In an updated recommendation statement, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) continues to strongly recommend screening for colorectal cancer for asymptomatic adults aged 50 through 75; but rather than emphasize specific screening strategies, it notes there are multiple screening...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved pembrolizumab (Keytruda), an anti–PD-1 (programmed cell death protein 1) therapy, at a fixed dose of 200 mg every 3 weeks, for the treatment of patients with recurrent or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma with...
BookmarkTitle: The Gene: An Intimate HistoryAuthor: Siddhartha Mukherjee, MDPublisher: ScribnerPublication date: May 2016Price: $32.00; hardcover, 608 pagesOn February 28, 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick entered The Eagle, a favorite watering hole for researchers working at the University of...
The Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation (ALCF) has announced that it has appointed David LeDuc as its new Executive Director. Mr. LeDuc most recently served as the Senior Director of Strategic Alliances for the Addario Lung Cancer Medical Institute (ALCMI), a partner foundation to ALCF, where ...
Photonics—the science of light—may not be associated with cancer in most people’s minds. But photonic technologies are: CT (computed tomography) scans and digital x-rays, for instance, are in everyday use, and next-generation oncology applications are in development. As the White House’s National...
I was raised to be an engineer. I grew up in an industrial community, worked summer jobs in a U.S. Steel chemical plant, and was good at science and math. My career choice was straightforward: I went to an engineering university. My first semester freshman year included a mandatory introduction...
At the 2015 Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium in Boston, Vicki Jackson, MD, MPH, Chief in the Division of Palliative Care and Geriatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital, Co-Director of the Harvard Center for Palliative Care, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School,...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Epclusa (sofosbuvir at 400 mg/velpatasvir at 100 mg) on June 28, 2016, to treat adult patients with chronic hepatitis C virus both with and without cirrhosis. For patients with moderate to severe cirrhosis (decompensated cirrhosis),...
On July 7, 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the Roche cobas HPV Test as the first test for human papillomavirus (HPV) that can be used with cervical cells obtained for a Papanicolau (Pap) test and collected in SurePath Preservative Fluid. The FDA approves HPV tests to be...
A large study headed by researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC), Vanderbilt University, and Boston University received $12 million in funding to examine why African American women die at a higher rate from breast cancer and have more aggressive...
American cancer centers promoting their services dramatically increased their advertising spending from 2005 to 2014, with the bulk of the spending by for-profit organizations, according to the results of a study published by Vater et al in JAMA Internal Medicine.1 Small Percentage Responsible for...
Study Title: A Pilot Study of a Protein-Sparing Modified Fast for Weight Loss in Obese Endometrial Cancer Survivors Study Type: Pilot/interventional/single-group assignment Study Sponsor and Collaborators: Case Comprehensive Cancer Center, National Cancer Institute Purpose: To study whether the...
The facts are well known: Although clinical trials are regarded as the gold standard to investigate whether a new treatment is safe and effective in patients—and have resulted in advances in cancer cures and increases in cancer survivorship—only 3% to 5% of patients enroll in these studies.1 The...
Quyen D. Chu, MD, MBA, FACS, this year’s recipient of ASCO’s Humanitarian Award, lives by the axiom that “One person can make a positive difference in the lives of others.” Although the term has become cliché, the experiences in Dr. Chu’s life and oncology career prove just how profound and...
In a retrospective study analyzing patients' medical records, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) found that race significantly affected longevity by increasing the likelihood of death after receiving androgen-deprivation therapy. These findings were published by Kovtun et al in...
Renal cell carcinomas (RCC) positive for the protein programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) from patients who did not respond to treatment with the anti–PD-1 therapeutic nivolumab (Opdivo) had significantly higher expression of genes associated with metabolism, compared with PD-L1–positive...
Next-generation sequencing of recurrent or metastatic head and neck tumors at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) has provided insight into the molecular characteristics of these tumors, which may aid in the implementation of precision treatment. Morris et al reported these findings in...
In a National Cancer Data Base analysis reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Seisen et al found that high-intensity local treatment was associated with an overall survival benefit in patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma of the bladder. Study Details The study included data from...
There was a time when transplantation across human leukocyte antigen (HLA) barriers was fraught with so much difficulty that many thought it was impossible and we should stop trying. However, most patients do not have an HLA-matched sibling donor, and death was therefore certain if they had a...
The global economic crisis beginning in 2008 was associated with substantial public health effects, especially with respect to mental health.1–3 Nevertheless, there is also evidence of a paradoxical association between recessions and reduced all-cause mortality, in part because of reductions in...
The global economic crisis has been associated with increased unemployment and reduced public-sector expenditure on health care. In a study reported in The Lancet, Mahiben Maruthappu, MA, of Imperial College London, and colleagues found that the global economic crisis beginning in 2008 was...
“Are you a member of ASCO?” I distinctly remember being asked that question in 1984, during my second year as a fellow at what was then the Sidney Farber (now Dana-Farber) Cancer Institute. My first reaction: “What’s an ASCO?” Turned out it was a) the Society that many of my mentors had or would...
Management of chemotherapy-induced vomiting has improved with the use of antiemetics, but chemotherapy-induced nausea remains a major clinical problem, according to Alex Molassiotis, RN, PhD, Professor and Head of the School of Nursing at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. And, he added, the...
Chemotherapy- and radiotherapy-induced gastrointestinal (GI) toxicities have risen alongside improved survival rates for many cancers, according to Jervoise Andreyev, MA, PhD, Consultant Gastroenterologist in GI Consequences of Cancer Treatment at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London. “For every...
Postoperative treatment intensification with chemoradiotherapy does not achieve better outcomes when compared with postoperative chemotherapy in patients with gastric cancer who have already undergone preoperative chemotherapy, according to phase III data presented by Marcel Verheij, MD, PhD, et...
Anti–PD-L1 (programmed death ligand 1) immunotherapy may achieve a response in patients with microsatellite-stable metastatic colorectal cancer if combined with a MEK inhibitor, according to phase I data presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 18th World Congress on...
More imaging after thyroid cancer treatment identifies recurrence, but it does not always improve survival, a new study published by Banerjee et al in The BMJ suggests. Researchers from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center looked at 28,220 patients diagnosed with...
African American women undergoing mastectomy for breast cancer are more likely than white women to undergo autologous breast reconstruction using their own tissue, rather than implant-based reconstruction, reported Sharma et al in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. “African American race...
A cutting-edge method of extracting big data from positron-emission tomography (PET) images can provide additional information to quantify lung tumors caused by a genetic mutation. This information could help guide the most effective treatment, suggest findings of a study of nearly 350 patients...
Women who engaged on social media after a breast cancer diagnosis expressed more deliberation about their treatment decision and more satisfaction with the path they chose, a new study from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center finds. Findings were published by Wallner et al in...
Harmonized recommendations for surveillance of premature ovarian insufficiency in female survivors of childhood, adolescent, and young adult (CAYA) cancers have been published by van Dorp et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology on behalf of the International Late Effects of Childhood Cancer...
Research conducted at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, is moving the field of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy forward in the treatment of B-cell malignancies. At the 2016 Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference in Koloa, Hawaii, David G. Maloney, MD, PhD, Professor of...
There has been an ongoing debate about which type of radiation therapy is preferable in the treatment of localized prostate cancer: hypofractionation (larger fractions given over 4–5 weeks) or conventional radiotherapy (given over 8–9 weeks). A new study presented at the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting...
The dismal accrual rates in cancer clinical trials are well known: Just 3% to 5% of adults with cancer enroll in clinical trials.1 The reasons patients are reluctant to participate in clinical trials are equally well known: fear of reduced quality of life, concern about receiving a placebo, and...
At the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting, studies presented at the Plenary Session gave attendees new treatment strategies to employ back home. But in the emerging push to contain the cost of new cancer treatments, do the four interventions fit within the new “value framework” for oncology? Deborah Schrag, ...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Judith A. Paice, PhD, RN, of Northwestern University, and colleagues, ASCO has released a clinical practice guideline on management of chronic pain in survivors of adult cancers. The guideline was based on literature review by an expert panel, with ...
Women were less likely to have breast reconstruction surgery after mastectomy if they had Medicaid or Medicare rather than private insurance or if they lived 10 or more miles from a plastic surgeon’s office, a University of North Carolina (UNC) Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center study has ...
Not only is breast cancer more than one disease, but a single breast cancer tumor can vary within itself, a finding that University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) researchers discovered has the potential to lead to very different patient treatment plans depending on the tumor sample and...
In a letter to the editor in The New England Journal of Medicine, de Maleissye et al described two cases of severe demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy that occurred after pembrolizumab (Keytruda) treatment for advanced melanoma. Case 1 A 45-year-old woman receiving pembrolizumab at 2 mg/kg every ...
Researchers at University Hospitals Case Medical Center have discovered that a rare genetic mutation is associated with susceptibility to familial Barrett's esophagus and esophageal cancer. The findings were published by Fecteau et al in JAMA Oncology. Amitabh Chak, MD, of University Hospitals...
Although active surveillance for patients with low-risk prostate cancer has become an increasingly acceptable strategy for disease management, many men opt for definitive therapies such as radical prostatectomy or radiation therapy. A new study of more than 2,200 patients with low-risk prostate...
Pathologic complete response rate was not improved by increasing the interval between neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy and surgery from 7 to 11 weeks in patients with rectal cancer, according to the French phase III GRECCAR-6 trial reported by Lefevre et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. In...
The immunotherapy ipilimumab (Yervoy) has revolutionized the treatment of malignant melanoma and resulted in durable responses in 20% to 25% of patients with the cancer. A study by Theurich et al investigating the benefits of combining ipilimumab with local peripheral treatments, such as...
A University of Colorado Cancer Center study compared outcomes of leukemia patients receiving bone marrow transplants from 2009 to 2014, finding that 3 years post transplant, the incidence of severe chronic graft-vs-host disease was significantly higher in patients who had received transplants from ...
A new study indicates that delirium is relatively frequent and underdiagnosed by physicians in patients with advanced cancer visiting the emergency department. Delirium was similarly common among older and younger patients, which suggests that in the setting of advanced cancer, all patients should...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Chagtai et al of the International Society of Paediatric Oncology (SIOP) Renal Tumours Study Group found that chromosome 1q gain was associated with poorer event-free survival in patients with Wilms tumor treated with preoperative...
The Children’s Oncology Group found that chromosome 1q gain is associated with poorer event-free and overall survival in patients with favorable-histology Wilms tumor. Gratias et al reported these findings in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Study Details The study involved analysis of...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation to the immunotherapy daratumumab (Darzalex) in combination with lenalidomide (Revlimid) and dexamethasone, or bortezomib (Velcade) and dexamethasone, for the treatment of patients with multiple myeloma who have ...
Most adolescent survivors of childhood cancer have no reported psychological symptoms, but an analysis led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital found that those who do often have multiple symptoms and distinct symptom profiles. The findings, published by Krull et al in the Journal of Clinical...
Just 6 months after President Barack Obama announced the establishment of a National Cancer Moonshot Initiative to accelerate the pace of research discoveries, improve patient access and care, and encourage data-sharing, dozens of new initiatives to accomplish those and other goals were rolled out...