The KRAS G12C inhibitor sotorasib doubled the rate of progression-free survival at 12 months and reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 34% compared with standard second-line docetaxel for patients with previously treated non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and KRAS G12C mutations....
Colorectal cancer ranks third among cancer deaths in both men and women in the United States, with an estimated 106,000 new cases and 52,000 deaths anticipated in 2022.1 Colorectal cancer rates have declined by approximately 2% per year from 2014 to 2018 in people over the age of 50 years, which is ...
With longer-term follow-up, adjuvant treatment with osimertinib led to a 77% reduction in the risk of disease recurrence or death following complete resection vs placebo-treated patients with EGFR-mutated, stage II to IIIA non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Disease-free survival was improved...
At this year’s European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress, we experienced an eagerly awaited return to normality (or almost), and the quality of the science on display was anything but disappointing: from molecular medicine to treatment de-escalation, from early cancer detection and...
The combination of immune checkpoint inhibitors relatlimab and nivolumab for patients with stage III melanoma given before surgery was safe and completely cleared all viable tumor in 57% of patients in a phase II study, according to findings published by Amaria et al in Nature. In addition to...
Christian U. Blank, MD, PhD, Professor of Internal Medicine, staff member at Netherlands Cancer Institute, Professor at the University of Regensburg in Germany, and founding member of the International Neoadjuvant Melanoma Consortium, was the invited discussant of the MD Anderson study of...
In an international, multicenter phase II clinical trial, almost two-thirds of patients with stage II to IV cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma had tumors nearly or completely eradicated by neoadjuvant treatment with cemiplimab-rwlc, an agent targeting PD-1. The results were presented at the European ...
A 3-week course of radiation therapy is as safe and effective as 4 to 6 weeks of treatment for patients with early-stage breast cancer who have a higher risk of having their tumors recur, results of a randomized phase III clinical trial show. Delivering fewer, but higher, doses of radiation...
Researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center demonstrated that adding metastasis-directed radiation therapy to intermittent hormone therapy improved progression-free survival in patients with oligometastatic prostate cancer. Findings from the multicenter EXTEND trial were...
On October 25, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to teclistamab-cqyv (Tecvayli), the first bispecific B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA)-directed CD3 T-cell engager, for adult patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma who have received at least four...
Nicholas J. Vogelzang, MD, FACP, FASCO, an expert in the treatment of patients with renal cell carcinoma, died on September 20, 2022. Dr. Vogelzang was 72 years old. Son of a Preacher Dr. Vogelzang was born on December 13, 1949, in Holland, Michigan, the oldest of seven children, in a close-knit...
Endocrine therapy is the foundation of first-line therapy in most patients with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer. Many of these patients respond to endocrine therapy but eventually become resistant to it through both intrinsic and acquired resistance mechanisms....
Three negative phase III trials presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2022 may dampen enthusiasm for immunotherapy as adjuvant therapy for renal cell carcinoma (RCC). None of the three trials—CheckMate 914, IMmotion010, and PROSPER—met its primary endpoint.1-3 The...
“Platinum-ineligible patients are typically excluded from clinical trials, yet they represent the majority of patients that we diagnose and treat—patients with poor performance status and comorbidities,” said invited discussant Natasha Leighl, MD, of the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto....
In platinum-ineligible patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), first-line treatment with the PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitor atezolizumab improved overall survival by an absolute value of about 1 month but almost doubled the rate of 2-year overall survival compared with chemotherapy...
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...
A randomized study has confirmed that patients with high-risk prostate cancer can be treated with 5 vs 8 weeks of radiation therapy. The phase III clinical trial is the first to confirm the safety and efficacy of a moderately shortened course of radiation exclusively for patients with high-risk...
Adding stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) to systemic therapy with sorafenib for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) may extend overall survival and delay tumor progression without compromising patients’ quality of life, findings from the randomized phase III NRG...
An artificial intelligence (AI) model developed by researchers may assist in predicting the likelihood that a patient may have an unplanned hospitalization during radiation treatments for cancer. The machine-learning model uses daily step counts as a proxy to monitor patients’ health as they go...
Studies show that rural populations experience greater cancer disparities across the cancer control continuum—from prevention and incidence to survivorship and mortality—compared with their urban counterparts. Those living in rural parts of the United States also tend to have lower cancer screening ...
Mepitel Film—a silicone-based polyurethane film dressing—may be beneficial in reducing skin toxicities caused by radiation treatment, according to data presented during the October 2022 session of the ASCO Plenary Series by Chow et al (Abstract 390226). Results of the phase III trial showed the...
In a preplanned analysis of the PALLAS trial, the addition of adjuvant palbociclib to standard endocrine therapy did not improve outcomes over endocrine therapy alone in patients with stage IIA breast cancer. Palbociclib offered no additional benefit in terms of invasive disease–free survival (the...
Further analyses of the MONALEESA metastatic breast cancer trials have shown that the benefit of ribociclib plus endocrine therapy in the first-line setting extends to most intrinsic molecular subtypes and is consistent across multiple subgroups. The studies were presented at the 2021 San Antonio...
For advanced breast cancer that is hormone receptor–positive and HER2-negative, sacituzumab govitecan-hziy significantly reduced the risk of disease progression by 34% over physician’s choice of treatment, based on the results of the phase III TROPiCS-02 trial.1 The heavily pretreated patients in...
The past year has seen an unprecedented number of practice-changing advances across all three major breast cancer subtypes. For patients with early-stage triple-negative breast cancer, neoadjuvant chemotherapy plus pembrolizumab firmly entered the standard of care based on improvements in...
The final overall survival analysis of the phase III PALOMA-2 trial has shown no significant benefit for palbociclib given with letrozole, vs letrozole and placebo, as a first-line treatment in hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer.1 The results were reported at the 2022 ...
The invited discussant of the TUXEDO-1 trial1 was Mafalda Oliveira, MD, PhD, of Vall d’Hebron University Hospital and Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, Barcelona. Dr. Oliveira noted that 40% of the 15 patients in TUXEDO-1 had symptomatic disease, and 60% had central nervous system metastases...
In the single-center phase II TUXEDO-1 trial of patients with advanced HER2-positive breast cancer, fam-trastuzumab-deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) showed efficacy in patients with active brain metastases, yielding intracranial responses in 73.3% of the population and a median progression-free survival of...
The antibody-drug conjugate fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) doubled progression-free survival compared with chemotherapy alone in patients with “HER2-low” metastatic breast cancer—ie, patients with low levels of HER2 expression. The agent also extended overall survival for patients with low ...
Preliminary results of the basket BEGONIA trial showed that the antibody-drug conjugate datopotamab deruxtecan (Dato-DXd), paired with the immune checkpoint inhibitor durvalumab, has strong activity in advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer among patients not biomarker-selected for...
Amy Tiersten, MD, Professor of Medicine, Hematology, and Medical Oncology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Carlos L. Arteaga, MD, Director of the Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center and Associate Dean of Oncology at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas,...
Switching from an aromatase inhibitor to fulvestrant upon early identification of the ESR1 mutation in plasma—before disease progression—doubled progression-free survival in the phase III PADA-1 trial, presented at the 2021 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.1 “PADA-1 is the first trial to...
The OlympiA trial of adjuvant olaparib in patients with HER2-negative, high-risk early-stage breast cancer and BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations has now demonstrated a significant overall survival benefit, reducing the risk of death over placebo by 32% and yielding an absolute improvement of 3.8% at 3...
Use of the first investigational oral selective estrogen receptor degrader (SERD) elacestrant significantly reduced the risk of death or disease progression and lengthened progression-free survival compared with standard-of-care endocrine therapy with fulvestrant or an aromatase inhibitor in...
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...
First-line maintenance therapy with olaparib extended survival beyond historical expectations in some women with newly diagnosed advanced ovarian cancer, according to two phase III studies presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2022 Congress.1,2 In the SOLO1 trial,1 more...
Pembrolizumab (anti–PD-1 therapy) plus chemotherapy continued to demonstrate a survival benefit and durable responses as first-line treatment of metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to the results of two phase III trials.1,2 Five-year overall survival was improved in both...
Primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL) accounts for less than 1% of all non-Hodgkin lymphomas and between 3% and 4% of all brain tumors, with an age-adjusted incidence rate of four cases per million persons per year. Approximately 1,500 new cases are diagnosed each year in the United...
The results of SWOG S18011 were met with enthusiasm by attendees at the Presidential Symposium of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2022. The ASCO Post captured the thoughts of several melanoma experts, who had somewhat different ideas about the immediate clinical...
In resectable stage III to IV melanoma, three cycles of neoadjuvant pembrolizumab followed by adjuvant pembrolizumab was significantly more beneficial than adjuvant pembrolizumab alone, based on the results of the phase II SWOG S1801 trial presented in a Presidential Symposium at the European...
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 ...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Olson et al, the primary toxicity results of the phase II SABR-5 trial have shown a low rate of toxic effects with stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) for patients with up to five oligometastases. As stated by the investigators: “After the publication of the...
Abstract discussant Jacek Jassem, MD, of the Medical University of Gdansk, Poland, underscored smoking as the most important cause of lung cancer, noting that between 85% and 90% of patients with lung cancer are current or former smokers. “Lung cancer screening, which has recently become standard...
Discussant of the IMpower010 abstract, Benjamin Besse, MD, PhD, Professor and Head of Clinical Research at Institute Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France, said there is enough evidence to use adjuvant immunotherapy in stage II–IIIA resected non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), calling the increased...
Despite significant advancements in cancer therapy, the number-one stopper of lung cancer remains the most basic intervention: quitting smoking. Unfortunately, for long-term smokers, that intervention can sometimes be the most challenging. According to data presented during the International...
Early results from the IMpower010 trial showed an overall survival trend favoring adjuvant atezolizumab vs best supportive care for patients with PD-L1–positive (tumor expression ≥ 1%), stage II–IIIA (UICC/AJCC staging system, 7th ed), resected non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). These data were...
Over the past few years, we have seen rapid and dramatic transformation in the therapeutic landscape of non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). We have had multiple new targeted therapies for newer targets (previously undruggable targets) and better diagnostic strategies to workup patients to realize...
Interim results of a phase II study have demonstrated the safety and feasibility of treating elderly and frail patients with locally advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with the monoclonal antibody durvalumab during and after radiation therapy, without chemotherapy. The results of a...
In patients with resectable, stage IIIA non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the addition of neoadjuvant nivolumab to platinum-based chemotherapy significantly improved overall survival compared with neoadjuvant chemotherapy alone, according to data presented by Mariano Provencio, MD, PhD, at the...