Care for people who have survived or are living with cancer should acknowledge the heterogeneity of their needs and experiences and should reflect the same level of personalization that is now guiding active cancer therapy. At a time when more people are surviving cancer than ever before, new...
On the Cancer.Net blog (www.cancer.net/blog), your patients can learn about the research highlighted at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting, including what it means for their care and treatment. They can also follow the blog for additional updates from the Meeting, including podcasts with ASCO experts...
The Quality Payment Program (QPP), established by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), launched this January and is being implemented in oncology practices across the country. In 2017, practices must report some quality data in order to avoid financial penalties in 2019. ASCO...
By including a planned gift to the Conquer Cancer Foundation in your estate plans, you can help make a dramatic difference for cancer patients years—even decades—into the future. With just one small change to your will or trust, your planned gift of any size will deliver a big impact, and: Your...
CancerLinQ LLC, a wholly owned nonprofit subsidiary of ASCO, has -announced that Wendy S. Rubinstein, MD, PhD, FACMG, FACP, will be its first Division Director, Clinical Data Management and Curation. Dr. Rubinstein will oversee the team working to securely process and analyze the -CancerLinQ®...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On May 10, 2017, pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was granted accelerated...
Here are several abstracts selected from the proceedings of the 2016 America Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, highlighting newer therapeutics for the development for patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma. For full details of these study abstracts, visit...
In a study from the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, the risk of lymphedema in a population-based breast cancer cohort was related to multimodality therapy and not axillary surgery alone, investigators reported at the American Society of Breast Surgeons (ASBrS) Annual Meeting.1 “Most patients...
Head and neck cancer can take away a patient’s “right to feel human,” and its impact on physical appearance, physical functioning, and general quality of life can be devastating, according to Merry Sebelik, MD, Associate Professor of Head and Neck Surgery at Emory University in Atlanta. At a...
Immunotherapy is a new treatment paradigm in recurrent metastatic head and neck cancer, according to Nabil F. Saba, MD. At a symposium hosted by the Winship Cancer Institute and Emory University—Updates in the Management of Head and Neck Cancer—Dr. Saba discussed current research and new...
A new survey finds that doctors would refer more patients with incurable blood cancers to hospice for end-of-life care if they could receive transfusions, which are generally not available because of hospice reimbursement policies. The findings, published by Oreofe Odejide, MD, MPH, and colleagues ...
Phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) inhibitors represent a highly active class of drug for the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Idelalisib (Zydelig), a PI3K-delta inhibitor and the first PI3K inhibitor to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for CLL, has...
Manish Shah, MD, Director of Gastrointestinal Oncology at NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine, was impressed with the findings of the two subanalyses of CALGB 89803. “The study found a 46% reduction in the risk of recurrence with two servings of tree nuts a week, and that’s more than ...
Tree nut consumption, as well as a generally healthy lifestyle, significantly reduced the risk of cancer recurrence and death in patients with stage III colon cancer treated in the Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB) 89803 trial, researchers reported at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting. Two subanalyses ...
At the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting, results were presented from the phase II I-SPY 2 trial investigating pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in combination with standard therapy (paclitaxel followed by doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide) as a neoadjuvant treatment for patients with locally advanced triple-negative ...
In the past 10 years, we have made remarkable advances in how we fight cancer. One of the most powerful new tools in our arsenal is cancer immunotherapy, which reawakens our own immune system to produce stunning results for many suffering from advanced cancer. Immunotherapy saved President Jimmy...
On June 8,the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requested that Endo Pharmaceuticals remove its opioid pain medication, reformulated oxymorphone hydrochloride (Opana ER), from the market. After careful consideration, the agency is seeking removal based on its concern that the benefits of the...
Combining the kinase inhibitor ibrutinib (Imbruvica) with an investigational personalized cellular therapy known as CTL119 can lead to complete remission in patients with high-risk chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University...
As new treatment decision-making tools make their way toward and into the clinic, oncologists are getting a sense of how they may affect clinical practice—and beginning to look farther down the road. “What do you see ahead for clinicians?” asked Christian Downs, JD, Executive Director of the...
As reported at the recent ASCO Annual Meeting and in The New England Journal of Medicine by Peters et al, the phase III ALEX trial has shown improvement in progression-free survival with alectinib (Alecensa) vs crizotinib (Xalkori) in the first-line treatment of advanced ALK-positive...
On June 2, the European Commission (EC) approved nivolumab (Opdivo) for the treatment of locally advanced unresectable or metastatic urothelial carcinoma in adults after failure of prior platinum-containing therapy. This makes nivolumab the first immuno-oncology agent approved in the European Union ...
Adjuvant therapy with gefitinib (Iressa), an epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-targeted agent, was more successful at preventing recurrence than standard-of-care chemotherapy, in a phase III study of patients with EGFR-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).1 Gefitinib extended...
By adding an experimental drug to a standard chemotherapy regimen, a subset of patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer had a significantly longer period before the cancer progressed as compared with those who received the standard treatment, according to a phase II clinical trial led by an...
ASCO’s Targeted Agent and Profiling Utilization Registry (TAPUR) Study continues to expand and now has more than 300 participants enrolled on study drug, more than 100 sites, new partnerships, and a revised protocol to lower the age of eligibility. “We are very pleased with the...
Malignant pleural mesothelioma is a rare cancer, but its incidence has been rising. This cancer is usually associated with asbestos exposure, and patients have a median life expectancy of only 13 to 15 months. All patients relapse despite initial chemotherapy, more than 50% of them within 6 months...
In an early clinical trial, 33 out of 35 (94%) patients had clinical remission of multiple myeloma upon receiving immunotherapy with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells targeting B-cell maturation protein, or BCMA. Most patients had only mild side effects. The study was presented by Fan et al...
A phase III clinical trial of 4,805 women with HER2-positive breast cancer suggests the addition of a second HER2-targeted medicine, pertuzumab (Perjeta), to standard-of-care trastuzumab (Herceptin) after surgery may improve outcomes, although the benefit is modest. The study was presented by von...
As reported in the Plenary Session at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting and in The New England Journal of Medicine by Fizazi et al, the phase III LATITUDE trial has shown that the addition of abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) and prednisone to androgen-deprivation therapy resulted in marked improvements in...
Xuesong Han, PhD, of the American Cancer Society, discusses the Affordable Care Act and her study findings showing how implementation of the law is associated with a shift to early-stage diagnosis for all screenable cancers except prostate cancer (likely due to Task Force recommendations against...
After surgery for lymph node–positive colon cancer (stage III), some patients may need only half of the long-standing standard course of chemotherapy. In an analysis of 6 clinical trials with over 12,800 patients, 3 months of chemotherapy was nearly as effective as 6 months in patients with...
A randomized clinical trial of 766 patients shows that a simple intervention—a Web-based tool that enables patients to report their symptoms in real time, triggering alerts to clinicians—can have major benefits, including longer survival. Patients with metastatic cancer who used the...
Findings from a phase III clinical trial of about 300 women may introduce poly ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitors as a new type of treatment for breast cancer. Compared to standard chemotherapy, the oral targeted medicine olaparib (Lynparza) reduced the chance of progression of advanced,...
Scientists may have developed the first targeted, oral, tumor-type agnostic therapy—an agent that works comparably well across many kinds of cancer, regardless of patient age. In clinical trials of adults and children with 17 different types of advanced cancer, larotrectinib treatment...
In a study of 124 patients with advanced breast, lung, and prostate cancers, a new high-intensity genomic sequencing approach detected circulating tumor DNA at a high rate. In 89% of patients, at least one genetic change detected in the tumor was also detected in the blood. Overall, 627 (73%)...
Findings from a retrospective study of 1,200 women provide reassurance to breast cancer survivors who are contemplating pregnancy. In the study, women who became pregnant after an early breast cancer diagnosis, including those with estrogen receptor–positive tumors, did not have a higher...
Adding abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) plus prednisone to standard hormonal therapy for men newly diagnosed with high-risk, metastatic prostate cancer lowers the chance of death by 38%. In a phase III clinical trial of 1,200 men, abiraterone also more than doubled the median time until the cancer...
The STAMPEDE clinical trial of nearly 2,000 men shows that adding abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) to a standard initial treatment regimen for high-risk, advanced prostate cancer lowers the relative risk of death by 37%. The 3-year survival rate was 76% with standard therapy alone vs 83% with standard...
Most patients experience significant distress after they are diagnosed with cancer. This distress not only erodes quality of life, but can also negatively affect the course of the disease and the patient’s ability to tolerate treatment. Yet few patients with cancer receive psychological...
Spinal cord compression is a common complication in people with metastatic cancer and is a major detriment to quality of life. Radiation treatment is widely used to relieve pain and other symptoms, but there is no standard recommended schedule, and approaches currently vary. Findings from a phase...
In a large study, 38% of 491 testicular cancer survivors had low testosterone levels. Compared with survivors with normal testosterone levels, survivors with low testosterone levels were more likely to have a range of chronic health problems, including high blood pressure, diabetes, erectile...
About 50% of all cancer survivors and 70% of young breast cancer survivors report a moderate to high fear of recurrence. The fear can be so distressing that it negatively affects medical follow-up behavior, mood, relationships, work, goal setting, and quality of life. Yet interventions to alleviate ...
As reported by Pemmaraju et al in the Journal of Oncology Practice, use of Twitter at the ASCO Annual Meeting has increased dramatically between 2011 and 2016. The investigators conducted a retrospective review of publicly available tweets collected by Nephrology On-Demand Analytics for the ASCO...
Sunday, June 4, 2017, marks the 30th anniversary of National Cancer Survivors Day. Here’s a look at the progress that has been made over the past 2 to 3 decades in reducing cancer incidence and cancer deaths and the challenges that remain. Increasing Rates of Cancer Survivorship In 1971, the...
A lung cancer diagnosis appears to put patients at the greatest risk of suicide when compared to the most common types of non-skin cancers, according to new research presented at the 2017 American Thoracic Society International Conference (Abstract 8321). Researchers analyzed 3,640,229 patients in ...
A pooled analysis of three PETHEMA/GEM studies has shown that minimum residual disease (MRD)-negative status after induction therapy is more prognostic of favorable outcome than complete response alone in newly diagnosed multiple myeloma. The findings were reported by Lahuerta et al in the Journal...
In a clinical feasibility trial conducted at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, image-guided biopsies identified select breast cancer patients who achieved pathologic complete response after neoadjuvant systemic therapy consisting of chemotherapy and/or targeted therapy. Should the...
In a study of three radiation therapies for early-stage breast cancer, one treatment option stands out as offering the most value based on factors including health outcomes, cost-effectiveness, and quality of life. The treatment—hypofractionated whole-breast irradiation—also requires...
Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) showed activity in previously treated patients with advanced programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1)–positive endometrial cancer in a cohort of the phase Ib KEYNOTE-028 study. These findings were reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Ott et al. Study Details ...
On May 26, 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted regular approval to ceritinib (Zykadia) for patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors are anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive as detected by an FDA-approved test. In April 2014,...
After he was not accepted into the University of Hong Kong, plan B for W.K. Alfred Yung, MD, was to leave his country and immigrate to the United States to attend the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis—a move he considers more exile than choice. Born on April 8, 1948, in Hong Kong, Dr. Yung...