In a modeling study reported in JAMA Oncology, Kalyta et al found that reducing the starting age for colorectal cancer screening with the biennial fecal immunochemical test (FIT) in Canada would result in reduction in colorectal cancer burden at a “modest cost.” As stated by the investigators:...
Researchers have found that fecal microbiota transplants from healthy donors may be safe and show potential in improving response rates to immunotherapy in patients with advanced melanoma, according to a phase I study published by Routy et al in Nature Medicine. Background While immunotherapy...
Commenting at a press briefing, Pamela L. Kunz, MD, Director of the Center for Gastrointestinal Cancers and Chief of GI Medical Oncology at Smilow Cancer Hospital and Yale Cancer Center, New Haven, said the results of PROSPECT are “practice-changing” and “align incredibly well with the theme at...
Researchers have identified a new potential therapeutic target—the cell-surface tumor antigen CUB domain–containing protein 1 (CDCP1)—for patients with all subtypes of metastatic bladder cancer, according to findings presented by Chopra et al at the Society of Nuclear Medicine & Molecular...
Female survivors treated for Hodgkin lymphoma may face declining fertility at a younger age, according to recent findings presented by Drechsel et al at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) 2023 Annual Meeting (Abstract O-083). The new research also suggested that the...
New research involving people living with HIV treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors has provided valuable insights into the safety and efficacy of immunotherapy in this historically excluded population, according to data published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.1 The real-world data...
For some precancerous cells, traveling from the bone marrow to the skin can trigger genetic transformations that can result in leukemia, according to a novel study published by Griffin et al in Nature. The new findings may have shed light on what researchers have termed the “genetic travelogue” of...
Research!America, a nonprofit alliance that advocates for science, discovery, and innovation to achieve better health for all, has elected four new members to its board of directors. Each of these individuals has made significant contributions to advancing medical and health research through...
Amanda Nickles Fader, MD, Professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Professor of Oncology, and Vice Chair of Gynecologic Surgical Operations at Johns Hopkins Health System, Baltimore, provided her thoughts on GOG 3026 for The ASCO Post. Dr. Fader applauded the investigators and the Gynecologic...
Specialized exercise and wellness programs significantly elevated physical well-being and quality of life among patients with breast cancer while reducing the use of health-care resources in new research presented at the 2023 American Society of Breast Surgeons Annual Meeting. In one multicenter...
New research involving people living with HIV treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors has provided valuable insights into the safety and efficacy of immunotherapy in this historically excluded population, according to data published by El Zarif et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The...
Amanda Nickles Fader, MD, Professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Professor of Oncology, and Vice Chair of Gynecologic Surgical Operations at Johns Hopkins Health System, Baltimore, provided her thoughts on GOG 3026 for The ASCO Post. Dr. Fader applauded the investigators and the Gynecologic...
ASCO has updated two living guidelines on the systemic treatment of stage IV non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with and without driver alterations with the inclusion of new evidence-based treatment recommendations.1,2 Among the updates, the guidelines add the recently approved RAS GTPase family...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Youssef et al found that the standard Response Assessment in Neuro-Oncology (RANO) and modified RANO (mRANO) criteria produced similar correlations between progression-free survival and overall survival in newly diagnosed glioblastoma and...
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....
Here is how Dr. Sharma summed up the current state of neoadjuvant therapy in triple-negative breast cancer: The addition of an immune checkpoint inhibitor to neoadjuvant chemotherapy improves long-term outcomes. This strategy can produce a modest improvement in pathologic complete response and a...
Commenting on these studies of menin inhibitors, Mikkael Sekeres, MD, MS, Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Hematology at the Sylvester Cancer Center, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, was enthusiastic about the promise of these agents because they are targeted to...
Xin Gao, MD, Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School, Genitourinary Cancers Program, Mass General Cancer Center, commented on the results from TROPHY-U-01 cohort 2. “These data add to the overall data on the efficacy of sacituzumab govitecan in patients with metastatic urothelial cancer. This...
The addition of abiraterone acetate and apalutamide to standard of care gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonist for 6 months and radiation therapy failed to improve progression-free survival and metastasis-free survival after prostatectomy compared to bicalutamide plus a GnRH agonist and...
Molecular changes observed in the breast tissue of transgender men undergoing androgen therapy may signal the potential for also using the hormone to prevent or treat estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer. The findings were published by Raths et al in Cell Genomics. “These findings build upon...
Amir T. Fathi, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Leukemia Program at Massachusetts General Cancer Center, said the approach of intensifying chemotherapy with the addition of venetoclax is one of several being studied in the upfront setting....
Longer follow-up of a phase II study of venetoclax combined with cladribine, idarubicin, and cytarabine (CLIA) as a front-line induction regimen for younger patients with high-risk acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) shows a pattern of durable efficacy consistent with...
The 2022 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition took place in the vibrant city of New Orleans. The meeting brought together tens of thousands of participants from across the world to present and discuss the results of studies that ranged from hypothesis-generating to...
Patients with prostate cancer who reported the highest amounts of plant-based foods in their diets had a 52% lower risk of disease progression and a 53% lower risk of recurrence compared with those who had the lowest amounts of plants in their diets. The diet assessments were based on...
Julio C. Chavez, MD, Associate Member in the Lymphoma Section of the Department of Malignant Hematology at Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, who co-moderated the session where the glofitamab study was presented, shared his thoughts with The ASCO Post. “Glofitamab has great activity in high-risk...
According to a review published by Ashley et al in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, preexisting dementia may complicate cancer care and increase the risk of worse clinical outcome and inferior patient experience. People living with dementia are more likely to have cancer diagnosed at an...
Researchers at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, and caregivers have helped secure medical coverage and financial compensation for individuals who were exposed to Ground Zero and consequently developed uterine cancer, including endometrial cancer—according to a new, final rule added to...
According to a new study published by Ben-Arye et al in Cancer, preoperative acupressure may help patients undergoing surgery for ovarian and endometrial cancers reduce anxiety. In addition, the researchers found that following up acupressure with perioperative acupuncture may reduce severe pain....
Researchers have developed and tested an artificial intelligence (AI) tool known as Sybil, which may accurately predict the risk of lung cancer for individuals with or without a significant smoking history using data from low-dose chest computed tomography (CT) scans, according to a new study...
Seth Wander, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Mass General Cancer Center, Boston, commented on the findings of the EMERALD trial. “We have seen a large amount of new data emerging related to elacestrant and other novel SERDs [selective estrogen receptor degraders]. Despite initial expectations based...
Just days before the publication of the 2022 Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer on October 27, 2022,1 which showed a continued downward trend in cancer deaths, Karen Knudsen, MBA, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of the American Cancer Society (ACS), joined the First Lady Dr. Jill...
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, signed into law on August 16, 2022, contains several important provisions regarding health care and drug pricing.1 In this article, I provide an overview of the legislation’s implications for oncology care, focusing on its provisions concerning drug price...
In an Australian phase IIb trial (MedCan1-CBD) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Hardy et al found that use of cannabidiol (CBD) oil did not improve symptom distress vs placebo in adult patients with advanced cancer receiving palliative care. Study Details The double-blind multicenter...
Researchers have found changes in the levels of particular proteins in patients’ blood up to 2 years before they were diagnosed with breast cancer, according to a novel study published by Hagenaars et al in the European Journal of Cancer. The study, also presented at the 13th European Breast Cancer ...
The ASCO Post asked for comment from Glenn J. Hanna, MD, Director of the Center for Salivary and Rare Head and Neck Cancers, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Hanna said it is important to put the findings of KEYNOTE-4121 into context...
A new study, published recently in JCO Oncology Practice, found that oncologists have different perspectives on how to select starting doses for patients with metastatic cancer.1 The study shared findings from a 2021 international survey of 367 medical oncologists who treat patients with metastatic ...
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson Low-intensity therapy for older or unfit patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) was introduced in the early 2000s in the form of low-dose cytarabine or hypomethylation therapy (azacitidine or decitabine). Recent studies...
The ASCO Post asked for comment from Glenn J. Hanna, MD, Director of the Center for Salivary and Rare Head and Neck Cancers, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Hanna said it is important to put the findings of KEYNOTE-4121 into context...
“Hats off to the investigators for the first comparison of triplet to doublet in advanced renal cell carcinoma. This is also the first results using a contemporary control group. The study met its primary endpoint,” said Sumanta K. Pal, MD, FASCO, Co-Director of the Kidney Cancer Program, City of...
The addition of cabozantinib to nivolumab plus ipilimumab prolonged progression-free survival in untreated intermediate-risk patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC), according to the first results of the phase III COSMIC-313 trial. These findings were presented as a Presidential Symposium ...
Meeting with a medical physicist who can explain how radiation therapy is planned and delivered may reduce patient anxiety and increase patient satisfaction throughout the treatment process, according to a new study published by Burmeister et al in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology •...
“Hats off to the investigators for the first comparison of triplet to doublet in advanced renal cell carcinoma. This is also the first results using a contemporary control group. The study met its primary endpoint,” said Sumanta K. Pal, MD, FASCO, Co-Director of the Kidney Cancer Program, City of...
Treating high-risk, asymptomatic bone metastases with radiation may reduce painful complications and hospitalizations and possibly extend overall survival in people whose cancer has spread to multiple sites, a phase II clinical trial suggests. Results of the multicenter, randomized trial were...
Although standard therapies may provide long-lasting remissions for many patients with various subtypes of lymphoma, there is a critical need for new strategies for the sizable high-risk subset. At the 2022 Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference, four experts in the field described future therapies for...
Jonathan Ledermann, MD, of UCL Cancer Institute University College London, was the formal discussant of both the phase III SOLO1 and PAOLA-1 trials. He was quite enthusiastic about SOLO1: “Perhaps, this is really cure we are seeing.” He also noted that overall survival is still immature and is...
With the aging of the world population, geriatric oncology is becoming a mainstay. Over the past year in The ASCO Post, we published a couple of articles on the history of oncology, including one on the history of geriatric oncology in the United States and Europe. Our goal was to promote a...
The addition of cabozantinib to nivolumab plus ipilimumab prolonged progression-free survival in untreated intermediate-risk patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC), according to the first results of the phase III COSMIC-313 trial. These findings were presented as a Presidential Symposium ...
Nearly one in four families of pediatric patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) enrolled in a clinical trial experienced food insecurity, and almost half of the families eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) did not receive benefits. In addition, receiving SNAP ...
In a large study led by researchers at the American Cancer Society (ACS), men and women who drank two or more servings of sugar-sweetened beverages per day had a 5% increased risk of death from an obesity-related cancer, including gastrointestinal, postmenopausal breast, endometrial, and kidney...
EQRx is an economics professor’s dream company. It is the perfect example of the principle of substitution. EQRx provides quality, lower-cost drugs in high-cost categories that may substitute for the higher-priced options. Although the profit margin for each drug unit is smaller than the...