Andrea Wang-Gillam, MD, PhD, Clinical Director of the GI Oncology Program and Director of Developmental Therapeutics at Washington University in St. Louis, was the invited discussant of SEQUOIA and HALO 109-301. She tried to make sense of the two negative studies of pegylated agents in advanced...
Two novel treatments once thought to hold promise in the treatment of metastatic pancreatic cancer have not proved to be effective in phase III trials, investigators reported at the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium. When combined with standard chemotherapy, a pegylated form of human...
Edmund K. Waller, MD, PhD, Professor, Departments of Medicine, Pathology, and Hematology and Medical Oncology at Emory University School of Medicine and Medical Director, Center for Stem Cell Processing and Apheresis at Emory, said he was not surprised to learn that bridging therapy was associated...
The use of bridging therapy before treatment with axicabtagene ciloleucel was associated with worse overall survival in univariate, multivariate, and propensity score–matched analyses performed on data from the U.S. Lymphoma CAR T Consortium, investigators reported at the 2019 American Society of...
Marcia Cruz-Correa, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine at the University of Puerto Rico and Adjunct Professor of Surgical Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, congratulated the investigators on the conduct of the PANGEA trial and the outcomes it achieved for patients. “When...
A personalized approach to selecting antibody therapy for patients with newly diagnosed stage IV gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma resulted in a 1-year overall survival rate of 66% and a median overall survival of 16.4 months in the PANGEA study (see Table 1).1 The study used a novel clinical...
Sara M. Tolaney, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Associate Director of the Susan F. Smith Center for Women’s Cancers at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center, Boston, commented on KEYNOTE-890. “Previous work has suggested minimal activity of...
The phase II KEYNOTE-890 trial is a small but interesting study in patients with inoperable advanced triple-negative breast cancer. After one injection of intratumoral tavokinogene telseplasmid, a plasmid encoding the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin-12 (IL-12), followed by electroporation and...
Jeremy S. Abramson, MD, Director of the Jon and JoAnn Hagler Center for Lymphoma at Massachusetts General Hospital and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston, commented on the study by Topp et al for The ASCO Post. “Earlier use of steroids with axicabtagene ciloleucel...
In patients with large B-cell lymphoma undergoing chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy with axicabtagene ciloleucel, earlier-than-usual intervention with corticosteroids and tocilizumab may reduce the incidence of severe cytokine-release syndrome, according to the findings of a...
Basem M. William, MD, MRCP(UK), FACP, Director of the T-Cell Lymphoma Program and Member of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Program at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center–Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute, Columbus, Ohio, commented on the...
Advanced mantle cell lymphoma appears to be a good target for chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy. Treatment with KTE-X19, an anti-CD19 CAR T-cell product, led to unprecedented outcomes in patients with relapsed or refractory disease in the phase II ZUMA-2 study presented at the 2019 ASH ...
Richard L. Schilsky, MD, FACP, FSCT, FASCO, Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President of ASCO, who is also a gastrointestinal oncologist, called the 74% response rate to cisplatin/gemcitabine “remarkable.” “What’s impressive to me is the high response rate, as well as the progression-free ...
As first-line treatment of patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and a germline BRCA/PALB2 mutation, cisplatin plus gemcitabine yielded high response rates and encouraging survival, establishing this doublet as a standard approach in this subset of patients, according to Eileen M....
For several breast cancer experts interviewed by The ASCO Post, the phase III oral paclitaxel study and the drug itself had some limitations. Virginia Kaklamani, MD, of UT Health San Antonio, moderator of a press briefing, thought that the dosing process and the 11 pills or so per day was a...
Charles L. Shapiro, MD, Professor of Medicine, Hematology and Oncology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, commented on the Women’s Health Initiative update. “These trials involved more than 27,000 women between the ages of 50 and 79. The women with a uterus were randomly...
In the first reported phase III study of an oral taxane, an investigational oral form of paclitaxel yielded a higher overall response rate and produced less neuropathy than standard intravenous paclitaxel, researchers reported at the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.1 “Oral paclitaxel...
In postmenopausal women without prior breast cancer, estrogen alone reduced the risk of breast cancer, not only during treatment, but for years after estrogen was stopped. It also reduced deaths as a result of breast cancer and deaths after breast cancer from all causes. However, in contrast,...
Shelley Hwang, MD, MPH, the Mary and Deryl Hart Distinguished Professor of Surgery, Duke University School of Medicine in North Carolina, discussed the APBI IMRT Florence trial in a meeting highlights session at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. She called physician-reported cosmesis “the...
Patients with early breast cancer with small, node-negative tumors can safely be treated with accelerated partial-breast irradiation using intensity-modulated radiotherapy. According to the 10-year median follow-up of the randomized phase III APBI IMRT Florence trial, recurrence rates were low and...
Debra A. Patt, MD, MPH, MBA, FASCO, Clinical Professor at Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin and Executive Vice President of Public Policy and Strategy Initiatives for Texas Oncology, told attendees in a symposium highlights talk, “We all identify and follow some patients who ...
For postmenopausal women at high risk for developing breast cancer—largely based on family history—anastrozole taken for 5 years maintained a preventive effect for at least an additional 7 years after stopping the drug in the IBIS-II trial, which included nearly 4,000 subjects. Women randomly...
Hope S. Rugo, MD, FASCO, Professor of Medicine, Director of Breast Oncology and Clinical Trials at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, said the residual cancer burden index is being increasingly used in medical oncology. “The...
Residual cancer burden after neoadjuvant chemotherapy can accurately predict disease recurrence and survival across all breast cancer subtypes, according to the findings from a meta-analysis presented at the 2019 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium by W. Fraser Symmans, MD, Professor and Director...
Debra Patt, MD, MPH, MBA, Executive Vice President of Policy and Strategy for Texas Oncology and Clinical Professor at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin, commented that the 10-year results of NSABP B-42 show “a substantial improvement” in disease-free survival, with an...
“In the 10-year analysis of the NSABP B-42 trial, the effect of extended treatment with 5 years of letrozole on disease-free survival persisted and reached statistical significance. There was no significant improvement in overall survival with letrozole, but letrozole continued to provide a...
Multiple myeloma is a malignancy characterized by clonal proliferation of terminally differentiated plasma cells within the bone marrow. Although it leads to a host of different issues within the body, overall survival has steadily improved in recent years. “This is largely because of better...
Preet M. Chaudhary, MD, PhD, of the University of Southern California (USC) Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, commented on the HOVON-96 trial for The ASCO Post. Dr. Chaudhary is Professor and Chief of Hematology, the Ronald H. Bloom Family Chair in Lymphoma Research, and Program Director of...
Following allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, cyclophosphamide significantly reduced grades II to IV acute and chronic extensive graft-vs-host disease compared with conventional immunosuppression, investigators reported during the Plenary Session at the 2019 American Society of...
Emerging treatments for relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma include options beyond triplet regimens, including immunotherapy and mutation-driven therapy. Several exciting drugs are poised to be available in the clinic in 2020, according to speakers at the recent JADPRO Live, the annual...
Thierry Facon, MD, Professor of Hematology at Lille University Hospital in France, and Michael Jain, MD, PhD, of Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, were interviewed by The ASCO Post on the second-generation chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell products for treating multiple myeloma. According to Dr. ...
In patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, two novel dual-target chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell strategies are yielding early and durable responses, with seemingly less cytokine-release syndrome and neurotoxicity than first-generation CAR T-cell products, according to the...
Angela Lamarca, MD, PhD, of the Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester, United Kingdom, served as European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) commentator for the ClarIDHy trial in a press briefing held during the ESMO Congress 2019. Dr. Lamarca acknowledged, “The reported median...
Two studies reported at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2019—ClarIDHy and FIGHT-202—demonstrated clinical benefits with novel molecularly targeted agents in the treatment of advanced cholangiocarcinoma. Currently, first-line treatment for locally advanced or metastatic...
Joshua Richter, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Hematology, and Medical Oncology at the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai in New York, offered his thoughts on the CANDOR study, noting that the findings point to “a new and exciting treatment regimen for our patients with relapsed and...
In patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, the addition of daratumumab to carfilzomib plus dexamethasone improved multiple outcomes, compared with carfilzomib/dexamethasone alone, in the international phase III CANDOR trial.1 “Overall, carfilzomib/dexamethasone/daratumumab was...
Invited study discussant, Mafalda Oliveira, MD, PhD, of Vall d’Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona, said the phase II G1T28-04 study was “a ‘negative’ trial with clinically ‘positive’ results: an improved toxicity profile and overall survival benefit…. Despite the statistically negative...
An unanticipated result of a randomized phase II study was the improvement in overall survival achieved with the investigational CDK4/6 inhibitor trilaciclib in women with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer. The drug was not being evaluated for its anticancer effects, but rather as a means of ...
Oncologists have become accustomed to seeing pneumonitis associated with immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment in non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), requiring intervention by pulmonologists in the management of severe cases. At CHEST 2019, the annual meeting of the American College of Chest...
More than one out of two patients with metastatic melanoma treated with the combination of nivolumab plus ipilimu-mab is still alive after 5 years, according to the longest follow-up of patients receiving this combination. In two additional studies, the immunotherapy duet also proved to be active...
Here is a glimpse at updated clinical trial data on newer therapies under study for the small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and advanced extrapancreatic neuroendocrine tumors. IMpower133 and ALTER: Novel Therapies for SCLC The treatment of small cell lung cancer has seen little progress in recent years,...
The invited discussant for the ATTRACTION-3 study was Ian Chau, MD, Consultant Medical Oncologist at The Royal Marsden Hospital, London and Surrey, United Kingdom. Dr. Chau first congratulated the investigators for successfully conducting a randomized phase III trial in metastatic esophageal...
Nivolumab improved overall survival compared with chemotherapy in previously treated patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in the final analysis of the phase III ATTRACTION-3 study. The data were presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2019 Presidential...
Arndt Vogel, MD, of Hannover Medical School in Germany, who served as discussant of the two studies of immunotherapy in hepatocellular carcinoma, said the findings point to a promising future in the treatment of this malignancy. He commented that the responses observed with nivolumab in CheckMate...
In the first-line treatment of advanced hepatocellular carcinoma, checkpoint inhibitors led to favorable outcomes in studies reported at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2019—though one study was technically negative. The current first-line standard of care for unresectable ...
Immune-related colitis is the second most common toxicity associated with checkpoint inhibitors, affecting up to 40% of patients. The ASCO Post interviewed Yinghong Wang, MD, PhD, Director of Medication-Induced Colitis and Enteritis, Director of Fecal Microbiota Transplantation, and Associate...
Circulating tumor DNA in the blood could serve as a marker of prognosis in patients with colon cancer receiving adjuvant oxaliplatin, according to a subanalysis of the IDEA trial, presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2019.1 After 2 years of adjuvant...
Patients with advanced lung cancer can experience burdensome symptoms at the end of life. Pulmonologists can alleviate some of this suffering, but it’s a balancing act between doing too much and not enough, according to specialists who spoke at CHEST 2019, the annual meeting of the American College ...
The invited discussant of BEACON CRC, Alfredo Falcone, MD, of the Department of Oncology and Translational Medicine at the University of Pisa, Italy, commented: “The ‘story’ of BEACON represents a good example of the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress theme: Translating Science Into...
For patients with metastatic colorectal cancer harboring BRAF V600E mutations, three drugs seem to be better than two, the most recent analysis of the phase III BEACON CRC study has shown.1 The results, presented at the 2019 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress, were concurrently...