April 10, 2020 (View All Issues)
- An overview of what the terms fertility and infertility mean
Immunotherapy ‘Comes of Age’ in Breast Cancer
Immunotherapeutics in breast cancer will likely not be limited to late-stage triple-negative breast cancer. Earlier lines, combination regimens, and expansion into different disease subtypes should become part of this emerging landscape, according to Hope S. Rugo, MD, FASCO, Professor of Medicine...
Practicing Oncology in the Era of COVID-19
The coronavirus-related pandemic has affected nearly every corner of the globe. What originated in one country is on course to likely affect every country in the world. In a few countries, the disease has peaked and is on the downward trend. In some, including the United States, the disease is on...
ASCO Releases Resource-Stratified Guideline on the Treatment of Late-Stage Colorectal Cancer
ASCO has released a new guideline for clinicians and policymakers in resource-constrained settings on treating patients with late-stage colorectal cancer.1
“Around the world, there is a huge variation in resources, and what is available to clinicians may change week to week,” said Mary D....
Study Suggests Adjuvant Everolimus May Benefit Patients With Advanced Head and Neck Cancer
The mTOR inhibitor everolimus, used to treat breast and kidney cancers, may benefit patients with advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck, according to data presented at the 2020 Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancers Symposium.1
The results of an investigator-initiated, phase II...
Abstracts From the NCCN 2020 Annual Conference Now Available
Abstracts from posters that would have been presented at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) 2020 Annual Conference are now available online. Although NCCN officials were compelled to postpone the conference in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, in order to ...
Pembrolizumab Plus Radiotherapy Worthy of Further Study in Locally Advanced Squamous Cell Head and Neck Cancer
The combination of the checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab and definitive radiation therapy appears to be a safe and feasible option for patients with locally advanced head and neck cancer who are not eligible for cisplatin, according to data presented at the 2020 Multidisciplinary Head and Neck...
Brief Highlights on Novel Therapies for Prostate, Bladder, and Kidney Cancers
Attendees gathered at the 2020 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium in San Francisco to hear the latest news about treating patients with cancers of the prostate, bladder, kidneys, and testicles. In addition to the comprehensive coverage of the meeting in The ASCO Post, here are some brief highlights...
Bispecific Antibodies: Successes and Challenges
Bispecific T-cell engager (BiTE) antibodies, such blinatumomab, may be the most appealing type of bispecific antibodies, a class of manufactured constructs that is expected to expand into the solid tumor space, according to Hermann Einsele, MD, Professor of Medicine at the University of Würzburg,...
ASCO Board Concludes Annual Meeting Cannot Occur in Person
On March 24, 2020, ASCO issued the following statement:
ASCO’s primary concern is the health and safety of the global oncology community and the patients we serve. As public health safety measures related to COVID-19 extend, the ASCO Board has concluded that the Annual Meeting, scheduled for May...
Mitigating the Spread of COVID-19 and Its Impact on Cancer
On March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) took the step it had been avoiding for weeks and declared that the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), and the virus that causes it, now identified as SARS-CoV-2, had reached global pandemic levels, the first pandemic sparked by a...
Association for Clinical Oncology: More Testing, Personal Protective Equipment, Practice Support Needed During COVID-19 Crisis
The Association for Clinical Oncology, ASCO's affiliated 501(c)(6) organization, is urging the White House and leaders in Congress to swiftly work together to meet the needs of patients and health-care professionals in response to the COVID-19 crisis.
Should Restrictions on Genetic Testing Be Loosened?
The loosening of restrictions on genetic testing would mean that all health-care providers could help move this needle to where it should be, according to Kevin S. Hughes, MD, a surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, and Medical Director of the...
Prior Antibiotic Use Linked to Poorer Survival in Patients With Advanced Melanoma Receiving Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors
Treatment with antibiotics prior to immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy may confer poorer overall survival and an increased risk of colitis in patients with advanced melanoma, according to data presented at the 2020 ASCO-SITC Clinical Immuno-Oncology Symposium.1
The largest institutional...
SEMA4D Inhibition: A Novel Means of Improving Immune Response
A novel class of inhibitors may hold some promise for boosting responses to checkpoint inhibitors and for sensitizing poorly immunogenic tumors, such as pancreatic cancer, to immunotherapy. The drug targets semaphorin 4D (SEMA4D), a glycoprotein expressed on the cell membranes of many tumor types....
Inspired by Her Physician Father, Reshma Jagsi, MD, DPhil, Tirelessly Advocates for Women’s Health and Careers in Medicine
Physician-scientist, Reshma Jagsi, MD, DPhil, was encouraged by her parents to become a politically active, socially conscious citizen of the world. “As a young woman, my mother traveled from Africa on a scholarship to the United States, where she attended the University of Wisconsin. It was in the ...
MSK and City College of New York Researchers Awarded $15 Million Grant From NCI
Francesca Gany, MD, MS, Chief of the Immigrant Health and Cancer Disparities Service, and Tim Ahles, PhD, Director of the Neurocognitive Research Laboratory, both of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), along with Gilda Barabino, PhD, and Karen Hubbard, PhD, of the City College of New York ...
Updates From Selected Clinical Trials in Breast Cancer
Each year, The ASCO Post asks Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, Chairman of the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Taussig Cancer Institute and Professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, to offer his picks for the most important research presented at 2019 San...
Philadelphia T-Cell Lymphoma/Leukemia Initiative to Be Launched
The Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center–Jefferson Health (SKCC) will establish the Philadelphia T-Cell Lymphoma/Leukemia Initiative to map and address knowledge gaps related to T-cell lymphoma and leukemia (TCLL), unmet patient needs, and barriers to progress in the existing TCLL care model. Pierluigi...
Donald Sullivan, MD, Receives ATS Foundation Research Program/American Lung Association Partner Grant
The ATS Foundation Research Program and the American Lung Association have awarded Donald Sullivan, MD, of Oregon Health & Science University, a $100,000 Foundation Partner grant. The grant will help support Dr. Sullivan’s research project, which he said will “answer important knowledge gaps...
FDA Approves Nivolumab/Ipilimumab for Pretreated Patients With Hepatocellular Carcinoma
On March 10, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to the combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma who have been previously treated with sorafenib.
CheckMate 040
Efficacy of the combination was...
Highlights From Transplantation and Cellular Therapy Meetings of ASTCT and CIBMTR
The Combined Annual Meetings of the American Society for Transplantation and Cellular Therapy (ASTCT) and the Center for International Blood & Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR) were held in Orlando, Florida, from February 19–23, 2020. The scientific program addressed the most timely issues in ...
Oncologists on the Front Lines of COVID‑19
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is dramatically affecting health-care systems. This is the first in a series of interviews The ASCO Post will conduct with oncologists, to learn what they and their cancer centers are doing to deal with the crisis. In this article, we talk with John Cole, MD, a...
Using Respectful Language to Reduce Unconscious Bias in Oncology Care
An abstract presented at the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting titled “Evaluating Unconscious Bias During Speaker Introductions at an International Oncology Conference,” by Narjust Duma, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Thoracic Oncologist at the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center in...
What’s in a Name?
When Narjust Duma, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine and a thoracic oncologist at the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center in Madison, presented the findings from her study, “Evaluating Unconscious Bias During Speaker Introductions at an International Oncology Conference,” during the...
A Hallmark Moment
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the Art of Oncology as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
Concurrent Pembrolizumab and Chemoradiotherapy in Locally Advanced NSCLC
In a phase I trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Jabbour et al found that the use of pembrolizumab concurrently with chemoradiotherapy in advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) was tolerable, and that progression-free survival with the combination therapy was 69.7% at 12 months.
As stated by the ...
Adjuvant Gemcitabine/Platinum-Based Chemotherapy vs Surveillance for Upper Tract Urothelial Carcinoma: POUT Trial
In the phase III POUT trial, reported in The Lancet, Alison Birtle, MD, and colleagues found that adjuvant gemcitabine/platinum chemotherapy was associated with improved disease-free survival vs surveillance in patients with locally advanced urothelial carcinoma of the upper urinary tract.
As...
City of Hope Deploys Platform, Makes Study Data Accessible
A $12 million federal grant enabled City of Hope and collaborators to deploy a novel cloud-computing platform, making an immense amount of data from a historic 25-year study more accessible and user-friendly.
The ongoing California Teachers Study, which began in 1995, has already given researchers ...
Living A Full Life After Pancreatic Cancer
I have been a radiologic technologist for 47 years, so after going to the bathroom one Sunday morning in October 2018 and finding my urine had suddenly turned dark, I knew something was wrong. I wasn’t in any pain and did not have a urinary tract infection, which would explain the discoloration of...
Breast Cancer Specialist Lawrence J. Solin, MD, FACR, FASTRO, Dies at Age 66
Lawrence J. Solin, MD, FACR, FASTRO, a champion of breast-conserving therapy for women with breast cancer, died unexpectedly on March 3 at the age of 66. At the time of his death, Dr. Solin was Professor Emeritus, Department of Radiation Oncology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of...
Spring 2020 ABIM Maintenance of Certification Exams Canceled
The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) has announced that all spring 2020 maintenance of certification (MOC) assessment administrations are canceled in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. They issued the following communication:
As frontline health-care professionals, many board-certified...
A Message From the FDA OCE for Patients With Cancer and Health-Care Providers on COVID-19
On March 23, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Oncology Center of Excellence (OCE) issued the following statement:
The FDA OCE recognizes that patients with cancer constitute a vulnerable population at risk of contracting the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). While everyone’s daily lives...
International Palliative Care Workshop in Russia Educates Providers, Improves Care Across Region
ASCO, in collaboration with international oncology societies, hosts International Palliative Care Workshops (IPCWs) designed to teach participants practical skills in patient communication and the management of cancer symptoms and pain. The IPCWs are led by ASCO member volunteers and local experts...
R. Kate Kelley, MD: Breakthroughs for Hepatocellular Carcinoma
At the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine, R. Kate Kelley, MD, contributes to research focused on improving outcomes for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma.
The trial: This was a phase III study that included 707 patients who received sorafenib and had disease...
House Bill Supports Innovative Payment Models, While Protecting People With Cancer and Their Providers
In a letter to Representatives Terri Sewell (AL), Adrian Smith (NE), Tony Cárdenas (CA), and John Shimkus (IL), the Association for Clinical Oncology conveyed its support for legislation the lawmakers introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill—H.R. 5741, or the Strengthening...
Lawrence Einhorn, MD, FASCO, Reflects on the Path to a Cure
Cancer.Net, ASCO’s patient information website, reports a current survival rate for stage I testicular cancer at 99%, but in 1974, men faced an overall survival rate of 5%. Surgery was the only viable treatment option, and if it failed, the prognosis was fatal. Lawrence Einhorn, MD, FASCO, was a...
Join the Conquerors Community
Monthly giving is an efficient and effective way to help conquer cancer all year long. Monthly gifts to Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation®, are processed automatically, which helps reduce costs and allows your donation to have the greatest possible impact in funding the research advancing...
Trusted Patient Resource: ASCO Answers Fact Sheet on Fertility and Cancer Treatment
Cancer and its treatment can cause infertility in both men and women. Educate your patients about this potential side effect by giving them the ASCO Answers fact sheet Your Fertility and Cancer Treatment. This fact sheet covers:
Significant Changes to Evaluation and Management Codes in 2021—Start Preparing Now
Starting January 1, 2021, there will be significant changes to the office and outpatient Evaluation and Management services Current Procedural Terminology codes (99202–99215) for both new and established patients. Practices, physicians, and staff must prepare in advance for these changes to ensure...
