James H. Doroshow, MD, of the National Cancer Institute, describes a new precision medicine initiative called the MATCH trial: Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice. In 2,400 NCI clinical trial sites, 3,000 patients will be screened and their tumors analyzed to determine whether they contain genetic abnormalities for which a targeted drug exists.
Thomas W. LeBlanc, MD, of Duke University Medical Center, and Eric Roeland, MD, FAAHPM, of the University of California, San Diego Moores Cancer Center, discuss the use of palliative and hospice care for patients with solid tumors vs hematologic cancers and clinicians’ attitudes (Abstracts e20554 and 9524).
Laurie Helen Sehn, MD, MPH, of the British Columbia Cancer Agency, discusses a first-ever finding on obinutuzumab and bendamustine in the setting of rituximab-refractory indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma (Abstract LBA8502).
Lawrence N. Shulman, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Clifford A. Hudis, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discuss the delivery of cancer care in resource-constrained settings such as Rwanda and Haiti, and plans to conduct research in basic tumor biology of patients in these areas.
Andrew Zelenetz, MD, PhD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses two important lymphoma trials presented at ASCO and his views on whether their results are indeed practice-changing (Abstract 8504 and LBA8502).
Claus Garbe, MD, of the University of Tuebingen, and Anthony J. Olszanski, RPh, MD, of Fox Chase Cancer Center, discuss the survival of sentinel lymph node-positive melanoma patients with and without complete lymph node dissection (Abstract LBA9002).
