Although it’s been widely reported for years that colorectal cancer incidence has been increasing among younger adults under age 50 by between 1% and 2% annually since the mid-1990s,¹ two new studies by Kimmie Ng, MD, MPH, Associate Chief of the Division of Gastrointestinal Oncology and Founding Director of the Colon and Rectal Cancer Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and her colleagues, find other alarming trends in early-onset gastrointestinal cancers.

The combination regimen of FOLFOX chemotherapy (leucovorin, fluorouracil, and oxaliplatin), bevacizumab, and atezolizumab led to a statistically significant improvement in progression-free survival compared with atezolizumab monotherapy for the first-line treatment of patients with deficient mismatch repair or microsatellite instability–high (dMMR/MSI-H) metastatic colorectal cancer, according to findings from the COMMIT study presented in a press briefing ahead of the 2026 ASCO Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium (Abstract 14). 

A research team has discovered that a particular marker on circulating tumor cells (CTCs) may indicate whether a patient with small cell lung cancer (SCLC) will experience a lasting response to tarlatamab-dlle, a newly approved immunotherapy. The findings, which were published by Mishra in Cancer Discovery, may allow clinicians to easily and noninvasively determine which patients should receive the drug.

Data from a major clinical trial from the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology has uncovered a genetic factor that may inform how to optimize the dosing of abiraterone, a widely used hormonal treatment for advanced prostate cancer. Published by Norton et al in Clinical and Translational Science, this secondary analysis of Alliance A032201 could lead to more personalized treatments for patients.