportion of patients with advanced melanoma will experience disease progression on anti–PD-1 therapy, and the optimal treatment of such patients represents an unmet need. Two studies prese...
Matthew L. Meyerson, MD, PhD, on Lung Adenocarcinoma: Somatic Mutations, Germline Risk, and Ancestry
Matthew L. Meyerson, MD, PhD, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses study findings that suggest the variation in frequency of EGFR and KRAS mutations in lung cancer may be associated with gen...
CoVac-1 Vaccination Studied for Prevention of Severe COVID-19 in Immune-Deficient Patients With Cancer
CoVac-1, a multipeptide COVID-19 vaccine candidate, elicited immunogenicity in patients with cancer and disease-related or treatment-related immunoglobulin deficiency in a phase I/II trial reported at...
Next-Generation PARP1-Selective Inhibitor Offers Significant Benefits Over Older Predecessors in Treatment of Solid Tumors
The first-in-human, first-in-class trial of the next-generation PARP (poly [ADP-ribose] polymerase) 1–selective inhibitor AZD5305 suggests this drug may be a welcome advance over its U.S. Food and Dru...
Nickolas Papadopoulos, PhD, on Multicancer Early Detection: Opportunities and Challenges
Nickolas Papadopoulos, PhD, of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses early detection as the key to reducing cancer mortality and the lack of tests for many malignancies. Liquid biop...
Polygenic Score May Enable More Precise PSA Screening for Prostate Cancer
The use of a polygenic score incorporating variations in prostate-specific antigen (PSA) values that are not due to cancer may allow for more precise PSA screening, according to findings of a large ge...
Christine A. Iacobuzio-Donahue, MD, PhD, on Pancreatic Cancer: Novel Insights Into Genetics and Evolution
Christine A. Iacobuzio-Donahue, MD, PhD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses her research on the evolutionary features of advanced stage pancreatic cancers and the insights that may b...
Natural Killer Cells Precomplexed With Innate Cell Engager Show Activity in CD30-Positive Lymphoma
Natural killer (NK) cells derived from donated umbilical cord blood, activated with a novel bispecific antibody targeting CD16A and CD30 known as AFM13, have yielded responses in patients with pretrea...
2-Year Follow-up Shows Durable Responses With Sotorasib in KRAS G12C–Mutated Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer
Sotorasib, the first KRAS G12C inhibitor approved for the treatment of KRAS G12C–mutated non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), continues to demonstrate meaningful and durable efficacy at 2-year follow-u...
Charles L. Sawyers, MD, on Transforming Patient Outcomes: The Future of Cancer Research
Charles L. Sawyers, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the battle against treatment resistance and how to overcome it, as well as the power of observational clinical data in prec...
Priscilla K. Brastianos, MD, on CNS Metastases: Understanding Their Evolution and the Clinical Implications
Priscilla K. Brastianos, MD, of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, talks about her efforts to better understand how brain metastases evolve genomically and to test such agents ...
Timothy A. Yap, MBBS, PhD, on Ovarian, Breast, Pancreatic, and Prostate Cancers With Genetic Mutations: A First-in-Human Trial of AZD5305
Timothy A. Yap, MBBS, PhD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses results from the PETRA study, a first-in-class, first-in-human trial of the next-generation PARP1-selective i...
Timothy A. Yap, MBBS, PhD, on Developing Novel Therapeutic Strategies to Target DNA Damage Response in the Clinic
Timothy A. Yap, MBBS, PhD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses how research is building on the success of first-generation PARP inhibitors in the clinic and the potential o...
Timothy A. Yap, MBBS, PhD, on Advanced Solid Tumors With DNA Damage Response Defects: Early Data on Elimusertib
Timothy A. Yap, MBBS, PhD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses results from a phase Ib expansion trial of the safety and efficacy of the oral ataxia telangiectasia and Rad3...
Gulam A. Manji, MD, PhD, on Gastric and Gastroesophageal Junction Adenocarcinomas: New Data on Pembrolizumab Plus Capecitabine and Oxaliplatin
Gulam A. Manji, MD, PhD, of Columbia University Medical Center, discusses phase II results on perioperative combination chemotherapy and pembrolizumab in patients with resectable gastric cancer. The c...
Lillian L. Siu, MD, on Looking Toward the Future of Clinical Research and Clinical Trials
Lillian L. Siu, MD, of Canada’s Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, discusses biomarker-driven precision cancer medicine, the optimal sequencing of immunotherapy (IO) with standard treatments in curative...
Marcia R. Cruz-Correa, MD, PhD, on a Vision for the Future of Cancer Research and Treatment
Marcia R. Cruz-Correa, MD, PhD, of the University of Puerto Rico Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses a way to possibly transform cancer outcomes by teaming up basic scientists, clinical researchers...
Some Recurrences of Ductal Carcinoma In Situ May Be Genetically Distinct From the Primary Tumor, Study Reports
Contrary to what has been assumed, all recurrences of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) are not genetically the same, according to a study presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR...
Cheryl L. Willman, MD, on Cancer Genomic Sequencing in Tribal Nations of the American Southwest
Cheryl L. Willman, MD, of the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the profound cancer health disparities among Native Americans, exacerbated by low rates of screening and limited access...
Zev Wainberg, MD, on Gastroesophageal Junction Adenocarcinoma: Early Results With Anti-CD39 Antibody Plus Chemoimmunotherapy
Zev Wainberg, MD, of the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center, discusses preliminary data on the safety and efficacy of TTX-030, an anti-CD39 antibody, in combination with budigalimab ...
David A. Barbie, MD, on Mesothelioma: Activating the STING Pathway May Promote Antitumor Immunity
David A. Barbie, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses his laboratory’s studies, showing that malignant pleural mesothelioma, an inflamed cancer type with marginal response to immune checkpoi...
Jia Luo, MD, on NSCLC: Clinicopathologic and Molecular Characterization of KRAS G12D–Mutated Disease
Jia Luo, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses the emerging class of cancer therapies for allele-specific KRAS inhibitors and the importance of their distinct clinical, genomic, and immunolog...
Gautam Mehta, MD, on Precision Oncology: An Overview of the Accelerated Approval Program
Gautam Mehta, MD, of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, discusses how accelerated approval of potentially life-saving cancer therapies has been applied in precision oncology. Although “fast-tracki...
Nicolas Girard, MD, PhD, on NSCLC: New Data on Event-Free Survival With Nivolumab Plus Platinum-Doublet Chemotherapy
Nicolas Girard, MD, PhD, of the Institut Curie, discusses findings from the phase III CheckMate 816 trial, which is the first study with an immunotherapy-based combination to demonstrate improved even...
Therapies Targeting DNA Damage Response Show Antitumor Activity
Results from two early-stage clinical trials show two drugs that target the DNA damage response (DDR) pathway in cancers—the ATR inhibitor elimusertib and the PARP inhibitor AZD5305—are safe and clini...
Researchers Seek to Expand Immunotherapy Options for Patients With Advanced Breast and Colorectal Cancers
Two presentations given at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2022 focused on promising strategies for making breakthrough immunotherapies work for more patients. Both ...
AI Model May Help Predict Adverse Events From New Drug Combinations
Preliminary data from an artificial intelligence (AI) model could potentially predict side effects resulting from new combination therapies, according to results presented by Küçükosmanoğlu et al at t...
New Bioinformatics Platform Optimizes Selection of Combination Cancer Therapies
Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have developed a new bioinformatics platform that predicts optimal treatment combinations for a given group of patients based on co-occ...
Patients With ALL and Certain Gene Regulation Patterns May Be Less Likely to Respond to CAR T-Cell Therapy
Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) cells from patients whose cancers did not respond to CD19-targeted chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy had gene regulation signatures that could potential...
Ipilimumab Plus Nivolumab Improves Progression-Free Survival in Advanced Melanoma
Patients with advanced melanoma whose cancer does not respond to treatment with PD-1 inhibitors are often switched to treatment with a second type of immunotherapy drug, a CTLA-4 inhibitor such as the...
Novel COVID-19 Vaccine May Provide Protection for Patients With B-Cell Deficiencies
CoVac-1, a new vaccine against SARS–CoV-2, induced T-cell immune responses in 93% of patients with B-cell deficiencies, including many patients with leukemia and lymphoma, according to results present...
In the Neoadjuvant Setting, Combination Immunotherapy With Durvalumab Is More Effective Than Durvalumab Alone for Early-Stage NSCLC
Combination immunotherapy with the anti–PD-L1 monoclonal antibody durvalumab and other novel agents outperforms durvalumab alone in the neoadjuvant setting for early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (...
New CAR T-Cell Therapy for Solid Tumors Was Safe and Showed Early Efficacy
A new chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell product had an acceptable safety profile and showed early signs of efficacy as a monotherapy and in combination with an mRNA vaccine in patients with solid...
Accounting for Genetic Factors That Cause Normal Variations in PSA Levels May Improve the Accuracy of Prostate Cancer Detection
The accuracy of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening for prostate cancer could be improved by accounting for genetic factors that cause changes in PSA levels not associated with cancer, according...
Study Examines Disparities in Relapse Among Pediatric Patients With ALL
According to a large multiethnic study presented by Sok et al at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2022, Latinx children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and me...
Maria Elena Martinez, PhD, MPH, on Colorectal Cancer Screening in Underserved Populations: COVID, Silver Linings, and Challenges Ahead
Maria Elena Martinez, PhD, MPH, of the University of California, San Diego Moores Cancer Center, provides an overview of the key components of the Accelerating Colorectal Cancer Screening and Follow-u...
Electra D. Paskett, PhD, on Social Stresses and Cancer Treatment: An Expert Perspective
Electra D. Paskett, PhD, of The Ohio State University, discusses various factors that may contribute to cancer such as socioeconomic status, discrimination, violence, and access to health care. When c...
Meenakshi Anurag, PhD, on Breast Cancer: New Data on Combining Anastrozole and Fulvestrant
Meenakshi Anurag, PhD, of Baylor College of Medicine, discusses results from the ALTERNATE trial, which showed the combination of anastrozole plus fulvestrant was superior to either drug alone in inhi...
Iván Márquez-Rodas, MD, PhD, on Advanced Melanoma: Efficacy of Intratumoral BO-112 With Systemic Pembrolizumab
Iván Márquez-Rodas, MD, PhD, of Spain’s Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, discusses final results of the phase II SPOTLIGHT203 study of systemic pembrolizumab in combination with intrat...
Silvia C. Formenti, MD, on Adapting Radiation Therapy to Immune Checkpoint Blockade
Silvia C. Formenti, MD, of Weill Cornell Medicine, discusses research on the best way to integrate radiotherapy with immune modifiers, which might require changes in standard radiation oncology practi...
Tina Cascone, MD, PhD, on NSCLC: New Findings From the NeoCOAST Trial on Durvalumab-Based Therapy
Tina Cascone, MD, PhD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the findings of the phase II NeoCOAST study, which showed that combination immunotherapy with the anti–PD-L1 mono...
Patricia M. LoRusso, DO, on Targeting KRAS: Clinical Successes and Challenges
Patricia M. LoRusso, DO, of the Yale University School of Medicine, discusses how patients may benefit in the coming decade from discoveries about agents that target KRAS, and how important the approv...
Novel Approach Using Off-the-Shelf Preactivated NK Cells Shows Efficacy in CD-30 Positive Lymphoma
Natural killer (NK) cells derived from donated umbilical cord blood and activated with a novel bispecific antibody known as AFM13 (which targets CD16A and CD30) were shown to be effective in patients ...
Sotorasib Achieves Durable Responses in KRAS G12C–Mutated Lung Cancer
Sotorasib, the first KRAS G12C inhibitor approved for the treatment of KRAS G12C–mutated non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), continues to demonstrate meaningful and durable efficacy at 2-year follow-u...
