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...
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...
The invited discussant of the two trials in cervical and endometrial cancers presented at the ESMO Congress 2019 was Nicoletta Colombo, MD, of the University of Milan-Bicocca in Italy, who commented on what she called “exciting results in cancers with unmet needs.” Dr. Colombo noted: “The studies...
In studies reported at the ESMO Congress 2019, immunotherapy yielded encouraging outcomes in two gynecologic cancer populations in need of new treatments, including patients with advanced cervical cancer that is microsatellite-stable and patients previously treated for advanced endometrial cancer. ...
Ana Oaknin, MD, PhD, Head of the Gynecologic Cancer Program at Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, discussed the PRIMA/ENGOT-OV26/GOG-3012 trial along with the results of the phase III PAOLA-1/ENGOT-ov25 trial of olaparib plus bevacizumab maintenance. According to Dr. Oaknin, the...
In women with advanced ovarian cancer responding to first-line chemotherapy, maintenance therapy with the PARP inhibitor niraparib significantly reduced the risk of disease progression by 38% overall and by 60% in women with BRCA mutations. Even patients without a homologous recombination...
The time has come to offer all patients a PARP [poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase] inhibitor,” said Mansoor R. Mirza, MD, Chief Oncologist at Copenhagen University Hospital and the invited discussant of the VELIA trial at the ESMO Presidential Symposium. He noted, however, that he wasn’t sure veliparib...
As first-line treatment for women with advanced ovarian cancer, the addition of veliparib during induction followed by veliparib maintenance therapy significantly reduced the risk of disease progression or death in the phase III VELIA/GOG-3005 trial reported at the European Society for Medical...
Formal discussant Mafalda Oliveira, MD, PhD, of Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology in Barcelona, commented that monarcHER was a “well-designed, hypothesis-generating trial that addresses clinically relevant questions,” including whether cyclin-dependent kinase 4 and 6 inhibition now has broader...
Inhibitors of cyclin-dependent kinases 4 and 6 (CDK4/6) are associated with a robust benefit in patients with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative breast cancer, but now the monarcHER trial has confirmed their benefit in the HER2-positive population. The new findings were reported at the...
“The main goal in ovarian cancer is to avoid relapse after first-line therapy because otherwise, the probability of cure is quite low,” said European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) discussant of the PAOLA-1 trial, Ana Oaknin, MD, PhD, of the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, Barcelona....
In women with newly diagnosed ovarian cancer, front-line maintenance therapy with olaparib plus bevacizumab reduced the risk of disease progression by 41% overall and by 69% in the subset of patients with BRCA-mutated disease, vs bevacizumab and placebo, in the phase III PAOLA-1/ENGOT-ov25 trial...
Chair of the German Breast Group, Sibylle Loibl, MD, of the University of Frankfurt, commented as a formal discussant of MONALEESA-3 and MONARCH 2. “It’s great to see overall survival in the first- and second-line metastatic breast cancer settings. We haven’t seen that in many years,” she said....