Based on the final results of ECOG-ACRIN E2211, invited discussant Marianne E. Pavel, MD, of Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany, concluded: “Capecitabine/temozolomide is a preferred regimen…, but temozolomide can still be an option in patients who do not tolerate...
“If we have data, let’s look at it. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.” —James Barksdale In this issue of The ASCO Post, Daniel Vorobiof, MD, and Irad Deutsch, principles at Belong.Life, a patient-oriented website whose self-described mission is to improve patient quality of life and ...
A prominent oncologist with an international reputation for cancer research will lead the new Wesley Center for Immunotherapy at University Hospitals (UH) Seidman Cancer Center as well as the Division of Hematology. Koen van Besien, MD, PhD, comes to UH Seidman Cancer Center from New...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently announced the launch of the “Next Legends” Youth E-cigarette Prevention Campaign as part of the agency’s ongoing efforts to protect youth from the dangers of tobacco use. The campaign will educate American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) youth, ages ...
OneOncology, headquartered in Nashville, recently appointed Thomas Stricker, MD, as Medical Director for Precision Medicine. Dr. Stricker will work with partner practices to create workflows that reduce physicians’ burden of genomic test ordering and interpretation, allowing more time for...
In patients with RAS/BRAF wild-type metastatic colorectal cancer, FOLFIRI (fluorouracil, leucovorin, irinotecan) plus panitumumab can be given intermittently rather than continuously, without compromising outcomes, according to the results of the IMPROVE study presented at the 2022 ASCO Annual...
Lori Wilson, MD, FACS, Chief of Surgical Oncology, Associate Dean of Faculty Development and Diversity, and former Program Director of the General Surgical Residency at Howard University Hospital, is the first woman to hold the position of Division Chief as well as the first tenured Professor of...
The all-oral combination of dabrafenib plus trametinib—two targeted therapies—significantly improved the overall response rate vs standard-of-care chemotherapy with carboplatin plus vincristine in pediatric patients with BRAF V600 mutation–positive low-grade gliomas. The clinical benefit rate...
Data from the world’s largest prostate cancer screening study provides further evidence to support the introduction of a targeted screening program for the disease, said researchers. In 2009, the European Randomised Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC) showed that screening can reduce...
Opioids are a cornerstone of cancer pain management, but there is a lack of consensus on how to treat pain patients with cancer who also have struggled with opioid use disorder or prescription opioid misuse. In a study published by Fitzgerald Jones et al in JAMA Oncology, researchers outlined...
Black and Asian women are more likely than White women to experience significant delays in getting breast biopsies after a mammogram identifies an abnormality. Moreover, those delays appear to be influenced by screening site–specific factors that may stem from structural racism, according to...
Invited discussant of the DETERMINATION trial, Joseph Mikhael, MD, MEd, Professor of Applied Cancer Research and Drug Discovery at the Translational Genomics Research Institute, City of Hope Cancer Center, described the many implications of the important findings for DETERMINATION and offered some ...
Our growing knowledge of the molecular and genomic drivers of cancer has translated into a robust pipeline of promising anticancer agents. However, bringing new drugs from the lab to the patient with cancer can be frustratingly slow. To that end, the accelerated approval system was created by the...
Women who are longer-term survivors of metastatic breast cancer may have a worse survival rate if they have diabetes and poorly controlled blood sugar levels, according to a new study presented at ENDO 2022, the Endocrine Society’s Annual Meeting. This is the first study to specifically examine the ...
Hearing the words “You have cancer” is a devastating blow, especially when the biggest health issues you’ve had to contend with over more than 6 decades are common colds and knee and hip replacements. But in 2017, the symptoms I thought were from a lingering summer cold drove me to seek medical...
In this installment of Living a Full Life, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Ariela L. Marshall, MD, Director, Women’s Hemostasis and Thrombosis Program at Penn Medicine. Along with her clinical and research activities, Dr. Marshall is also an advocate for women’s health and equity in ...
In Ukraine, with a population of about 44 million, there are more than 1.3 million patients with cancer. Approximately 160,000 new cases of cancer are diagnosed each year.1 In almost every region, there are local cancer centers; specialized oncologic centers are located in large cities. In Kyiv,...
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...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Global Oncology series, Guest Editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with surgical oncologist Héctor Martínez-Said, MD, of the Melanoma Clinic at NCI Mexico. Dr. Martínez-Said’s maternal grandfather was part of a Lebanese immigration movement...
According to a study published by DuMontier et al in the journal Blood Advances, frailty assessments—geriatric exams considered essential to predicting health outcomes in older adults with cancer—are both safe and feasible when conducted virtually for patients with blood cancers. While providers...
Most men with low-risk prostate tumors now opt for active surveillance, but overtreatment remains a problem, according to data presented during the 2022 American Urological Association (AUA) Annual Meeting.1 A retrospective analysis of more than 20,000 patients with low-risk prostate cancer showed...
Telemedicine stepped up to the plate when the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe. Oncology providers—and practitioners in all specialties—had to rapidly adapt to a telemedicine format when face-to-face visits were severely limited. This scenario had its benefits for both patients and providers (and...
In an analysis reported in a research letter in JAMA Oncology, Nguyen et al identified postmarketing cases of ocular toxicity in patients receiving daratumumab in the United States. Daratumumab is a CD38-directed monoclonal antibody that was initially approved in 2015 for the treatment of multiple...
This is Part 2 of Updates in Lymphoma, a four-part video roundtable series. Scroll down to watch the other videos from this Roundtable. In this video, Drs. Alison J. Moskowitz, Andrew M. Evens, and Ann S. LaCasce discuss the management of bulky early-stage Hodgkin lymphoma. The patient is a...
Optimizing oncology care in the United States will require making state-of-the-art care more accessible to all. Delivering quality, equitable cancer care is undoubtedly a challenge in a country as large, diverse, and disparate as the United States, but if it is to be achieved, it will entail the...
Androgen receptor (AR) signaling may affect response to BRAF/MEK inhibitor therapy in both male and female patients with melanoma, according to findings from a study published by Vellano et al in Nature. The report provides a new target to combat therapeutic resistance and one possible answer to...
ASCO’s CancerLinQ® and Atropos Health announced a new collaboration that will provide oncology clinicians with the latest real-world evidence available to help inform personalized care and treatment of an individual patient. Atropos Health and CancerLinQ will work together to provide a “digital...
The Ralph Lauren Corporate Foundation recently announced it will provide $25 million in new grant funding to expand or establish five Ralph Lauren cancer centers, aimed at reducing disparities in cancer care and access across underserved communities in the United States. The funding will benefit...
The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research, which actively partners with scientists, research institutions, and philanthropic organizations around the world to accelerate research in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer, recently announced that Ryan Schoenfeld, PhD, has been appointed...
After a nationwide search, Jennifer Willcox, JD, has been named Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Chief Governance Officer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. In this role, Ms. Willcox has overall responsibility for the legal and board governance function of Dana-Farber. She will serve on...
Xiao-Jing Wang, MD, PhD, assumed the role of Chief Science Officer and Associate Director for Basic Science for the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center in Davis, California. She is also Associate Director for Basic Science. Dr. Wang comes to UC Davis from the University of Colorado Anschutz...
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center recently announced that Tong Joo (TJ) Gan, MD, FRCA (UK), has been named Division Head of Anesthesiology, Critical Care and Pain Medicine. Dr. Gan will join MD Anderson’s faculty on September 1. Dr. Gan will lead a division composed of 117 faculty...
The COVID-19 pandemic and the confluence of events that followed—including the rapid development of vaccines, the mixed messaging on mitigation efforts to prevent coronavirus infection, and the growing political polarization—helped spark public mistrust and skepticism toward science. This mistrust...
Since the introduction of trastuzumab in the late 1990s, overall survival for patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer has substantially improved. Median overall survival in the pivotal first-line trial was only 20.3 months in the chemotherapy arm, and 25.1 months in the...
A novel combination of two experimental cancer immunotherapy agents along with an immune checkpoint blocker elicited robust immune responses in patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma brain tumors, according to a presentation of interim, 2-year follow-up clinical trial data given by David...
In a phase II clinical trial, immune checkpoint blockade before surgery was associated with favorable responses and outcomes in undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma (UPS) and recurrent dedifferentiated liposarcoma (DDLPS), Keung et al reported at the 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting (Abstract LBA11501)....
In a collaboration announced today, 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 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and WHO Global Action Plan on...
In patients with stage II colon cancer where cancer DNA was not present in the blood (as circulating tumor DNA, or ctDNA), adjuvant chemotherapy could be skipped without compromising recurrence-free survival. Conversely, for patients where ctDNA was present after surgery, the rate of recurrence...
Treatment with the antibody-drug conjugate sacituzumab govitecan-hziy resulted in longer progression-free survival compared to physician’s choice of chemotherapy in patients who have received many prior therapies for hormone receptor–positive/HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer, according to...
Global health crusader Paul Farmer, MD, PhD, had a wildly unconventional childhood, which helped inform his adult life as a medical humanitarian. Dr. Farmer was born in West Adams, a town that lies along the verdant valley surrounding the Hoosic River in northern Massachusetts. He was the second of ...
On April 12, 2022, ASCO announced the establishment of the ASCO Center for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, which will advance the Society’s equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) goals across the organization and throughout the wider oncology community. ASCO Chief Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion ...
Individuals elected to ASCO leadership for the 2022–2023 term were announced earlier in the year. ASCO elected Lynn M. Schuchter, MD, FASCO, a long-time member and volunteer, to serve as its President beginning in June 2023. Dr. Schuchter will take office as President-Elect immediately after the...
On a cool, gray November morning, I took the call from a walk-in doctor about Carla, a 26-year-old woman with progressive lymphadenopathy who was refusing investigations because of severe needle phobia. Carla was willing to meet with me to discuss treatment options for a suspected diagnosis of...
Michael Silbermann, DMD, PhD, was born on January 19, 1935, in the old quarter of Acre, a northern Arab city stretching along the north end of the Bay of Haifa in present-day Israel. “Acre, which was developed more than 4,000 years ago, was one of the primary harbors of the Phoenician people....
In support of President Biden’s Cancer Moonshot goal of fostering data sharing in cancer research, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), which is part of the National Institutes of Health, has launched the Molecular Characterization Initiative for pediatric tumors. This program offers tumor...
Debra Patt, MD, PhD, MBA, Executive Vice President of Policy and Strategic Initiatives for Texas Oncology, was reared in Plano, Texas, a city in the sprawling Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. “My father was an electrical engineer with a PhD, and all throughout my childhood, I was exposed to the wonders ...
Individuals elected to ASCO leadership for the 2022–2023 term were announced earlier in the year. Lynn M. Schuchter, MD, FASCO, was elected to serve as the Society’s President beginning in June 2023. Dr. Schuchter will take office as President-Elect immediately after the 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting in ...
Community practices have long been a keystone of our nation’s oncology care delivery system by allowing patients with cancer to receive specialized treatment near their homes and places of business. Innovative clinicians in the community setting are also leading efforts to create a more efficient...
ASCO Past President, Michael Link, MD, who has pioneered new strategies for treating common childhood cancers, was born and reared in a suburb of Cleveland. “My first significant exposure to medicine was my own family doctor, Dr. J.W. Epstein. Looking back, I was impressed by the combination of...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Living a Full Life series, guest editor, Jame Abraham, MD, spoke with Sunil Verma, MD, the Global Head of Oncology, Medical, at AstraZeneca. Sunil Verma, MD, was born in Zambia, a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central, Southern, and East Africa. “My...