Giving patients larger fractions of radiation over shorter periods (ie, hypofractionation) is gaining ground in several types of cancers. This approach is attractive for patients’ convenience, shortening treatment and travel times, and also for resource utilization. Several studies have shown that ...
The investigational immunotherapeutic IMC-20D7S was found to be well tolerated and somewhat active in patients with advanced melanoma, including one complete response, according to the results of a phase I/Ib trial reported by Khalil et al in Clinical Cancer Research. IMD-20D7S is a...
Dear Presidential Candidates: Wouldn’t it be great if history’s Alexander the Great was actually Dr. Alexander Fleming, the doctor-scientist who saved millions of lives by discovering penicillin, rather than the other Alexander, who conquered and killed thousands of innocent people? Wouldn’t it be...
A radiation boost to the local tumor bed following treatment with breast-conserving therapy (ie, local excision followed by whole-breast radiation therapy) improves local control for patients with ductal carcinoma in situ, according to a study of pooled data from 10 academic centers,1 presented at...
“These results apply to about two-thirds of women with advanced breast cancer, ie, those with hormone receptor–positive metastatic breast cancer,” noted the formal discussant of this paper, Stephen R.D. Johnston, MD, of the Royal Marsden Hospital, London. “At present with first-line endocrine...
The combination of the selective CDK4/6 inhibitor ribociclib plus letrozole significantly improved progression-free survival in hormone receptor–positive advanced breast cancer. When ribociclib was added to letrozole, progression-free survival improved by 44% compared with letrozole alone,...
The addition of the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) antibody pembrolizumab (Keytruda) to standard first-line chemotherapy for treatment-naive advanced non–small cell lung cancer significantly improves response rates and progression-free survival, Langer et al reported at the 2016...
Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) significantly improved progression-free and overall survival vs platinum-based chemotherapy in patients with previously untreated advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with ≥ 50% PD-L1 (programmed cell death ligand 1) expression and no sensitizing EGFR...
Lurbinectedin showed promising clinical benefit in pretreated patients with metastatic breast cancer and BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations, including patients previously treated with platinum, according to phase II trial results presented by Balmaña et al at the 2016 European Society for Medical...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Loehrer et al found that the 2006 Massachusetts health-care reform has resulted in increased rates of resection and reduced emergent resection for colorectal cancer. The study used the Hospital Cost and Utilization Project State Inpatient...
Nintedanib (Ofev) improves progression-free survival but not overall survival in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer who are not responding to standard therapies, according to the results of the phase III LUME-colon 1 trial presented by Van Cutsem et al at the 2016 European Society of...
In a study using Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER)-Medicaid data reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Winn et al found that 68% of Medicare patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) initiated tyrosine kinase inhibitor treatment within 180 days after diagnosis. Factors...
Triple-negative breast cancer in African American women is much more likely to lack the androgen receptor protein compared with triple-negative breast cancer in European American women, and this may contribute to the racial disparity in survival outcomes among these two populations, according to a...
African American cancer survivors are more likely than whites to experience lasting debt or forgo necessary medical care as they struggle with the financial burden of cancer, while whites are somewhat more likely to use existing assets to pay for their cancer care, according to a study (C13)...
Implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in California may have led to a significant increase in the number of Hispanic breast cancer patients at a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated cancer center and an increase in the number of Hispanic women who consented to participate in a...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Luo et al found that a modified staging classification based on the European Neuroendocrine Tumor Society (ENETS) and the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) staging classifications may improve distinction among risk groups in pancreatic...
In a phase II trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Brian I. Rini, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute, and colleagues found that some patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma can safely undergo active surveillance for an extended duration prior to initiation of systemic...
A collaborative modeling study evaluating outcomes for various screening intervals for women over the age of 50 based on breast density and risk for breast cancer has found that average-risk women with low breast density undergoing triennial screening and higher-risk women with high breast density...
To make information about clinical trials widely available to the public, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a final rule on September 19 that specifies requirements for registering certain clinical trials and submitting summary results information to ClinicalTrials.gov....
The release of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Safety Communication “alerting women about the risks associated with the use of tests being marketed as ovarian cancer screening tests”1 and recommending against using these tests comes not as a result of startling new studies, but from an...
In a Safety Communication directed at women and physicians, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) alerted women “about the risks associated with the use of tests being marketed as ovarian cancer screening tests” and recommended “against using currently offered tests to screen for ovarian...
Despite my breast cancer diagnosis 4 years ago, I feel really lucky. My cancer was detected relatively early, stage IIB, during a routine mammogram screening—a test that many of my lesbian friends skip because they don’t want to deal with a medical system steeped in a heterosexual culture that is...
We pass them every day on our way to the hospital, the street dwellers of our town in India. Their home consists of a plastic sheet suspended between four poles on the pavement. One day, two women sat under the plastic sheet in happy conversation. It had rained heavily the previous night, and I...
On August 8, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) rule giving the agency the authority to regulate e-cigarettes, cigars, hookahs, and pipe tobacco took effect. In May, ASCO applauded the FDA for exercising its congressionally mandated authority to regulate e-cigarettes as a crucial step in ...
When it comes to cancer-causing viruses like human papillomavirus (HPV), researchers are continuing to find that infection with one strain may be better than another. In an analysis of survival data for patients with oropharyngeal cancer, researchers from the University of North Carolina (UNC)...
What are the factors that add up to the best outcomes for patients who have surgery to treat cancer? Looking for a better way to measure quality of care and share best practices in surgical oncology, a team from Roswell Park Cancer Institute developed a quality assessment tool and validated it in a ...
With impeccable timing, as well as considerable forethought and planning, Dr. Paice and colleagues have produced a superb evidence-based guideline on “Management of Chronic Pain in Survivors of Adult Cancers.”1 (See this issue of The ASCO Post.) This summary of well-informed and thoroughly...
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.1 The guideline was based on literature review by an expert panel,...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Distinguished Lecture on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities, funded by Susan G. Komen, honors an investigator whose novel and significant work has had or may have a far-reaching impact on the etiology, detection, diagnosis, treatment, or...
The advent of more effective systemic therapies, which extend patients’ lives, has also resulted in an increasing incidence of brain metastases, for which clinicians must determine appropriate treatment. Whole-brain radiotherapy has been the traditional treatment modality, but stereotactic...
Pilot Study Title: Pilot Trial of an Implantable Microdevice for in Vivo Drug Sensitivity Testing in Patients With Early-Stage, HER2-Positive, or Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Receiving Neoadjuvant Therapy Study Type: Pilot/interventional/single-group assignment Study Sponsor and Collaborators:...
Three years ago, IBM’s Watson supercomputer was best known for defeating two former champions on the TV game show Jeopardy! Today, it is grabbing headlines for becoming an important assistant in cancer care. Able to read and understand millions of pages of text within seconds, Watson caught the...
The CD38 antigen was first recognized on normal and abnormal plasma cells over 3 decades ago. Indeed, this antigen was originally classified as T10, as it was the tenth antigen described on T cells. Its distribution of expression included activated B and T cells, natural killer cells, leukocytes,...
Caregivers of patients with cancer provide invaluable health-care services, but they are an underserved and undervalued group, with many unmet needs. Early palliative care may provide important benefits to these often tireless individuals, according to J. Nicholas Dionne-Odom, PhD, RN, ACHPN, of...
A session at the 2016 Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium focused on the special needs of cancer caregivers. In a large survey, caregivers of persons with cancer reported higher levels of stress and significantly more duties than caregivers of other patients. But, according to research from...
Clinicians and researchers in the field of palliative and supportive care are enjoying the recognition the field is now receiving and expecting the future to be ripe with opportunity. But one thought leader in this specialty had a suggestion for attendees at the 2016 Palliative Care in Oncology...
With checkpoint inhibitors in frequent use, clinicians strive daily to balance the efficacy and toxicity of these treatments. At the 2016 Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium, Lynn M. Schuchter, MD, FASCO, the C. Willard Professor of Hematology-Oncology at the University of Pennsylvania,...
The advent of immunotherapies has created a number of interesting challenges for oncology providers. At the 2016 Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium, specialists in the field tackled these issues. “There is a lot of newness to how we approach patient care with immunotherapies on board,” said...
This past summer, Eric S. Lander, PhD, President of the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, raised a few eyebrows at the Aspen Ideas Festival when he...
The third annual Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium, held on September 9–10, 2016, in San Francisco, California, brought together more than 650 attendees from multiple countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and China. It featured over 250 study...
The Community Oncology Alliance (COA) released the 2016 Community Oncology Practice Impact Report today, which tracks the changing landscape of cancer care in the United States. It documents a 121% increase in community cancer clinic closings and a 172% increase in consolidation into hospitals...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Bagrodia et al found that alterations in TP53 and MDM2 were associated with cisplatin resistance and poorer outcome in patients with advanced germ cell tumors. Actionable alterations were found in a high proportion of cases of cisplatin...
Here is a brief look at the study findings and clinical implications of several recent clinical trials on newer treatment options in neoplastic hematology. Attention is focused on several types of leukemia, Hodgkin lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. Leukemia Clinical Trial: INO-VATE ALL phase III...
In August 2016, the Healthcare Delivery Research Program of the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences at the National Cancer Institute convened a group of experts in a variety of fields to identify a research agenda for optimizing employment outcomes among cancer survivors. A core...
Although research advances in more effective therapies and diagnostics and improved screening technology over the past 2 decades have led to a 23% reduction in the cancer death rate in the United States, saving nearly 2 million lives,1 cancer remains the second leading cause of death after heart...
The ProtecT trial showing similar 10-year survival with active monitoring, surgery, or radiotherapy for prostate-specific antigen (PSA)-detected localized prostate cancer but a greater risk of disease progression/metastasis with monitoring was recently reported by Hamdy and colleagues and is...
In a two-institution experience reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Naidoo et al identified the incidence of pneumonitis occurring in patients receiving anti–PD-1/PD-L1 (programmed cell death protein 1/ligand 1) monoclonal antibody as monotherapy or combined with anticytotoxic...
On September 29, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a blood-based companion diagnostic for osimertinib (Tagrisso). The companion diagnostic for osimertinib is the only FDA-approved and clinically validated companion diagnostic test that uses either tissue or a blood sample ...
For men with intermediate-risk prostate cancer, side effects at 2 years following radiation therapy were comparable for extremely hypofractionated treatment, which was delivered in 7 fractions across 2.5 weeks, and conventional treatment of 39 fractions across 8 weeks, according to research...
Enhanced, culturally competent communication with early-stage lung cancer patients can narrow racial gaps in curative treatment completion and increase treatment rates for all races, according to research presented by Manning et al at the 58th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation...