The international, randomized phase III MONALEESA-7 trial found that the addition of ribociclib to standard-of-care endocrine therapy significantly improved overall survival for premenopausal women with advanced hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer compared with endocrine...
Five-year data from the phase Ib KEYNOTE-001 trial showed that treatment with pembrolizumab was safe and effective and substantially increased overall survival in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Specifically, 23.2% of people who had not previously been treated with...
Results from the phase III TITAN trial, presented by Chi et al at the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting (Abstract 5006), showed that the addition of apalutamide to androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) improved radiographic progression-free and overall survival in patients with metastatic castration-sensitive...
In a study presented by Wasp et al at the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting (Abstract 6507) studying variation in end-of-life care across cancer centers in the United States, researchers found quality of care was lower at centers that served a greater concentration of minorities. However, end-of-life care...
The phase III KEYNOTE-048 trial is examining the efficacy of pembrolizumab alone, pembrolizumab/cisplatin or carboplatin/fluorouracil (5-FU), or cetuximab/cisplatin or carboplatin/5-FU as first-line therapy for recurrent or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. At the second interim...
On May 29, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the addition of overall survival data in the labeling for gilteritinib (Xospata), which is indicated for adult patients who have relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with an FLT3 mutation as detected by an FDA-approved...
Head and neck cancer specialist Cristina P. Rodriguez, MD, was born and reared in Manila, the capital and largest city in the Philippines. “I grew up on the campus of the University of the Philippines, as both my parents were professors. I am one of three girls, and there was quite a bit of stress ...
The oncology community was deeply saddened by the untimely passing of Arti Hurria, MD, FASCO, a nationally regarded expert and advocate for elderly patients with cancer. Dr. Hurria died on November 7, 2018, in a traffic accident. At the time of her tragic death, Dr. Hurria was Director of the City...
Internationally renowned breast cancer expert, Larry Norton, MD, FASCO, spent his formative years in a Long Island town that rubbed shoulders with the border of New York City. Making music was Dr. Norton’s first passion and a cheap subway ride landed him in Greenwich Village, the Holy Grail of the ...
Breast cancer specialist Julie Gralow, MD, FASCO, Director, Breast Medical Oncology, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, has a straightforward philosophy about her career: “Cancer is about living, not dying. I enjoy helping my patients with breast cancer take control of their health through leading-edge ...
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently issued final rulings on several issues relevant to prescription drug prices and Medicaid provider payments. Prescription Drug Prices On May 16, 2019, CMS issued a final rule that modernizes and improves the Medicare Advantage and Part ...
Raja M. Flores, MD, grew up in New York’s Meatpacking District, a rough West Side neighborhood, light years before its gentrification into a hip commercial area, home to the Whitney Museum of American Art, high-end designer clothing stores and chic bars, and a stretch of the High Line (an...
ASCO and ASCO’s Conquer Cancer Foundation are proud to recognize the winners of ASCO’s Special Awards and Conquer Cancer’s Women Who Conquer Cancer Mentorship Awards and Tribute Award. The recipients of these awards have worked to transform cancer care around the world. Don’t miss the opportunity...
Internationally recognized breast cancer expert Lisa A. Carey, MD, FASCO, was born in New Jersey and moved to Montreal, where she attended an all-girls school (Miss Edgar’s and Miss Cramp’s School for Girls) until age 8. When she was 9 years old, her father’s business ventures took the family back ...
Former ASCO President Paul Bunn, Jr, MD, FASCO, was born at the New York Hospital, the second oldest hospital in New York City and the third oldest in the nation. He grew up in DeWitt, New York, an eastern suburb of Syracuse, and went through the public-school system graduating from...
Rajendra Achyut Badwe, MBBS, MS, was born and reared in the sprawling city of Mumbai, the most populous city in India. “My grandmother was a matron in an infectious disease hospital. At that time, smallpox was a serious issue, and the patient care challenges were momentous. She taught me the value...
New research published by Bagley et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network used a large real-world data set to demonstrate a modest but consistent survival benefit associated with adding bevacizumab to carboplatin/pemetrexed in advanced nonsquamous non–small...
Cancer drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took a median of 6.5 years to advance from the first clinical trial in adults to the first trial in children, according to a study published by Neel et al in the European Journal of Cancer. “Despite knowing that these...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Sharma et al, follow-up of the cohort receiving nivolumab at 1 mg/kg plus ipilimumab at 3 mg/kg the phase I/II CheckMate 032 trial showed the regimen produced high levels of activity in platinum-treated, unresectable, locally advanced or metastatic ...
Lori J. Pierce, MD, FASCO, FASTRO, grew up in Washington, DC, and moved with her family to Philadelphia while in high school. She still considers the fast-paced DC–Philadelphia corridor her home, but her passion for a career in medicine, in part, took seed in a small town located in North...
Internationally renowned breast cancer specialist Daniel A. Vorobiof, MD, was born in Santa Fe, Argentina, a province in the northeastern region of the country that is prone to catastrophic flooding. Asked about any early influences in his desire to pursue a career in medicine, Dr. Vorobiof...
Nationally regarded cancer immunologist Padmanee Sharma, MD, PhD, was born and reared in Georgetown, Guyana, on South America’s North Atlantic coast, noted for being the only South American country in which English is the official language. Her parents were descendants of indentured immigrants...
In elementary school, Laurie H. Sehn, MD, MPH, dreamed of becoming a teacher. However, as she moved through high school, her passion for science blossomed, as did her desire to have an impact on people’s lives. “I began to seriously consider medicine because it provided the dual opportunity to...
Over the past year (May 2018–May 2019), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted approval and accelerated approval to a number of new oncology drugs and biosimilars. Here we list the new FDA-approved labels and indications. AVELUMAB (BAVENCIO) and AXITINIB (INLYTA) has been approved as a ...
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved lenalidomide (Revlimid) in combination with a rituximab product for previously treated follicular and marginal zone lymphoma. AUGMENT and MAGNIFY Trials Approval was based on two clinical trials: AUGMENT and MAGNIFY. In AUGMENT, 358...
Results from a study published early by Boehmer et al in Cancer point to the need for improved access to medical care for sexual minority cancer survivors—in particular, sexual minority women. In women who are sexual minority cancer survivors, poor access to care is more strongly related to...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Rita S. Mehta, MD, and colleagues, the final overall survival results of the phase III SWOG S0226 trial show that the addition of first-line fulvestrant to anastrozole was associated with improved overall survival in postmenopausal women with...
AVERAGE-RISK women between the ages of 50 and 74 who have no symptoms of breast cancer should undergo breast cancer screening with mammography every other year, the American College of Physicians (ACP) has recommended in a new evidence-based guidance statement published by Qaseem et al in Annals of ...
When strangers ask me how many children I have, I’m not quite sure how to respond. Do I still have four children even though one has died? A year and a half after my son Brent’s death, at the age of 18, from complications of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), I’m still struggling with knowing the...
The story of immunotherapy is one of the most interesting and provocative in medical history. William B. Coley, MD, first harnessed the immune system against cancer in the late 19th century by injecting mixtures of live and inactivated bacteria into patients’ tumors. For various reasons,...
Situated in the nucleus of the human cell is DNA, the secret of life discovered by the Nobel Prize laureates Drs. Watson and Crick. More recently, another scientist, Venki Ramakrishnan, PhD, won a Nobel Prize for his work in uncovering another secret within the human cell: the structure of the...
Although the detection of pancreatic cancer at early stages would offer an improved chance for successful treatment and survival, symptoms of pancreatic cancer are usually vague or absent, and screening to detect pancreatic cancer earlier is not recommended for average-risk asymptomatic patients....
After disclosing that he had been diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer, Alex Trebek, longtime host of the popular television game show Jeopardy!, vowed that he would beat the disease despite the low associated survival rate. His statement has brought pancreatic cancer back into the public...
His steps generated a low rumble that propagated through the floor like a tsunami, flowed up through my desk, and ended as tiny waves visible through the clear plastic of my water bottle. His custom Lucchese ostrich boots made a distinctive clicking sound as they rhythmically struck the tile floor, ...
CITY OF HOPE recently received $7.5 million in grant awards to study the rare blood cancer cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) awarded two grants valued at $6.3 million over 5 years to City of Hope’s Steven Rosen, MD, and Christiane Querfeld, MD, PhD, so they can develop...
Despite the increasing public awareness of the danger of the overuse of prescription opioids, drug overdose deaths continue to rise in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), from 1999 to 2017, nearly 400,000 people died of an overdose involving...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) recently awarded Andrew T. Chan, MD, MPH, with the 2019 AACR–Waun Ki Hong Award for Outstanding Achievement in Translational and Clinical Cancer Research during the 2019 AACR Annual Meeting. Dr. Chan is recognized for his work on the molecular...
In this installment of Living a Full Life, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Otis W. Brawley, MD, MACP, FASCO, a global leader in cancer research and health disparities. Dr. Brawley, who served as Chief Medical and Scientific Officer for the American Cancer Society (ACS) and...
Population screening programs and the advent of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination have made cervical cancer largely a preventable disease. Despite these advances, cervical cancer remains a leading cause of cancer death for women in low- and middle-income countries. A recent study identified...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies sometimes used by patients with cancer. In this installment, Shelly Latte-Naor, MD, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, explore the use of...
Breast cancer remains the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women globally. Due to a lack of early interventions, most women in low- and middle-income countries have advanced disease at the time of diagnosis, conferring a grim prognosis. Yehoda M. Martei, MD, of the Department of Medicine,...
The Global Burden of Disease Study was initiated in 1990, commissioned by the World Bank. At that time, the study was conducted mainly by researchers at Harvard and the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then the study has gone through many iterations to its present structure, which is a...
It has been well documented that noncommunicable diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, now pose the greatest health threat to people living in low- and middle-income countries, surpassing infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS as the leading cause of death and disability.1...
Recently, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed to improve the reimbursement currently given to hospitals that provide chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy to patients with blood cancer as part of the Fiscal Year 2020 Inpatient Prospective Payment System...
A report by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) based on data from more than 100 cancer registries in 68 countries shows that from 2001 to 2010, the occurrence of childhood cancer worldwide was 13% more common than in the 1980s.1 In addition, the report’s findings showcase stark...
The statistics are alarming: according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), about 70,000 adolescents and young adults (AYAs) are diagnosed with cancer each year1—a recent report by the University of California put that figure at 87,000.2 Although overall cancer survival rates continue to improve ...
Immunotherapies are radically changing outcomes, but while helping patients, they are creating complexities surrounding their cost. At the 2019 Annual Conference of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®), a roundtable of experts, including clinicians and payers, discussed how chimeric...
On April 12, 2019, erdafitinib was granted accelerated approval for patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma with susceptible fibroblast growth factor receptor 3 (FGFR3) or FGFR2 genetic alterations, when the disease has progressed during or following platinum-containing...
On May 15, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved venetoclax (Venclexta) in combination with obinutuzumab (Gazyva) for the treatment of adult patients with previously untreated chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL). Approval was based on the CLL14...
On April 14, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for the first-line treatment of patients with stage III non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who are not candidates for surgical resection or definitive chemoradiation, or those with metastatic NSCLC....