ASCO and Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation, will recognize researchers, patient advocates, philanthropists, teachers, and global oncology leaders who have reshaped cancer care with the Society’s highest honors at the 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago. Hear from select award recipients at the...
According to Sunil R. Hingorani, MD, PhD, his parents figured heavily on who he became as a person and on his career choices, which ultimately led to his current position as Director of the Pancreatic Cancer Center of Excellence at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine, Omaha. “My father...
George D. Demetri, MD, FASCO, Director of the Sarcoma Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Professor of Medicine and Co-Director of the Ludwig Center at Harvard, was born in Hyde Park, a town along the Hudson River in New York. When Dr. Demetri was growing up there, it was known for three...
The respected members of the oncology community listed here are among some of those who passed away in 2022–2023. The ASCO Post remembers them, their lives, and their contributions to cancer research and treatment. Robert J. Gillies, PhD Moffitt Cancer Center and the global research community lost ...
Caroline Robert, MD, PhD, Head of the Dermatology Unit at Gustave Roussy and Co-Director of the Melanoma Research Unit at INSERM 981 Paris-Sud University, was born and reared in Paris. “I didn’t have a vocation for medicine when I was a kid; I wanted to be an archeologist. I’m not from a medical...
Manali Patel, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Medicine (Oncology) at Stanford University, grew up in Shelby, a small town in the textile and farming community of Western North Carolina, among mill workers and other blue-collar laborers. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Dr. Patel’s early life was...
ASCO and Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation, will recognize researchers, patient advocates, philanthropists, teachers, and global oncology leaders who have reshaped cancer care around the world with the Society’s highest honors at the 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago. Hear from select award...
The improvement in cancer survival rates since President Richard M. Nixon signed the National Cancer Act of 1971 into law is staggering. The legislation further committed the United States to greater investments in cancer-focused research to drive down the rates of cancer diagnoses, boost patient...
The ASCO Post is pleased to present Hematology Expert Review, an ongoing feature that quizzes readers on issues in hematology. In this installment, Drs. Syed Ali Abutalib and L. Jeffrey Medeiros explore the World Health Organization (WHO) classification of hematopoietic and lymphoid tissue...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Global Oncology series, Guest Editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with Dov Zippel, MD, a surgical oncologist at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, Israel, where he is Head of the Meirav Breast Center. Dr. Zippel is the current President of ...
The addition of a checkpoint inhibitor to standard chemotherapy as first-line treatment of advanced endometrial cancer reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 70% in patients with mismatch repair–deficient (dMMR) tumors in two recent phase III studies. The results of the two...
Emergency department (ED) visits by patients with cancer increased by 67.1% between the start of 2012 and the end of 2019, compared with an increase of just 7.5% in cancer incidence, according to a recent study in JAMA Network Open.1 Factors identified as possible explanations for the...
The addition of a checkpoint inhibitor to standard chemotherapy as first-line treatment of advanced endometrial cancer reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 70% in patients with mismatch repair–deficient (dMMR) tumors in two recent phase III studies. The results of the two...
Pancreatic cancer is a rare disease, accounting for about 3% of all cancers in the United States. It is the deadliest of all solid malignancies, accounting for about 7% of all cancer deaths each year, and carries a 5-year survival rate of just 11.5%. According to the American Cancer Society, in...
In this installment of our Global Oncology series, Guest Editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with Kelly M. McMasters, MD, PhD, who, for the past 27 years, has directed a basic and translational science lab studying adenovirus-mediated cancer gene therapy and melanoma biomarkers....
Researchers have revealed the potential mechanisms contributing to treatment resistance in patients with melanoma at the end of life, according to a new study published by Spain et al in Cancer Discovery. “These results present the most detailed picture yet of what melanoma looks like at the final...
Obesity may spur DNA damage in the breast tissue of patients who carry BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations, possibly contributing to breast cancer development in patients who are already at a higher risk of the disease, according to a new study published by Bhardwaj et al in Science Translational Medicine....
“There is and always has been, more to me than medicine. Ever since the university, I have loved flying. Ever since school, I have adored choral singing,” writes John F. Smyth, MD, in his memoir Taming the Beast: Memoirs of a Pioneering Cancer Physician. Dr. Smyth is Emeritus Professor of Medical...
Researchers have discovered that whole-genome sequencing—rather than the current standard of exome sequencing—may allow physicians to better identify genetic changes that drive cancer development and growth, and create the most effective, personalized treatment plans for patients with classical...
In recognition of her work in uncovering the mechanisms of the p53 tumor suppressor, Guillermina “Gigi” Lozano, PhD, Chair of Genetics at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, has received the 2022 Award for Distinguished Research in the Biomedical Sciences by the Association...
In anticipation of President Joseph R. Biden’s State of the Union Address tonight, ASCO is urging the president to keep cancer care and research as top national priorities. Oncologists have seen how clinical research has improved prevention, detection, and treatment for millions of Americans and...
The newly identified category of “HER2-low” breast cancer has raised many new issues in this malignancy now that the DESTINY Breast-041 trial determined that fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) may effectively treat this tumor. Among the issues are challenges in accurately identifying just...
Researchers have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm, known as SPHINKS, capable of performing advanced computational analyses to identify potential therapeutic targets for patients with glioblastoma multiforme. The platform may also have applicability in other cancers, according to...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) will award the 19th AACR–Irving Weinstein Foundation Distinguished Lectureship to Andrea Schietinger, PhD, during the 2023 AACR Annual Meeting, held April 14–19, in Orlando, Florida. Dr. Schietinger, an associate member of the Immunology Program...
Maintenance therapy with a poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor may do more than just delay disease progression for patients with platinum-sensitive, relapsed ovarian cancer; it might also improve overall survival, according to data presented during the December 2022 European Society for...
Lymphoma expert Jeremy S. Abramson, MD, was born in Westchester County, New York, but soon after, his family relocated to Bergen County, New Jersey, where he spent his formative years. “I attended Tenafly High School and had dual passions: one was the natural sciences and the other on the...
The Ellen and Ronald Caplan Cancer Center at The Wistar Institute, Philadelphia, has announced the appointment of the Ira Brind Endowed Professor, Maureen Murphy, PhD, as Deputy Director. Dr. Murphy will guide the growth of the Cancer Center through expanding research initiatives and collaboration, ...
Debu Tripathy, MD, Professor of Medicine and Chair of Breast Medical Oncology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, said that the study points the way to further exploration of the benefit of adding immunotherapy to treatment after patients develop resistance to CDK4/6 inhibitors for ...
A pilot study provides a signal that the novel HER2 antibody-drug conjugate fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd), is active in the neoadjuvant setting in patients with HER2-low breast cancer. Overall response rates were 75% with T-DXd alone and 63% when T-DXd was combined with endocrine therapy...
Researchers have found that measuring the activation of immune system B cells may be more effective than measuring the activation of either T cells or tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in predicting whether patients with HER2-positive breast cancer will respond to treatment. These findings were ...
Researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have discovered a novel immunotherapy combination, targeting checkpoints in both T cells and myeloid suppressor cells, that successfully reprogrammed the tumor immune microenvironment and significantly improved antitumor responses in...
For this installment of The ASCO Post’s Living a Full Life series, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Laurie Glimcher, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI). She is also Director of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, Principal...
As a result of breakthroughs in immune checkpoint inhibitors over the past decade, immunotherapy has joined surgery, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy as one of the pillars of cancer treatment. However, nearly half of patients still do not benefit from immune checkpoint blockade. During the 2022...
Several studies presented during the 2022 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition uncovered significant disparities in medical care and health outcomes among patients of different racial backgrounds, nationalities, and socioeconomic status across a range of blood...
Poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor maintenance therapy may do more than just delay disease progression for patients with platinum-sensitive, relapsed ovarian cancer; it might also improve overall survival, according to data presented by Mansoor Raza Mirza, MD, during the December Virtual ...
Fox Chase Cancer Center was recently awarded a grant for $6 million over the course of 5 years to develop a new Cancer Prevention-Interception Targeted Agent Discovery Program (CAP-IT). The new National Cancer Institute (NCI) program was created to establish a pipeline for the discovery of new...
The chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy axicabtagene ciloleucel was deemed safe and showed encouraging signs of efficacy in a small pilot trial involving patients with lymphoma of the brain and/or spinal cord, according to findings presented by Caron A. Jacobson, MD, MMSc, and colleagues ...
A previous analysis by Khurana et al on the impact of inclusion/exclusion criteria in clinical trial design for patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) found that up to 24% of patients treated with standard immunochemotherapy were excluded based on five lab-based criteria alone. A new...
Breast cancer specialist Brittany L. Bychkovsky, MD, MSc, grew up primarily in Kansas; however, given that her father was a pilot, her childhood was not wholly centered in the Sunflower State. “When I was 12 years old, my mom, who was a schoolteacher, was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer. Her ...
The repercussions from the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 24, 2022, to overturn Roe v Wade, effectively ending a nearly 50-year federal constitutional right to an abortion and allowing instead states to determine abortion access, are starting to be felt in the cancer care community. The ...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Living a Full Life series, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Michael A. Caligiuri, MD, a physician-scientist who currently serves as President of the City of Hope National Medical Center and the Deana and Steve Campbell Physician-in-Chief...
Lori Wilson, MD, FACS, was the first woman to hold the surgical oncology division chief position at Howard University Hospital and the first woman to be promoted to full professor in surgery at Howard University College of Medicine. Known as a fierce advocate for patients with cancer in underserved ...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Living a Full Life series, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with C.S. Pramesh, MS, FRCS, Director of the Tata Memorial Hospital and Professor and Head of Thoracic Surgery at the Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai, India. Dr. Pramesh is the Convener of the...
Myeloma expert Sarah A. Holstein, MD, PhD, was born and reared in Iowa City, a college town in eastern Iowa along the banks of the Iowa River. “The town itself is small, but it doubles in population when all the college students are present. Both my parents had a PhD in humanities, so I had no...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Lannes et al found that single-cell genomics could identify the presence of high-risk copy number abnormalities (CNAs) in small subclonal populations at diagnosis of multiple myeloma in many patients. The investigators stated, “Multiple...
There I was, crying once again all the way from the hospital’s parking lot to my apartment, into the shower, and while trying to fall asleep. This had become the norm during my internal medicine residency. For years, I tried hard every day to be someone else to fit in. It started with off-hand...
To achieve its goal of eliminating cervical cancer, the World Health Organization (WHO) is calling on all countries “to reach and maintain an incidence rate of below 4 per 100,000 women.” Doing so would depend on the following: A total of 90% of girls being fully vaccinated against human...
Researchers have found that a new drug may be able to target—and for the first time, inhibit—the function of the MYC gene. Until now, no other drug has been able to do this safely and effectively, according to findings from a phase I clinical trial published by Garralda et al in the European...
In this installment of the Living a Full Life series, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with William L. Dahut, MD, who is currently serving as Chief Scientific Officer for the American Cancer Society (ACS). In this role, Dr. Dahut manages all pieces of the organization’s discovery work,...
I continue to be struck by the creativity of medical oncologists. The reimagining of dosing, duration, or regimen composition to respond to patient symptoms or preferences is like a master chef in the kitchen. Although standardization has, with good reason, become the paragon, delivering...