Ari M. Melnick, MD, of Weill Cornell Medicine, discusses the BCL10 mutation in patients with activated B-cell–like diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, and his study results which showed that the mutation should be considered as a biomarker for ibrutinib resistance so that alternative targeted treatments ...
The Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) has announced the creation of the Steven A. Rosenberg, MD, PhD, Endowed Scholars Fund. Established in honor of Dr. Rosenberg, this fund recognizes his many contributions to the field by supporting investigators who are emerging leaders in...
Sara Federico, MD, associate member of the Department of Oncology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, has received the 2020 Cancer Clinical Investigator Team Leadership Award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). This award recognizes and supports outstanding mid-career clinical...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) presented the 2020 E. Donnall Thomas Lecture and Prize to Toshio Suda, MD, PhD, of the National University of Singapore and Japan’s International Research Center for Medical Sciences, Kumamoto University, for his outstanding contributions to the field of...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) presented the 2020 William Dameshek Prize to Adolfo Ferrando, MD, PhD, of Columbia University Institute for Cancer Genetics in New York, for his outstanding research on the impact of NOTCH1 mutations on T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). “I am...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) recognized Michelle Le Beau, PhD, of the University of Chicago and the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Maria Domenica Cappellini, MD, of the University of Milan in Italy, with the 2020 Henry M. Stratton Medal for their...
ON OCTOBER 28, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the U.S. Department of Labor, and the U.S. Department of the Treasury released the coverage transparency final rule. Building on earlier administration actions requiring hospitals to disclose standard charges and negotiated...
Atlantic Health System Cancer Care recently announced that fellowship-trained medical oncologist Shilpi Gupta, MD, has joined Morristown Medical Center’s comprehensive breast health program, where her focus is breast oncology and research. Dr. Gupta is on staff at Atlantic Hematology Oncology at...
A TEAM OF SCIENTISTS from Albert Einstein College of Medicine has received a 5-year, $4.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to establish a research center to investigate human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)- and human papillomavirus (HPV)-related cancers in Africa. The...
CITY OF HOPE ORANGE COUNTY recently announced the appointment of cancer researcher and clinician Edward S. Kim, MD, MBA, as Senior Vice President and Vice Physician-in-Chief at City of Hope and Orange County Physician-in-Chief. “Dr. Kim has a depth and breadth of cancer expertise that is well...
New York University (NYU) Langone Health’s Perlmutter Cancer Center recently appointed Abraham Chachoua, MD, as the new Director of Perlmutter Cancer Center’s Lung Cancer Center. Dr. Chachoua currently serves as the Jay and Isabel Fine Professor of Oncology and Professor of Urology at NYU...
THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (WHO) has launched the Global Strategy to Accelerate the Elimination of Cervical Cancer, outlining three key steps: vaccination, screening, and treatment. Successful implementation of all three could reduce more than 40% of new cases of the disease and 5 million...
Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah recently announced new leadership appointments for two long-standing cancer center members. Chief Academic Officer Brad Cairns, PhD, has accepted an appointment as Chief Academic Officer at HCI. In this new role, Dr. Cairns will lead...
The more senior of this duo grew up with prognostication by disease stage and was taught that all stage IV cancers behaved the same. In the past 3 decades, we have become much more cognizant of the heterogeneity in outcome within stage. Individual Kaplan-Meier plots by stage separate well but hide...
ASCO has helpful, trusted resources to support your patients and their caregivers. Available in three convenient formats, you can choose from fact sheets; topic-specific booklets; and comprehensive, patient-friendly guides. ASCO Answers materials provide trusted, easy-to-understand information...
As part of its ongoing commitment to addressing inequities in cancer care and research, ASCO has launched a new educational series focused on the role of social determinants of health in cancer care and cancer outcomes. The free series, which began October 21, is aimed at educating oncology...
Systematic liquid biopsies are transforming treatment approaches for patients with gastrointestinal (GI) cancers. Many GI tumors are detected late, which ultimately reduces 5-year overall survival rates. Liquid biopsies may become increasingly important both in the early detection and treatment...
Julie R. Gralow, MD, FACP, FASCO, Professor of Medical Oncology and Director of Breast Medical Oncology at the University of Washington, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, has been named the next Chief Medical Officer of ASCO. Dr. Gralow will succeed...
When I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in 2018, my first thought was, I hope my three young children do not lose two parents to cancer. My husband, Ricky, had survived two bouts of cancer, early-stage colorectal cancer and, most recently, stage I kidney cancer. Like Ricky’s two...
OCE Insights is an occasional department developed for The ASCO Post by members of the Oncology Center of Excellence (OCE) at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In this installment, Preeti Narayan, MD, a medical oncologist and clinical reviewer on the Breast and Gynecologic Disease Team,...
In a systematic review and network meta-analysis reported in JAMA Oncology, Mohamad Bassam Sonbol, MD, of Mayo Clinic Cancer Center, Phoenix, and colleagues, found that atezolizumab plus bevacizumab outperformed other regimens in the first-line treatment of advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Thomas Powles, MD, of Barts Cancer Institute, London, and colleagues, extended follow-up of the phase III KEYNOTE-426 trial shows continued progression-free and overall survival superiority with pembrolizumab/axitinib vs sunitinib alone in first-line treatment ...
In a 7-year follow-up of the phase III CALGB 40601/Alliance trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Aranzazu Fernandez-Martinez, MD, of Lineberger Comprehensive Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and colleagues found that neoadjuvant paclitaxel combined with a dual...
In the UK phase III POETIC trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Ian Smith, MD, of The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, London, and colleagues, found that perioperative aromatase inhibitor therapy did not reduce the risk of recurrence in postmenopausal women with hormone receptor (HR)-positive...
ASCO has released a new evidence-based clinical practice guideline to assist in clinical decision-making for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma.1 “Advanced hepatocellular carcinoma has transitioned from a disease where we had a single approved therapy for patients to one where we now...
The Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation and National Medical Fellowships recently announced their new partnership, which is aimed at improving diversity in clinical trials. Leveraging $100 million of the previously announced commitment to diversity and inclusion from Bristol Myers Squibb and the...
Relapse is the primary obstacle to cure in leukemia. The term minimal residual disease (MRD) was coined in the early 1990s to describe finding a disease-specific marker in the context of a morphologic-appearing remission. The technique first used for MRD detection was the Southern blot (!), but the ...
In a systematic review and meta-analysis reported in JAMA Oncology, Nicholas J. Short, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and colleagues, found that measurable residual disease (MRD) negativity is associated with superior disease-free and overall survival in patients with...
The text and photograph here are excerpted from a four-volume series of books titled Oncology: Tumors & Treatment, A Photographic History, The Antiseptic Era 1876–1900 by Stanley B. Burns, MD, FACS, and Elizabeth A. Burns. The photograph appears courtesy of Stanley B. Burns, MD, and The Burns...
“A bald eagle skims along the bluff where windblown Douglas firs, their exposed roots like talons, grip the eroding cliffs. Gulls circle and warn the bird of prey not to get too close. One hundred fifty feet below, the Salish Sea crashes and stretches west to the Pacific.” So begins Wild Ride Home: ...
The 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Award for Leadership in Promoting Diversity was awarded to Edward J. Benz, Jr, MD, President and Chief Executive Officer Emeritus of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Richard and Susan Smith Distinguished Professor at Harvard Medical School. Dr....
The American Cancer Society and Pfizer have approved grants totaling more than $3.7 million focused on reducing racial disparities in care and helping to optimize cancer outcomes for Black men and women in 10 communities. The goal is to address systemic race-related barriers and disparities in the...
Enrichment of the lungs with oral commensal microbes was associated with advanced-stage disease, worse prognosis, and tumor progression in patients with lung cancer, according to results from a study published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.1 “The...
Immune checkpoint inhibitors may prove to be effective in treating patients with two rare cancer types—leptomeningeal metastases and angiosarcoma, according to early-phase clinical trials reported at the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC), which was held virtually ...
Stamford Health and Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center (DF/BWCC) formally announced an exclusive, expanded collaboration to increase access to DF/BWCC experts and resources for patients at Stamford Health’s Carl & Dorothy Bennett Cancer Center. Stamford Health first joined the...
Immunotherapy with checkpoint inhibitors, established as a treatment of many solid tumors, may be finding a role in the treatment of breast cancer. The current state of the art regarding immunotherapy for triple-negative breast cancer was the focus of a talk by Heather L. McArthur, MD, MPH, Medical ...
Prostate cancer has lagged behind other solid tumors with regard to molecularly targeted therapy and precision medicine, with no targeted therapies approved specifically in prostate cancer, but that has changed with the recent approval in 2020 of a PARP (poly [ADP-ribose] polymerase) inhibitor for...
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the Caribbean. Adding to this growing burden, many of the nations in this geographically spread region have under-resourced health-care systems and a lack of cohesive approaches to the delivery of cancer care. To shed light on the public health...
Researchers from Penn State College of Medicine are participating in a $10 million project to better understand why men and women with a common and deadly type of brain cancer have different survival rates. The investigators hope the study results can be used to develop new therapeutic approaches...
That Moses Judah Folkman would buck tradition, breaking his family’s long line of rabbinical succession and pursuing a career in science and medicine instead, was evident from the time he was a young child. Born in Cleveland on February 24, 1933, the first child of Rabbi Jerome and Bessie Folkman, ...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) honored Admiral Brett Giroir, MD, Assistant Secretary for Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), for his outstanding support of hematology research and patient care. At the all-virtual annual meeting, Admiral Giroir received the...
An assortment of agents has been approved in the United States for the first-line treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), and all of them are effective, explained Richard Furman, MD, of Weill-Cornell Medical College, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, New York. In the modern era, most patients ...
Hannah Hazard-Jenkins, MD, Associate Chair of Surgery for Cancer Services, has been named permanent Director of the West Virginia University (WVU) Cancer Institute after having served in the position on an interim basis since January. “As a native West Virginian, it is my honor to serve in this...
Invited discussant of the abstract, Joel W. Neal, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine at Stanford University, called this real-world analysis novel,1 given the decreasing number of patients treated with single-agent immunotherapy. “I think we’re unlikely to have a larger prospective study [in...
A real-world study of single-agent immune checkpoint inhibitors in driver-mutated non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has demonstrated significant variation in progression-free survival between mutation subtypes, according to data presented during the International Association for the Study of Lung...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) recently announced that Daniel D. Von Hoff, MD, FACP, FASCO, FAACR, will receive the inaugural AACR Daniel D. Von Hoff Award for Outstanding Contributions to Education and Training in Cancer Research. Dr. Von Hoff is being recognized for his...
Although early-stage, resectable disease represents the best chance for meaningful long-term survival and cure for patients with lung cancer, there are still high rates of recurrence. According to Rajwanth Veluswamy, MD, MSCR, neoadjuvant and adjuvant treatments are needed to improve surgical...
Formal discussant of this trial, Ramesh Rengan, MD, PhD, Professor and Chair, Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Washington, and Professor, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, commented: “My interpretation in the follow-up period is that low-dose radiation therapy is...
Whole-lung low-dose radiation therapy led to quicker recovery from COVID-19–related pneumonia in hospitalized and oxygen-dependent patients compared with matched controls treated with best supportive care and physician’s choice of anti–COVID-19 therapy, according to the results of a small trial.1...
Formal discussant Thomas J. Dilling, MD, MS, of Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, Florida, congratulated the authors on this study. He noted that early findings from both treatment arms showed similar rates of grade 3 and higher toxicity. “However, in the [four-fraction] arm, a fatal event occurred in...