SIX HOSPITAL systems across the country are launching a new research collaboration to improve the reporting and management of cancer treatment–related symptoms. The initiative, known as the SIMPRO Research Center, will integrate the use of patient-reported outcomes into the routine practice of...
DURING THE 2018 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition in San Diego this December, ASH will honor Cage S. Johnson, MD, Professor Emeritus of Medicine, Physiology, and Biophysics at the University of Southern California, and José A. López, MD, Professor of Medicine...
Lung cancer researcher Melissa Johnson, MD, is a self-described “military brat,” whose father was a career officer in the Marine Corps, serving for more than 35 years. She was born in Oklahoma City and moved nine times during her childhood. When Dr. Johnson was in high school, her father was...
“‘Sickness’ is what is happening to the patient. Listen to him. Disease is what is happening to science and to populations.” —Lawrence Weed, MD, 1978 America’s massive health-care system is highly complex, with its own unique language, methods, technologies, and scientific approaches, developed and ...
In this installment of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, interviewed Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP, FASCO, ASCO’s Chief Executive Officer. Prior to his current position, Dr. Hudis served in a variety of roles at ASCO, including President during ASCO’s 50th anniversary...
RESEARCHERS AT LA JOLLA INSTITUTE for Immunology and University of California (UC), San Diego, have been awarded $4.5 million as part of the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Moonshot initiative. The funding will support research to develop new and improved immunotherapeutic options for patients...
ON NOVEMBER 16, 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expanded the approved use of brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) injection in combination with chemotherapy for adult patients with certain types of peripheral T-cell lymphoma (PTCL)—adults with previously untreated systemic anaplastic...
THE SAN ANTONIO Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) will honor three researchers for their work in breast cancer at the upcoming 2018 SABCS in December. They are Ian Smith, MD, FRCP, FRCPE, who will receive the SABCS William L. McGuire Memorial...
ON JULY 30, 2018, the radiotherapeutic agent iobenguane I-131 (Azedra) was approved for the treatment of adult and pediatric patients (aged ≥ 12 years) with iobenguane scan–positive, unresectable, locally advanced or metastatic pheochromocytoma or paraganglioma who require systemic anticancer...
ON NOVEMBER 6, 2018, following Priority Review, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved elotuzumab (Empliciti) injection for intravenous use in combination with pomalidomide (Pomalyst) and dexamethasone for the treatment of adult patients with multiple myeloma who have received at...
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved glasdegib (Daurismo) tablets to be used in combination with low-dose cytarabine for the treatment of newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in adults who are 75 years of age or older or with comorbidities that may preclude the use of ...
When you give to ASCO’s Conquer Cancer Foundation, your donation provides grants to researchers around the world. Research fuels the breakthroughs in cancer prevention and treatment needed for every cancer, every patient, everywhere. “Year after year, we meet patients who credit their successful...
The ASCO Nominating Committee has selected 15 distinguished ASCO members as candidates for open leadership positions within the Society, including: The office of President-Elect Three seats on the Society’s Board of Directors Three seats on the Nominating Committee Biographical information and...
Each year, we call upon the ASCO members to place their votes to select our Society’s future leaders. This year, we are asking that you not only vote for the open leadership positions, but also for a proposed bylaw change. ASCO’s mission is more urgent than ever in today’s landscape of fast-moving ...
On September 28, 2018, cemiplimab-rwlc (Libtayo) was approved for the treatment of patients with metastatic cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma or locally advanced cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma who are not candidates for curative surgery or curative radiation.1 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval...
Despite growing national awareness of health-care inequities, the plight of rural Americans diagnosed with cancer has persistently remained inadequate. Speaking with The ASCO Post, Jan Probst, PhD, Professor at the Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina, Columbia, noted, “We...
The phase III DUO trial, reported by Flinn et al and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, has led to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of a novel B-cell receptor (BCR) kinase inhibitor, duvelisib (Copiktra), which targets phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)-δ/γ in patients...
As reported in Blood by Ian W. Flinn, MD, PhD, Director of the Lymphoma Research Program at Sarah Cannon Research Institute, and colleagues, the phase III DUO trial has shown significantly prolonged progression-free survival with the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)-δ/γ inhibitor duvelisib...
In response to the opioid-overdose epidemic, several measures have been put in place, such as the reclassification of hydrocodone as a Schedule II opioid and new requirements for physician review of prescription drug–monitoring program databases in most states. Moreover, the Surgeon General and...
As part of the Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot initiative, the National Cancer Institute has awarded $6.3 million to Nicholas Mitsiades, MD, of the Baylor College of Medicine, and a collaborative team at Baylor College of Medicine to establish a Minority Patient-Derived Xenograft Development and Trial...
Amar Kishan, MD, Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology and a member of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, will receive the 2018 Publication Award from the Radiation Oncology Institute in recognition of a study highlighting the value of...
The link between inflammation and cancer is a field of growing interest in the oncology community. Biologists have theorized that simultaneous DNA damage and cell division during inflammation could lead to cancer. To shed light on this important issue, The ASCO Post recently spoke with Jennifer...
On September 27, 2018, dacomitinib (Vizimpro) received approval for the first-line treatment of patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) exon 19 deletion or exon 21 L858R substitution mutations, as detected by a test approved by the...
New research by Lichtensztajn et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network examined disparities in care for Latino men with prostate cancer. A team of researchers from UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, Stanford Cancer Institute, and...
A combination of the chemotherapy drug azacitidine with the immune checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab (Opdivo) demonstrated an encouraging response rate and overall survival in patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML), according to findings from a phase II study published...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Ogura et al found that lateral lymph node dissection (LLND) reduced the risk of lateral local recurrence in patients with lateral nodes ≥ 7 mm undergoing neoadjuvant chemoradiation or radiation and total mesorectal excision in clinical...
Steven A. Rosenberg, MD, PhD, knew from the start of his medical career that if treatments for cancer were to become curative, research in new therapies would have to move away from the mainstay one-size-fits-all approach of systemic chemotherapy to an innovative, personalized strategy that...
In a 2-year follow-up of the phase III SUPREMO trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Galina Velikova, PhD, of the Leeds Cancer Centre, St. James’s University Hospital, United Kingdom, and colleagues found worse chest wall symptoms in women with intermediate-risk breast cancer who did vs did not...
Three prominent medical organizations have issued a new clinical guideline for physicians treating men with early-stage prostate cancer using external-beam radiation therapy (EBRT). Developed by a panel of experts from the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), ASCO, and the American...
The Atlantic Health System, an integrated health-care delivery system, recently announced a partnership with the Translational Genomics Research Institute, an affiliate of City of Hope, and Origin Commercial Ventures to create a new platform to deliver economically viable immunotherapies and other...
Nosayaba Osazuwa-Peters, MPH, PhD, of St. Louis University, discusses study findings on married cancer survivors with advanced stage disease who were less likely to die by suicide, highlighting the value of supportive care in cancer survivorship (Abstract 181).
Telemedicine—the remote diagnosis and treatment of patients via telecommunications technology—has changed the way oncology care is delivered in rural parts of the world. Patients in rural areas are now able to connect remotely with their physicians without having to deal with the time, expense, and ...
Charles Gawad, MD, PhD, an assistant member in the Departments of Oncology and Computational Biology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, has been selected by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to receive a Director’s New Innovator Award. Established in 2007, this award supports...
Randomized clinical trials have been providing high-quality evidence for decades, but there are limitations to the traditional design. At the 2018 ASCO Quality Care Symposium, George J. Chang, MD, MS, FACS, FASCRS, discussed the need to modernize clinical trials, so they continue to provide...
Katherine C. Lee, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses her study findings that showed older patients with metastatic cancer who survived emergency general surgery experienced higher intensity end-of-life care than similar patients who did not undergo surgery (Abstract 56).
For patients with recurrent ovarian cancer who receive platinum-based retreatment, the more suitable partner for bevacizumab (Avastin) may be carboplatin plus pegylated liposomal doxorubicin, rather than carboplatin and gemcitabine, according to the results of a phase III ENGOT/GCIG Intergroup...
In patients with stage III melanoma, a reduced-dose neoadjuvant immunotherapy combination was well tolerated and led to high pathologic response rates, in the phase II OpACIN-neo trial presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2018 Congress.1 “Neoadjuvant ipilimumab (Yervoy) at...
Formal discussant of the ERA 223 trial, Daniel Heinrich, MD, of Akershus University Hospital, Lørenskog, Norway, reminded listeners at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2018 Congress that radium-223 was developed in Norway. “When the ALSYMPCA results came out, we were celebrating....
The combination of radium-223 plus AAP (abiraterone acetate [Zytiga] and prednisone) was not superior to placebo plus AAP in the phase III ERA 223 trial, which enrolled men with asymptomatic bone-predominant metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.1 Patients treated with the combination had ...
In the JAVELIN Renal 101 phase III study, the combination of the immune checkpoint inhibitor avelumab (Bavencio), a programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1) blocking antibody, plus the tyrosine kinase inhibitor axitinib (Inlyta) significantly improved progression-free survival in previously untreated...
Formal discussant of this trial, Amanda Psyrri, MD, PhD, of the University of Athens Medical School, Attikon Hospital, Athens, Greece, commented on these results, suggesting they would affect clinical practice “tomorrow.” “Cisplatin/radiotherapy remains the standard of care for low-risk human...
In the United States and European countries, many oncologists are using cetuximab (Erbitux)/radiotherapy instead of cisplatin/radiotherapy in the treatment of human papillomavirus (HPV)-positive oropharyngeal cancer, based on the belief that cetuximab is equally effective with less toxicity than...
Suleika Jaouad, an Emmy Award–winning writer, advocate, and cancer survivor who was diagnosed at age 22 with myelodysplastic syndrome and acute myeloid leukemia, discusses what she has learned about coping with cancer, learning from it, and growing beyond it.
Invited discussant Jean-Pascal Machiels, MD, PhD, Head of the Department of Medical Oncology at the Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc, UCLouvain, Brussels, called the study “very important,” especially for showing that in patients with high expression of programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1),...
An overall survival advantage has now been shown for first-line immunotherapy in recurrent or metastatic head and neck cancer, researchers reported at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2018 Congress.1 In the phase III KEYNOTE-048 trial, treatment with the anti–programmed cell death...
In previously untreated patients with metastatic colorectal cancer and tumors demonstrating microsatellite instability–high (MSI-high) or mismatch repair deficiency (dMMR), immunotherapy with nivolumab (Opdivo) and low-dose ipilimumab (Yervoy) produced a durable clinical benefit in the...
Androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) use was associated with a higher risk of heart failure in a study of patients with prostate cancer, according to findings published by Kao et al in The Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. Study Methods, Findings Study authors used data from the Taiwan...
Growing numbers of cancer survivors, provider shortages, rising health-care costs, and socioeconomic disparities in health outcomes have created an urgent need to provide coordinated, comprehensive, personalized care for cancer survivors. A new report from the American Cancer Society (ACS) creates...
In a small study of patients with early-stage colon cancer, neoadjuvant ipilimumab (Yervoy) plus nivolumab (Opdivo) produced major pathologic responses in 100% of patients with mismatch repair (MMR)-deficient tumors but in none of the patients with MMR-proficient tumors, researchers reported at the ...
For patients with prostate cancer who have persistent or rising prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels after radical prostatectomy, the addition of short-term androgen-deprivation therapy and radiotherapy to the pelvic lymph nodes demonstrated increased rates of freedom from disease progression,...