There are currently more than 3.8 million breast cancer survivors living in the United States, and 3 out of 10 women with invasive breast cancer will develop metastases. However, if some breast cancer cells remain after treatment, the amount is often too small to be detected by mammograms or...
In a single-institution study reported in Cancer, Bei Hu, MD, of the Department of Hematologic Oncology and Blood Disorders, Levine Cancer Institute/Atrium Health in Charlotte, and colleagues found that use of a dedicated nurse navigation program contributed to redressing the recognized inequities...
Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, Chairman of the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology at the Taussig Cancer Institute, Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, recently announced the appointment of Craig Sauter, MD, as the new Director of Blood and Marrow Transplant Program at the Cleveland...
Renal cell carcinoma is a common malignancy among men and women in the United States.1 The incidence continues to increase with the ever-increasing use of contemporary medical imaging. Although many patients who present with localized disease are cured with definitive surgery, some patients develop ...
Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Priority Review to a gene therapy for patients with β-thalassemia, and Fast Track designation to a SETD2 inhibitor for patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Priority Review: Betibeglogene Autotemcel for...
Newly identified genetic abnormalities in acute myeloid leukemia (AML), as well as therapies that can target some of those abnormalities, are now available as the landscape for treatment continues to evolve. During the 2021 National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Annual Congress: Hematologic...
Newly identified genetic abnormalities in AML have led to novel therapies that can target some of them, as the landscape for treatment continues to evolve. During the 2021 National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Annual Congress: Hematologic Malignancies, Alice S. Mims MD, presented updates in...
A severely calorie-restricted, low-carbohydrate, low-protein, 5-day dietary regimen that mimics fasting was shown to be safe and feasible, and it resulted in a decrease of blood glucose and growth factor concentration, a reduction in peripheral blood immunosuppressive cells, and enhanced intratumor ...
Although treating patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) remains challenging, some newer therapies on the horizon offer promise, including bispecific antibodies, anti-CD47 antibodies, antibody-drug conjugates, and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy,...
New research published by Geer et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network has found that fewer than one-third of hospitals in the United States had immediate availability of all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA), a crucial blood cancer medication. ATRA is initiated early in the...
Although patients with multiple myeloma can respond to initial treatment, once a patient has had three or four different types of therapy, and the disease is deemed relapsed or refractory, treatment becomes more complicated. This is related to both clinical characteristics, as patients may develop...
A preclinical study published by Arnaud et al in Nature Biotechnology has demonstrated the utility and efficacy of a highly efficient method to generate large numbers of immune cells specifically engineered to recognize neoantigens and destroy the tumors that express them. Developed by a team of...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved ropeginterferon alfa-2b-njft (Besremi) for the treatment of adults with polycythemia vera. The new agent is a monopegylated, long-acting interferon, which exhibits its cellular effects in polycythemia vera in the bone marrow. Ropeginterferon...
A clinical trial recently published by Kutny et al in JAMA Oncology found that the combination of all-trans retinoic acid and arsenic trioxide was highly effective in children with standard- and high-risk acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). Nearly all patients in the trial survived for 2 years...
In an analysis of the pivotal CLL14 trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Al-Sawaf et al found that venetoclax plus obinutuzumab was associated with higher rates of undetectable measurable residual disease (MRD) and prolonged MRD doubling time vs chlorambucil plus obinutuzumab at 3...
Most children and adolescents with cancer have mild COVID-19 disease and make a full recovery, a new study by Haeusler et al in the European Journal of Cancer has found. But pediatric patients with cancer and underlying health conditions, severe infections, and low white blood cell counts were...
People with blood cancers are at a higher risk than healthy individuals for severe infection with COVID-19; furthermore, research suggests that they do not always achieve optimal protection from vaccination. A new study published by Pagano et al in the journal Blood—the first to report on...
Treatment with arginine, an amino acid, enhanced the effectiveness of radiation therapy in patients with cancer and brain metastases in a proof-of-concept, randomized clinical trial published by Marullo et al in Science Advances. The recently published paper reported the results of administering...
In a study published by Abashidze et al in JAMA Network Open, the investigators found that Black men were at least 23.6% less likely than White men to undergo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) following an elevated prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test result. They also found that Hispanic and Asian...
About 9% of patients with cancer experience complications while hospitalized that lead to a deterioration in their condition, a transfer to the intensive care unit, or death. A multidisciplinary team of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis is developing a machine learning–based early...
In a study published by Magenau et al in the journal Blood Advances, researchers found that patients with high-risk acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who received a form of type I interferon after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant experienced reduced rates of disease relapse. Additionally,...
Cleveland Clinic researchers have shown that diet-associated molecules in the gut may be associated with aggressive prostate cancer, suggesting dietary interventions may help reduce risk. These findings were published by Reichard et al in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. While...
Patients with multiple myeloma lacking an antibody response to COVID-19 vaccine may also fail to mount a T-cell response, according to research from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Concerningly, this scenario was most common among patients actively treated with anti-CD38 and...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Courtney D. DiNardo, MD, and colleagues, an interim analysis of the phase II portion of a phase Ib/II trial (AG221-AML-005) showed that the addition of the oral mutant IDH2 protein inhibitor enasidenib to azacitidine significantly improved overall response rate ...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the Art of Oncology as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
Patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and brain metastasis derived significant benefit from treatment with the monoclonal antibody atezolizumab plus chemotherapy, according to the multicenter phase II Atezo-Brain trial.1 The study was presented at the International Association for the...
Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is a B-cell lymphoproliferative disorder defined by a specific phenotype and the presence of more than 5,000 clonal B cells in the peripheral blood.1 In the absence of this number of circulating cells, its soft-tissue/bone-marrow counterpart is semantically...
In a study reported in a research letter in JAMA Oncology, Morice et al found that pancytopenia was associated with use of poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors for cancer treatment, according to drug adverse event reports in the World Health Organization global pharmacovigilance database...
A large study from the United Kingdom has taken a deep dive into SARS–CoV-2 in the setting of cancer, yielding both concerning and encouraging findings about natural and vaccine-induced immunity. The study was presented at the Presidential Symposium during the European Society for Medical Oncology...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Kwan et al found that preexisting TP53 clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) variants were associated with increased risk of secondary myeloid neoplasms in patients receiving poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor therapy with rucaparib...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by William G. Wierda, MD, PhD, and colleagues, findings in the measurable residual disease (MRD) cohort of the phase II CAPTIVATE study indicated a high disease-free survival rate with placebo and no significant benefit of continued ibrutinib in...
In a phase II clinical trial, the drug 4-demethyl-4-cholesteryloxycarbonylpenclomedine (DM-CHOC-PEN) improved survival for some adolescent and young adult patients with cancers involving the central nervous system, according to results presented by Morgan et al at the AACR-NCI-EORTC Virtual...
On October 15, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved atezolizumab (Tecentriq) for adjuvant treatment following resection and platinum-based chemotherapy in patients with stage II to IIIA non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors have PD-L1 expression on ≥ 1% of tumor cells, as...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Sabnis et al analyzed characteristics of genomically targeted single-patient use requests for investigational agents for the treatment of pediatric cancers. These requests were made from pediatric cancer programs over a 5-year period. As...
Adjuvant therapy with the PARP inhibitor olaparib for 1 year extended disease-free survival in patients with high-risk early-stage HER2-negative breast cancer with BRCA1/2 germline (inherited) mutations, according to a prespecified interim analysis of the phase III OlympiA trial presented at the...
Because of their well-established efficacy, inhibitors of cyclin-dependent kinases 4 and 6 (CDK4/6) are the standard of care in the treatment of hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer. The question now is this: After disease progresses on a CDK4/6 inhibitor and endocrine...
Psychological therapy may reduce adverse biobehavioral effects of testicular cancer in young adult survivors, according to a pilot study published by Hoyt et al in the American Journal of Men’s Health. Biobehavior is the interaction of biologic processes and behavior. The recently published...
The Association for Clinical Oncology (the Association) launched the ASCO Patient-Centered Cancer Care Certification, a new pilot that certifies outpatient oncology group practices and health systems that meet a single set of comprehensive, expert-backed standards for patient-centered care...
In a UK trial (CAVA) reported in The Lancet, Jonathan G. Moss, MBChB, FRCR, of the Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences, University of Glasgow, and colleagues found that among central venous access devices, totally implanted ports (PORTs) were associated with significantly reduced rates ...
Elevated allostatic load was associated with a lower likelihood of completing chemotherapy and a lower overall survival rate in patients with lymph node–positive or high-risk lymph node–negative HER2-negative breast cancer, according to results presented by Samilia Obeng-Gyasi, MD, MPH, at the 14th ...
Black patients with prostate cancer who were treated with the androgen receptor inhibitor darolutamide had clinical outcomes similar to those observed in the overall clinical trial population, according to results from the phase III ARAMIS trial presented by Neal Shore, MD, at the 14th AACR...
Since my small cell lung cancer diagnosis in 2010, I’ve had to overcome not just the distress of having a life-threatening disease, but the stigma attached to it as well. I admit that I was a smoker. I was attracted to smoking when I was 16 and saw how “cool” people looked smoking in television and ...
“I vividly remember watching television with my older sister, Suzy, and marveling at President Nixon’s signing of the National Cancer Act in December 1971, and thinking ‘for me, this was like a man going to the moon,’” writes Nancy G. Brinker in the foreword to the recently published Centers of the ...
For aggressive B-cell lymphomas, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy saves lives, but relapse remains common, and a second-line standard of care is lacking. During the 2021 Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference, Grzegorz (Greg) S. Nowakowski, MD, Professor of Medicine and Oncology, Lymphoma...
Some of the most impressive data on chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy have come from studies conducted in China. Attendees at the 2021 Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference heard from one of the leading Chinese investigators, Peihua (Peggy) Lu, MD, of Lu Daopei Hospital, who described the...
In a retrospective cohort study reported in a research letter in Blood Advances, Jennifer L. Crombie, MD, and colleagues found that axicabtagene ciloleucel produced high overall and complete response rates in patients with primary mediastinal B-cell lymphoma. They also observed some evidence to...
Luis E. Aguirre, MD, of the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, discusses the subset of patients with chronic myelomonocytic leukemia who have a more indolent disease course. Features at diagnosis may include higher hemoglobin and platelet counts or JAK2, SF3B1, and IDH2 mutations; ...
Research published by Kachuri et al in the American Journal of Human Genetics reveals that children born with a genetic predisposition to produce more lymphocytes—particularly in relation to other types of white blood cells—may be at a higher risk of developing acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL)....
Every system in the body relies on oxygen. From cognition to digestion, effective breathing not only provides us with a greater sense of mental clarity, but it can also help us sleep better, digest food more efficiently, improve our body’s immune response, and reduce stress levels. According to...
The ASCO Post is pleased to present the Hematology Expert Review, an ongoing feature that quizzes readers on issues in hematology. In this installment, Drs. Abutalib, Desai, and DeAngelis explore the treatment of older patients with primary central nervous system lymphoma (PCNSL), which pose...