2017 AACR Annual Meeting
Former Vice President Joe Biden and Congressman Kevin Yoder Pledge Continued Support to Conquer Cancer
In a nearly hour-long address to more than 4,500 attendees at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) on April 3, former Vice President Joe Biden lambasted Pres...
New Immunotherapy Combinations Gain Ground in Advanced Melanoma, but Results Preliminary
Attention is focused among the cancer community on identifying the optimal immunotherapy combinations, with more than 800 ongoing trials of combination therapy. Two studies presented at the 2017 Annua...
Expert Point of View: David L. Porter, MD & Jonathan S. Serody, MD
In a separate interview with The ASCO Post, David L. Porter, MD, Director of Blood and Marrow Transplantation and the Jodi Fisher Horowitz Professor in Leukemia Care Excellence at the University of P...
CAR T Cells in Relapsed B-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia
Updated results in 51 adults with relapsed B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) treated with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York showed h...
Expert Point of View: Aditya Bardia, MD, MPH
Commenting on the phase I study of atezolizumab (Tecentriq) presented at the 2017 American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting, Aditya Bardia, MD, MPH, Attending Physician at Massachusetts...
Atezolizumab Improves Overall Survival in Small Subset of Patients With Triple‑Negative Breast Cancer
Triple-negative breast cancer is an aggressive disease with no approved targeted therapy, and it remains challenging to treat. Early data from a phase I study suggest that the PD-L1 inhibitor atezoliz...
Neratinib in Combination With Ado‑trastuzumab Emtansine in HER2-Positive Metastatic Breast Cancer
Puma Biotechnology presented interim results from the phase Ib/II FB-10 clinical trial of the oral pan-HER family irreversible tyrosine kinase inhibitor neratinib given in combination with the antibod...
Expert Point of View: Filipa Lynce, MD
Formal discussant of the MONARCH 1 trial and the MONALEESA-2 biomarker analysis, Filipa Lynce, MD, of Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, Washington, DC, noted that this is the first stu...
Abemaciclib Active in Metastatic Breast Cancer
In the single-arm phase II MONARCH 1 trial, the investigational cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 (CDK4/6) inhibitor abemaciclib achieved an objective response in about 20% of heavily pretreated patients wi...
Expert Point of View: Ashish Saxena, MD, PhD
After the data were presented, Ashish Saxena, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and Assistant Attending Physician at the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, New Yor...
Five-Year Survival Quadrupled in Responders to Immunotherapy for Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer
At 5 years, the overall survival rate was 16% in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with single-agent nivolumab (Opdivo), according to follow-up of a phase Ib dose-rang...
Expert Point of View: Gary K. Schwartz, MD
Gary K. Schwartz, MD, Chief of Hematology/Oncology and Deputy Director of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, New York, is not s...
Nivolumab/Ipilimumab Combination Improves Survival Over Ipilimumab Alone in Patients With Melanoma
The race is on to identify combinations of immune checkpoint inhibitors that can improve outcomes over the use of immune checkpoint inhibitor monotherapy. Updated results of the phase III CheckMate 06...
One Physician’s Experience
In a separate interview, George Ansstas, MD, a medical neuro-oncologist at Siteman Cancer Center, Washington University, St. Louis, discussed his experience in treating patients with tumor-treating f...
Expert Point of View: George Demetri, MD
“I am intrigued by this study. I have no idea by which molecular mechanism this [tumor-treating fields therapy] works, but the data are the data,” said George Demetri, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Cente...
‘Out-of-the-Box’ Approach Plus Temozolomide Extends Survival in Glioblastoma
Using a novel approach called tumor-treating fields—which involves the delivery of low-intensity electric fields to the brain by a patient-operated device—along with standard-of-care temozolomide ther...
Study Projects HIV-Related Cancer Burden to Decline
The total number of cancer cases diagnosed among people living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is projected to decline in coming years, due mostly to declines in non-Hodgkin lymphoma and K...
Expert Point of View: Suzanne L. Topalian, MD
“Avelumab (Bavencio) is the very first drug approved for Merkel cell carcinoma, an orphan disease that is uncommon in the United States. For that reason, pharmacologic development has been slow. In t...
Avelumab Produces Durable Responses in Merkel Cell Carcinoma, Becomes First Drug Approved for the Rare Disease
Avelumab (Bavencio) achieved durable responses in patients with metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma, according to longer-term follow-up of the phase II JAVELIN study, the largest study conducted to date ...
AACR Introduces New Incoming Officers of the Associate Member Council
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) issued congratulations to Allison S. Betof, MD, PhD, on her election to Chairperson-elect of the Associate Member Council (AMC) of AACR. Dr. Betof ...
Expert Point of View: Rodrigo Dienstmann, MD
“This is one of the most beautiful stories we have in translational precision oncology research in colorectal cancer. We have robust preclinical data, rigorous molecular diagnosis, and successful cli...
Dual HER2 Targeting of HER2-Positive Metastatic Colorectal Cancer Shows Clinical Benefit
The combination of trastuzumab (Herceptin) plus lapatinib (Tykerb) achieved positive results in patients with heavily pretreated, HER2-positive metastatic colorectal cancer, according to the final res...
AACR 2017: Telomere Length May Predict Cancer Risk, According to Large Epidemiologic Study
The length of the telomeres that protect the tips of chromosomes may predict cancer risk and be a potential target for future therapeutics, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) scientists ...
AACR 2017: Interim Results of Phase Ib/II Trial of Neratinib in Combination With Ado-trastuzumab Emtansine in HER2-Positive Metastatic Breast Cancer
Interim results from the phase Ib/II FB-10 clinical trial of neratinib given in combination with the antibody-drug conjugate ado-trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1, Kadcyla) were reported in a poster at the...
AACR 2017: PRMT1 Identified as Potential Druggable Target for Pancreatic Cancer
A protein known as arginine methyltransferase 1 (PRMT1) may be a potential therapeutic target for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, according to results presented by Giuliani et al the 2017 Annual Mee...
AACR 2017: Minority Patients With Colorectal Cancer Report Higher Burden of Poor Quality-of-Life Than Whites
A study presented by Hildebrandt et al at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR; Abstract 990) revealed several findings about racial disparities in health-relat...
AACR 2017: Combination Immunotherapies Show Clinical Activity in Metastatic RCC in Pilot Study
Immunologic changes observed in an early study of patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC) raised the possibility for a larger clinical study of combination immunotherapy, according to find...
AACR 2017: Ipilimumab/CVA21 Combination Treatment Shows Promise in Advanced Melanoma
Treatment with a combination of ipilimumab (Yervoy) and coxsackievirus A21 (CVA21; Cavatak) led to durable responses in a number of patients with advanced melanoma, including some whose melanoma had p...
AACR 2017: Adding the IDO-Pathway Inhibitor Indoximod to Pembrolizumab Improved Response Rate in Melanoma
Adding the investigational immunotherapy indoximod to the immunotherapy pembrolizumab (Keytruda) increased the proportion of patients with advanced melanoma who responded to treatment compared with pr...
AACR 2017: IDH-Mutant Cancers May Be More Amenable to Treatment With PARP Inhibitors Than IDH Inhibitors, According to Preclinical Findings
Tumors with mutations in the proteins isocitrate dehydrogenase-1 or -2 (IDH1/2) exhibited features similar to BRCA-mutant tumors and were more likely to respond better to PARP inhibitors than to IDH i...
AACR 2017: Patients With Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Who Responded to Atezolizumab Had Long-Term Survival Benefit
Among patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer who were treated with the anti–programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) immunotherapy atezolizumab (Tecentriq), those who responded to the t...
AACR 2017: Combination of Nivolumab and Ipilimumab Improved Overall Survival in Advanced Melanoma
Among patients with advanced melanoma, those who received both nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) had improved overall survival compared with those who received only ipilimumab, and appeared t...
AACR 2017: 5-Year Survival Rate for Nivolumab-Treated Advanced Lung Cancer Higher Than Historical Rate in Early-Phase Trial
Treatment with the immune checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab (Opdivo) yielded durable responses in some patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), with a 5-year survival rate of 16%,...
AACR 2017: Combination HER2-Targeted Therapy Effective in Heavily Pretreated HER2-Positive Colorectal Cancer
A combination of two HER2-targeted therapies, trastuzumab (Herceptin) and lapatinib (Tykerb), showed clinical benefit in patients with heavily pretreated HER2-positive metastatic colorectal cancer, ac...
AACR 2017: Addition of TTFields to Temozolomide Treatment Improves Survival for Patients With Glioblastoma
Patients with glioblastoma who wore a medical device that delivers alternating electrical fields in addition to being treated with the chemotherapeutic temozolomide had significantly improved median o...
AACR 2017: Cancer Type and Mutation Identity Influenced Response to Neratinib in a Basket Clinical Trial
In the phase II SUMMIT clinical trial, the likelihood that a patient’s cancer responded to the investigational pan-HER–targeted therapeutic neratinib was influenced by both the cancer type...
