As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology,1 researchers at the National Cancer Institute observed complete regression of metastatic cervical tumors in two patients following a single infusion of human papillomavirus (HPV)-targeted tumor-infiltrating T cells. In the protocol, nine patients...
Retrospective analyses of the ATAC, TEAM, and BIG 1-98 adjuvant endocrine therapy trials in breast cancer have suggested that treatment-emergent endocrine symptoms may be associated with superior survival outcomes. In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Vered Stearns, MD,...
Jane Carrie Weeks, MD, MSc, a prominent researcher at Dana-Farber Cancer Center, died of cancer on September 10, 2013, at the age of 61. At the time of her death, Dr. Weeks was Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public ...
As the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) celebrates its 20th year, The ASCO Post asked its Chief Executive Officer, Robert W. Carlson, MD, to reflect on the organization’s accomplishments, mission, and future and on the role he may have played in its success. The Early Years You became...
The greatest health threat to people living in low- and middle-income countries is no longer infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS, which has seen a 33% decline in the global rate of new infections since 2001.1 It is the rise of noncommunicable diseases (including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and...
Dr. Are extended to me the opportunity to make additional comments about his article. I am the husband of the most wonderful Mrs. X he discusses. As always, Dr. Are’s comments are very kind and generous. Three Roles Based on my experience and observations, I would like to mention three roles a...
Despite the high prevalence of breast cancer worldwide, it is important to recognize that > 40% of all cases occur in women aged 65 years or older in both the United States and the United Kingdom.1,2 Breast cancers in older patients are more often associated with indolent features and with...
“Use of oncology-related services is increasingly scrutinized, yet precisely which services are actually rendered to patients, particularly at the end of life, is unknown,” noted an article in the Journal of Oncology Practice. To address this knowledge gap, Eijean Wu, MD, of the Los Angeles County...
The information contained in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting clinical studies for patients with newly diagnosed or relapsed or refractory neuroblastoma. The studies include pilot, observational, phase I, phase II, and phase III trials investigating single-agent and...
Even though today I’m cancer-free, the experience of getting a cancer diagnosis and going through treatment leaves an indelible mark on your psyche—as well as your body—that time doesn’t erase. Once you have cancer, you become a cancer survivor, and that status doesn’t change. I’ve known many...
The 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting will feature three activities to help attendees earn American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Maintenance of Certification (MOC) points while onsite. Annual Meeting Practice-Centered Session MOC Self-Assessment Activity This activity is designed for attendees who want ...
Overdiagnosis associated with breast cancer screening has been the subject of much attention in recent years. The notion that cancer screening—largely believed to be beneficial—could actually be harmful is simultaneously fascinating and difficult to believe. With the publication of multiple studies ...
In a study reported in Lancet, Jolyn Hersch, MApplSc, of the University of Sydney, and colleagues found that use of a decision aid containing information on overdetection in breast cancer screening was associated with an increased rate of informed choice regarding screening, a reduced rate of...
Hodgkin lymphoma is generally thought to be a malignancy with a favorable prognosis. Overall, approximately 80% of patients will have durable, long-term remissions with initial chemotherapy. Some patients, however, demonstrate evidence of disease progression, and these patients usually receive...
In the phase III AETHERA trial reported in The Lancet, Craig H. Moskowitz, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and colleagues found that brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) consolidation therapy after autologous stem cell transplantation prolonged progression-free survival by 18 months vs...
The quality and quantity of original research presented at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Annual Conference continue to grow since poster sessions debuted a few years ago. The ASCO Post offers summaries for just a few that caught our eye, out of more than 65 presented this year....
Can metastatic breast cancer ever be cured? This issue was debated at the 32nd Annual Miami Breast Cancer Conference by two experts in the field: George W. Sledge, Jr, MD, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University Medical Center, Palo Alto, California, and Clifford A. Hudis, MD, Chief of the...
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services projects that U.S. health-care spending will reach $4.3 trillion and account for 19.3% of the nation’s gross domestic product by 2019.1 Although cancer care represents a small fraction of overall health-care costs, the cost of cancer care is rapidly...
Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) proved superior to ipilimumab (Yervoy) for the treatment of unresectable advanced melanoma in the global phase III KEYNOTE-006 trial. Pembrolizumab significantly improved overall survival, progression-free survival, and overall response rate compared with ipilimumab, which...
BOOKMARKTitle: p53: The Gene That Cracked the Cancer CodeAuthor: Sue ArmstrongPublisher: Bloomsbury PublishingPublication date: November 20, 2014Price: $19.98; hardcover, 288 pages Completed in April 2003, the Human Genome Project was one of the greatest feats of scientific exploration, an inward ...
“Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a neglected disease in patients with cancer,” Harrys A. Torres, MD, and colleagues from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston noted in the Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. To rectify that situation, the researchers...
Using a novel polymerase chain reaction assay “to efficiently assess” epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations in circulating free DNA (cfDNA) from blood samples of patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the Spanish Lung Cancer Group has “shown that the EGFR L858R...
A study finding that just doing some leisure time physical activity reduces overall and cancer-specific mortality by 20% and that more activity can provide even greater survival benefits concludes that health-care professionals should encourage inactive patients to perform more leisure time...
There’s good news for those who recognize the benefits of exercise but feel they have neither the time nor energy for frequent workouts: A recent study reported in JAMA Internal Medicine1 has found that just performing “some” leisure time physical activity, even below the recommended minimum level, ...
Few people have impacted cancer clinical research in the past quarter century as much as Mark Green. His expertise in lung cancer and clinical trial design led to the successful completion of seminal studies combining radiation and chemotherapy that forever changed the management of patients with...
I first met Michael Katz, MBA, in 2004, 3 years after my brother, Dom, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and we were at a crossroads in his care and needed advice. Although an experimental regimen of thalidomide (Thalomid) and dexamethasone had successfully put Dom in remission for a year (the...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the “Art of Oncology” as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO). These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
Alan Alda’s passion and appreciation for science extend nearly as far back to his early life as his love of acting. The son of actor Robert Alda, Mr. Alda began his acting career at the age of 16. Although he has appeared in such widely acclaimed films as The Seduction of Joe Tynan, Crimes and...
No one ever expects to hear the words “you have cancer,” but over the course of the day, over 5,000 people in the United States are given that news.1 I first heard those words in the summer of 2007 and have been living with cancer ever since. At the time of my diagnosis, I knew this would forever...
The following essay by Kishore K. Dass, MD, is adapted from The Big Casino: America’s Best Cancer Doctors Share Their Most Powerful Stories, which was coedited by Stan Winokur, MD, and Vincent Coppola and published in May 2014. The book is available on Amazon.com and thebigcasino.org. Born in...
BOOKMARKTitle: Less Medicine, More Health: 7 Assumptions That Drive Too Much Medical CareAuthor: H. Gilbert Welch, MDPublisher: Beacon PressPublication date: March 3, 2015Price: $24.95; hardcover, 241 pages He’s the best physician that knows the worthlessness of most medicines. —Benjamin Franklin...
The process of delivering novel treatments for patients with cancer involves a multifaceted and long-term interaction between three distinct entities: clinical researchers, who conduct the trials which test treatments; drug developers, including the pharmaceutical industry, which takes cancer drugs ...
For over a decade, Patrick W. Mantyh, PhD, JD, has been investigating the molecular and cellular mechanisms that are involved in cancer-related pain, especially bone pain caused by advanced breast, prostate, and lung cancers. His early laboratory work using mouse models of bone cancer led to an...
The text and photographs on this page are excerpted from a four-volume series of books titled Oncology Tumors & Treatment: A Photographic History, by Stanley B. Burns, MD, FACS. The photos below are from the volume titled “The Anesthesia Era: 1845–1875.” To view additional photos from this...
The information contained in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting clinical studies for patients with newly diagnosed or relapsed or refractory lymphoma of the skin. The studies include observational, phase I, and phase II trials investigating single-agent and...
A famous Talmudic question asks: “What is truer than the truth?” The answer: “The story.” This is the story of my personal journey in search of meaning and the development of an approach to care for patients with advanced cancer, which I came to call “meaning-centered psychotherapy.” In terms of...
The treatment landscape for metastatic melanoma has recently undergone a remarkable transformation. Prior to 2011, clinicians and patients were presented with difficult decisions between therapies without proven survival benefit. Now, similarly difficult but much more hopeful choices are posed...
In the phase III KEYNOTE-006 trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine,1 Caroline Robert, MD, PhD, Head of the Dermatology Unit at the Institut Gustave Roussy, Paris, and colleagues found that the anti–programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) antibody pembrolizumab (Keytruda) increased...
The recent publication of the results of our National Cancer Institute (NCI) RO1-funded randomized controlled trial of meaning-centered group psychotherapy for advanced cancer patients in the Journal of Clinical Oncology,1 and the accompanying summary published in this issue of The ASCO Post,...
In the past 2 decades, the incidence of thyroid cancer has risen steeply, with rates now growing by 5.5% annually.1 In 2014, 62,980 new cases of thyroid cancer were diagnosed in the United States. The good news is that, overall, the prognosis of thyroid cancer remains excellent; 97.8% of patients...
Large, randomized phase III clinical trials showed that the addition of HER2-targeted therapy to chemotherapy for patients with early-stage, HER2-overexpressing breast cancers substantially decreased the risk of recurrence and improved survival. The chemotherapy given in these trials varied, but it ...
In a phase II study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Sara M. Tolaney, MD, MPH, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and colleagues found that adjuvant paclitaxel and trastuzumab (Herceptin) was associated with high invasive disease-free survival in women with small, node-negative,...
ASCO and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) have launched a project to apply team-based oncology clinical care delivery and are calling for writing teams to submit the best clinical oncology patient-centered practices. The two organizations will work with interested authors to create writing teams ...
A new app from ASCO University enables clinicians to earn Maintenance of Certification (MOC) points quickly, conveniently, and easily by answering questions on a smartphone, tablet, or computer. The ASCO MOC app, available for iOS and Android devices, as well as on a mobile-friendly responsive...
On March 31, 2015, Harold Varmus, MD, left his position as Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to join the faculty of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York as its Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine. Dr. Varmus was also named Senior Associate Core Member of the New York...
Although the idea of using viruses to target cancer cells dates back more than 100 years, technologic advances in the genetic engineering of viruses are now making it possible to safely test oncolytic virotherapy as a valid strategy against cancer cells. One type of genetically engineered virus...
In the phase III MAINSAIL trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Daniel P. Petrylak, MD, of Yale Cancer Center, New Haven, Connecticut, and colleagues found that the addition of lenalidomide (Revlimid) to docetaxel-prednisone in chemotherapy-naive men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate...
Sokal Score1 Derives from a multivariate analysis of survival of 813 patients diagnosed with chronic phase CML between 1962 and 1981 (0.0116 × (age [years] – 43.4)) + (0.0345 × (spleen size [cm] – 7.51) + (0.188 × ((platelets [109/L]/700)^2 – 0.563)) + (0.0887 × (blasts [%] – 2.10)). Smaller...
The ASCO Post is pleased to present “Hematology Expert Review,” an occasional feature that includes a case report detailing a particular hematologic condition followed by questions. Answers to each question, along with expert commentary, can be found in the sidebar. In this installment, we present...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Matthew J. Resnick, MD, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and colleagues, ASCO has endorsed the 2014 American Cancer Society Prostate Cancer Survivorship Care Guidelines.1,2 The ASCO endorsement panel was co-chaired by Dr. Resnick and David...