On September 5, 2022, the oncology community lost a pioneer in the treatment of Hodgkin lymphoma, Saul A. Rosenberg, MD, FASCO. Dr. Rosenberg was the Maureen Lyles D’Ambrogio Professor in the School of Medicine, Emeritus, at Stanford University. Together with the late Henry Kaplan, MD, Dr....
“MC1675 is an important and exciting trial,” stated invited discussant Farzan Siddiqui, MD, PhD, of the Henry Ford Cancer Institute, Detroit. “Congratulations to the authors and to Dr. Ma for his award.” “There is strong evidence to suggest that patients with HPV-positive oropharyngeal cancers...
In a multinational study using artificial intelligence (AI), investigators developed an algorithm to improve the prediction of colorectal cancer recurrence. Study results were published by Pai et al in Gastroenterology. QuantCRC Rish K. Pai, MD, PhD, a pathologist at Mayo Clinic in Arizona and...
In our continuing effort to connect and learn more about our international oncology colleagues, The ASCO Post recently spoke with Rossana Berardi, MD, Professor in Medical Oncology and Director of the Postgraduate School of Oncology at the Università Politecnica Marche, Ancona, Italy, where she is...
Pilar Garrido, MD, PhD, is Head of the Medical Oncology Department, University Hospital Ramón y Cajal, Madrid. She is also Co-Director of the Cancer Research Group at Instituto Ramón y Cajal de Investigación Sanitaria (IRYCIS). Her main areas of research and clinical interest are thoracic tumors,...
MRI-guided focused ultrasound focal therapy produced “a high degree of success” and “a low rate of genitourinary adverse events” when used to treat select patients with intermediate-grade prostate cancer, Behfar Ehdaie, MD, MPH, and colleagues reported in The Lancet Oncology.1 Dr. Ehdaie is...
My diagnosis of terminal prostate cancer 3 years ago was filled with irony. As an interventional radiologist, I have treated hundreds of patients with advanced prostate cancer, and I knew my prognosis wasn’t good. After experiencing some of the common symptoms of the cancer, including voiding...
"This e-mail is different from my usual. No smiley faces or funny cartoons, for I have moved on to another location…. My place in the long line of life has suddenly been jumped up to the head of the queue, and now I have a boarding pass,” notes Harry, a patient with end-stage lung cancer who has...
In a recently published study by Needle et al in JAMA Network Open, University of Minnesota researchers and colleagues say adolescents with cancer deserve a voice in medical decisions made for and about them. “Adolescents with cancer should be given the opportunity to participate in their own...
In an English retrospective cohort study reported in JACC: Cardio-Oncology, Helen Strongman, PhD, of the Department of Non-Communicable Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and colleagues found that cardiovascular mortality ultimately exceeded mortality from common...
Anthony S. Fauci, MD, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), announced his intention to step down from his various roles in December 2022. He issued the following statement on August 22: I am announcing today that I will be stepping down from the positions...
Katrina S. Pedersen, MD, MS, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, said while the results of the phase II -SEQUENCE trial1 are encouraging and the drugs are available to translate into the clinic without delay, phase III validation would be needed...
The 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting was filled with important science, engaging data, and several practice-changing abstracts, many of which have been covered in detail on other pages or in earlier issues of The ASCO Post. There were numerous high-impact studies and attendees, whether present at the...
As a nonpartisan organization, the American Cancer Society has an overarching goal to improve the lives of patients with cancer and their families. We believe all individuals should have an equitable opportunity to prevent, find, detect, and survive cancer, irrespective of geography. The June 24...
About 3 years ago, researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute launched PROMISE (Predicting Progression of Developing Myeloma in a High-Risk Screen Population; ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT03689595), a large, ambitious screening study to identify individuals at high risk of developing...
An article in The New York Times earlier this year crystallized the dilemma facing health-care providers when they are presented with a patient in a life-threatening situation: Should they rely on advance care directives written years prior to the current medical situation to accurately determine...
By searching previously ignored regions of the genome, researchers have found a multitude of new genetic mutations that may contribute to diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). These findings were published by Bal et al in Nature. “Our findings not only show that these mutations can contribute to...
Informed consent forms can be overwhelming for patients—they are written at a level that is too high for many patients, possibly impeding true informed consent, according to a report given by King-Kallimanis et al at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) 2022 World...
On August 11, Roche announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of a label expansion for the Ventana MMR RxDx Panel. The Ventana MMR RxDx Panel is the first immunohistochemistry (IHC) companion diagnostic test to aid in identifying patients whose solid tumors are deficient in DNA ...
About 7 years ago, I had emergency hernia surgery and soon after began experiencing severe constipation and abdominal bloating. I had started to have minor symptoms leading up to the surgery, but now the pain and exhaustion of trying to have a bowel movement became unbearable. I met with a...
Jaye Gardiner, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, is among 10 recipients of the 2022 Dr. Eddie Méndez Award. This honor recognizes underrepresented postdoctoral researchers across the United States who have demonstrated research expertise in cancer, infectious...
In 2016, Theresa Brown, RN, wrote The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients’ Lives, a vivid real-time description of an oncology nurse’s standard 12-hour shift on a hospital cancer ward. It was an excellent book, which was reviewed on these pages and highly recommended for readers of The...
In this installment of Living a Full Life, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, spoke with Manmeet S. Ahluwalia, MD, MBA, Deputy Director, Chief Scientific Officer, and Chief of Solid Tumor Medical Oncology at Miami Cancer Institute, where his research focuses on the development of new therapies for...
Research shows that although 15% of Black individuals and 13% of Hispanic individuals have cancer in the United States, only between 4% and 6% of clinical trial participants are Black and between 3% and 6% are Hispanic.1-3 To improve these statistics, in 2020, ASCO and the Association of Community...
At the 2022 Summit on Cancer Health Disparities in Seattle, leaders from five of the leading professional societies in cancer discussed their respective organizations’ current initiatives toward improving cancer health disparities.1 Representatives from ASCO, the American Society for Clinical...
In a collaboration announced on June 4, ASCO will work with the World Health Organization (WHO) to measure and improve the quality of cancer care internationally. The goal is to achieve health-related targets of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals and WHO Global Action Plan on Non-Communicable...
ASCO has released the first comprehensive set of guidelines for the management of metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma (RCC).1 The guidelines are subdivided into six main sections: diagnosis, the role of cytoreductive nephrectomy, first-line systemic treatment, second- or later-line systemic...
ASCO has endorsed the recommendations put forth in a new guideline, developed by the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), on the use of radiation therapy for the management of brain metastases.1,2 Although ASTRO—in conjunction with ASCO and the Society for Neuro-Oncology (SNO)—recently...
To shed some light on the importance of caring for the whole patient and his or her caregiver, as well as the role of cellular aging and oncogenesis, The ASCO Post recently spoke with Kaumudi Bhawe, PhD, a clinical scientist with Cancer Commons in Mountain View, California. Dr. Bhawe has more than ...
The invited discussant of the DS8201-A-U105 trial, Rebecca A. Dent, MD, Head of the Department of Medical Oncology, Senior Consultant, and Chief of the Breast Medical Oncology Service at the National Cancer Center Singapore, said the results were reassuring in terms of safety and may pave the way...
When the 21st Century Cures Act went into effect in April 2021, health-care organizations began releasing electronic health information to patients immediately. An aim of the act is to reduce barriers to patients’ timely access to electronic health information, and previous research has shown that...
Despite data showing that cigarette smoking is the number one risk factor for the development of lung cancer,1 and a leading cause of preventable disease, disability, and death in the United States, an estimated 30.8 million American adults continue to smoke cigarettes.2 Globally, the number of...
A study looking at the correlation between daily insulin dose and cancer incidence among patients with type 1 diabetes found that higher insulin dose is positively associated with cancer incidence and that the association is stronger among those with insulin resistance. The results were published...
Physicians and researchers from UK HealthCare's Transplant Center and the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center conducted a study of patients over age 70 with hepatocellular carcinoma to examine how the outcomes of ablative treatments compare to liver transplants. The findings were published...
Women make up just 37.7% of all speakers at hematology and medical oncology board review lectures, according to a study published in Blood Advances. The findings call attention to the many barriers people underrepresented in medicine face in obtaining educational opportunities that can be vital to...
Patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head or neck were 93% less likely to die of any cause during the first 3 years after diagnosis if they ate a healthy diet high in nutrients found to deter chronic disease, according to results published by Vieytes et al in Frontiers in Nutrition. The...
The invited discussant of the ATLAS trial, Peter M. Voorhees, MD, Professor of Medicine, Chief of the Plasma Cell Disorders Division, at Levine Cancer Institute and Atrium Health/Wake Forest Baptist in North Carolina, applauded the very good outcomes achieved in the study.1 However, he posed the...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Global Oncology series, Guest Editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with Kevin Billingsley, MD, MBA, FACS, Chief Medical Officer of the Smilow Cancer Hospital and Yale Cancer Center. Although interracial marriage is common in the United States...
From June 10 to 15, delegates from the Association for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) participated in the 2022 Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association’s (AMA) House of Delegates (HOD). The AMA HOD is the principal policy-making body of AMA and meets twice a year to discuss pressing issues and...
Time-limited venetoclax-based regimens provide deeper and more durable remissions than chemoimmunotherapy combinations in patients with previously untreated chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), regardless of patients’ fitness, according to late-breaking data presented during the European Hematology...
In the phase III EVEREST trial, adjuvant everolimus improved median recurrence-free survival in patients with resected renal cell carcinoma (RCC), but this finding failed to be statistically significant in the total study population of 1,499 patients, according to a prespecified boundary. However,...
In countries with a high income, research in oncology is sponsored by funding agencies and industry, which has meaningfully improved survival outcomes of patients with cancer. In contrast, the African continent is disadvantaged in all aspects of human development, particularly in the fields of...
In this installment of Living a Full Life, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Mark A. Lewis, MD, Director of Gastrointestinal Oncology at Intermountain Healthcare, Murray, Utah, and Vice President of American Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia Support. Dr. Lewis is also a social media...
CancerCare has released a report entitled “Cancer Caregivers: National Research Report on Shared Treatment Decision-Making.” It details the findings of its caregiver decision-making survey, which polled a nationally representative sample of 2,703 cancer caregivers between February and July 2021....
The effective treatment of patients with brain metastases is an unmet need because, until fairly recently, patients with brain metastases were excluded from clinical trials of systemic therapies. However, the emergence of molecular targeted therapies has allowed a new treatment approach in patients ...
Invited discussant Susan Slovin, MD, PhD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, pointed out there are no relevant serum biomarkers for disease progression and the challenges of interpreting response in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. “We should have more definitive...
Lutetium-177–labeled PSMA-617 (LuPSMA; lutetium Lu 177 vipivotide tetraxetan) achieved longer progression-free survival with fewer toxicities compared with cabazitaxel in patients with prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-positive metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer whose disease...
“BCMA-targeting bispecific antibodies work, showing impressive single-agent activity in heavily pretreated multiple myeloma. This class of agents is likely to become an important component of future antimyeloma therapies, but we must learn how to optimally use them,” said Madhav V. Dhodapkar,...
In patients with multiple myeloma exposed or refractory to three standard therapies, treatment with the bispecific antibody teclistamab produced strong and durable responses in the phase I/II MajesTEC-1 study.1 The results of weekly subcutaneous dosing of teclistamab in 165 patients were presented...
Experts’ discussions and recommendations addressing the interface between cancer and heart disease were published by Supriya Mohile, MD, MS, and colleagues in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, summarizing sessions from a virtual bench-to-bedside conference hosted by the American...