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Showing 11301 - 11350New Breast Biopsy System with Vacuum Technology Approved
Devicor Medical Products, Inc, announced that it has received 510(k) clearance from the FDA for the Mammotome elite Biopsy System, a tetherless single-insertion, multiple-sample, vacuum-assisted biopsy device featuring proprietary vacuum technology. Devicor also announced the commercial launch of...
Pediatric ALL with Induction Failure Is Highly Heterogeneous with Varying Outcomes
While failure of remission-induction therapy is rare in children and adolescents with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), when it does occur it is highly adverse and heterogeneous, according to a study in The New England Journal of Medicine. “Patients who have T-cell leukemia appear to have a...
Panobinostat Produces Objective Responses in Patients Refractory to Autologous Transplant
Panobinostat produced objective responses in 27% and tumor reductions in 74% of 129 patients enrolled in “the largest, prospective, multicenter, international trial conducted in heavily pretreated patients” with Hodgkin lymphoma who relapsed or were refractory to autologous stem cell...
Low-dose Radioiodine as Effective as High-dose in Thyroid Ablation
Two studies in The New England Journal of Medicine found that low-dose radioiodine is as effective as a high-dose strategy in treating patients with thyroid cancer and that recombinant human thyrotropin (thyrotropin alfa [Thyrogen]) and thyroid hormone withdrawal had similar efficacy in preparing...
Physicians Need to Be Involved in Reducing Costs
I am so proud of ASCO for participating in the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation’s Choosing Wisely campaign (see The ASCO Post, May 1, page 19; and page 75 of this issue). I am the Associate Medical Director for a 280-physician multispecialty group in the Hudson Valley of New York,...
The Semantics of Palliative Care
The interview with Thomas J. Smith, MD (The ASCO Post, April 15, 2012), the lead author of the ASCO Palliative Care Provisional Clinical Opinion, was timely. However, it left many clinical terms and issues unclear. A significant percentage of modern medicine, including cancer care, is palliative....
Surviving the Aftermath of Cancer
With medical information now just a click away, it’s difficult to imagine a time before the Internet existed, when finding answers to questions about serious diseases was nearly impossible. When I was diagnosed with liposarcoma 33 years ago, there was only one oncologist in my hometown of Tyler,...
Screening for Distress and Unmet Needs in Patients with Cancer
In the past decade, “screening for distress has been positioned as the sixth vital sign in cancer care, in addition to the first five, which are measurements of pulse, respiration, blood pressure, temperature, and pain,” according to a review article in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Although...
Pain Remains Prevalent and Often Inadequately Treated among Cancer Outpatients
“Pain is as prevalent in ambulatory oncology patients with common solid tumors as it was more than 20 years ago, despite the fact that opioid prescribing in the United States has increased more than 10-fold since 1990,” according to results of a study among 3,023 ambulatory patients with cancer...
Acai Berry
The use of dietary supplements by patients with cancer has risen significantly over the past 2 decades despite insufficient evidence of safety and effectiveness. Finding reliable sources of information about dietary supplements can be daunting. Patients typically rely on family, friends, and the...
SIDEBAR: Difference between Efficacy and Effectiveness
One of the reasons large population-based studies are important is based on the “difference between efficacy—does a treatment work in a highly controlled setting of a phase III randomized clinical trial—and effectiveness—does a treatment work in general practice,” according to Benjamin D. Smith,...
SIDEBAR: Expect Questions from Your Patients
“Our study provides critical interim companion data to awaited randomized trials and may help clinicians and patients quantify the risk-benefit ratio of brachytherapy compared with standard therapy,” Benjamin D. Smith, MD, said of a study comparing lumpectomy and either whole-breast irradiation or...
Will Study Showing Increased Complications Compared to Whole-breast Irradiation Put the Brakes on Brachytherapy?
In the News focuses on media reports that your patients may have questions about at their next visit. This continuing column will provide summaries of articles in the popular press that may prompt such questions, as well as comments from colleagues in the field. Older women treated for invasive...
What You Need to Know About Glucarpidase Injection for Toxic Methotrexate Levels in Renal Impairment
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. Indication In January 2012, glucarpidase injection (Voraxaze) was...
Newest Indication for Rituximab as Maintenance Treatment in Non‑Hodgkin Lymphoma
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. Indication The CD20-directed monoclonal antibody rituximab...
ASCO Reexamines the Oncology Workforce Shortage
A study commissioned by ASCO in 2006 predicted a significant shortage of medical and gynecologic oncologists in the United States by 2020. As a result, the organization created the Workforce Implementation Group to develop recommendations to stem the projected workforce shortfall and ensure ongoing ...
New Drug Application Submitted for Regorafenib for the Treatment of Metastatic Colorectal Cancer
Bayer HealthCare announced that it has submitted a New Drug Application (NDA) to the FDA seeking approval for the oral multikinase inhibitor regorafenib for the treatment of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer. The submission is based on the results of the pivotal, global phase III CORRECT...
Denosumab Delays Time to First Bone Metastasis in Men with Castration-resistant Prostate Cancer
Denosumab (Xgeva) significantly delayed time to first bone metastases among men with nonmetastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer enrolled in a phase III randomized, placebo-controlled trial. The time to first bone metastasis was 33.2 months among the 716 patients randomly assigned to receive ...
FDA-led Research Team Discovers Autoimmune Mechanism for Drug-induced Adverse Reactions
A team of researchers led by the FDA has discovered a new mechanism for identifying and understanding drug-related autoimmune reactions. In an article available online in the journal AIDS, the team reported that in certain at-risk patients, the anti-HIV drug abacavir (Ziagen) causes the immune...
SIDEBAR: Photodynamic Therapy for Cancer
Photodynamic therapy is a two-step treatment that includes a photosensitizing agent and a light source. In the first step, the photosensitizing agent (porfimer sodium) is injected into the bloodstream and absorbed by all cells. Over 24 to 48 hours, the drug is concentrated in cancer cells. In the...
International Photodynamic Medicine Symposium: Shedding New Light on an Old Therapy
This past May, a collaborative think tank of researchers was convened at The Ohio State University, Columbus, to share their expertise in a somewhat older treatment that is reemerging on many fronts: photodynamic therapy. Participants from the United States, Great Britain, and Japan took part in...
Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation Initiatives Are Leading to More Effective Targeted Treatment
In 1996, at just 37, the last thing Kathy Giusti expected to hear was that she had the fatal blood cancer multiple myeloma. An executive at Searle Pharmaceuticals and the mother of an 18-month-old daughter, Giusti was told she probably had 3 years to live. At the time, treatments for the disease...
Markers in Cancer 2012, to be Held October 11–13, Will Seek to Move the Field of Biomarkers to the Next Phase
There are hundreds and hundreds of papers published on biomarkers in cancer each year, but very few make it over the hurdles necessary to be used in actual patient care, said James L. Abbruzzese, MD, Chair of the Department of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson ...
Full Membership: What It Means, What It Offers, and Why It’s Essential
As part of our series explaining the benefits of ASCO’s various membership categories, in this issue we focus on the Full Membership Category Involvement in ASCO—the largest and most inclusive professional organization in oncology—allows those involved in cancer care to chart the very course of the ...
Cancer Survivors Stand Up, Give Thanks, and Give Back
“I have me back,” is how breast cancer survivor Jeanette Daniel of Memphis described her life after being treated on a clinical trial at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville. Being conducted by the Stand Up To Cancer P13K Dream Team, whose leader discovered the PI3K pathway, the trial...
Risk Stratification and Targeted Therapy, Abetted by Collaboration, Improve Outcomes for Children with Cancer
Outcomes for children with cancer have “improved over the course of the years incrementally, mostly not from the development of new drugs, because virtually all the drugs that we use now in leukemia were available in the 1970s. It is really through better understanding of the heterogeneity of the...
Epidemiology, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Breast Cancer Explored at the American Society of Breast Surgeons Meeting
Over 1,300 breast surgeons attended the 13th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Breast Surgeons, held May 2–6 in Phoenix. Presentations included investigations on recurrence after lumpectomy, gender differences in breast cancer, and the potential role of infrared thermography in diagnosing...
Postsurgical Local Breast Cancer Therapies Compared in Two Large Studies
A study presented at the 13th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Breast Surgeons suggested that accelerated partial-breast irradiation (APBI) using brachytherapy might control the tumor bed better than whole-breast irradiation (WBI), while another study suggested that radiofrequency ablation ...
Maintenance Lenalidomide Improves Progression-free Survival and Time to Progression in Patients with Multiple Myeloma
Three phase III, double-blind, multicenter, randomized studies showed that lenalidomide (Revlimid) maintenance therapy for patients with multiple myeloma significantly improved progression-free survival or time to progression, the primary endpoints of the studies published in The New England...
Can Whole-genome Sequencing Predict Cancer Risk and Improve Public Health?
If, as expected, the cost of whole-genome sequencing continues to drop, perhaps down to the $1,000 vicinity, it may become an alluring option for consumers who want to know about their risks for cancer and other diseases. But can genome sequencing really provide practical information about...
At More than a Century Old, American Association for Cancer Research Continues to Evolve
Margaret Foti, PhD, MD (hc), has been Chief Executive Officer of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) since 1982, and has been instrumental in launching some of the most seminal efforts of the cancer research organization. Over the past 4 years, she has helped spearhead the AACR’s...
Better Information Needed for Primary Care Providers Who Treat Cancer Survivors
Many primary care providers are unaware of the late effects of chemotherapy, according to survey results presented at the ASCO Annual Meeting.1 For three out of four commonly used chemotherapy agents, medical oncologists performed well on the survey, but 29% to 38% of medical oncologists were...
Expert Point of View: Dual BRAF and MEK Inhibition Is Active in Advanced Melanoma
Commenting on the trial of combined BRAF and MEK inhibition in advanced melanoma, Michael K.K. Wong, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine at Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, called the findings “nothing short of extraordinary” and a potential “game changer.”...
Expert Point of View: Crizotinib Yields Benefits in Aggressive Pediatric Tumors
Michael P. Link, MD, 2011–2012 President of ASCO and a pediatric oncologist himself (at Stanford University School of Medicine and the Lucile Salter Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford), said the crizotinib study by Mosse and colleagues has far-ranging implications. “The molecular driver (ALK)...
Expert Point of View: Encouraging Results with Neoadjuvant Therapy for High-risk Prostate Cancer
“This is one of the first, if not the first, study to show that a treatment can make prostate cancer in the prostate gland itself disappear in a reproducible number of patients, and it is an exciting step forward,” said Nicholas Vogelzang, MD, moderator of the pre–ASCO Annual Meeting press...
Encouraging Results with Neoadjuvant Therapy for High-risk Prostate Cancer
Use of the CYP17 inhibitor abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) in combination with leuprolide and prednisone prior to radical prostatectomy achieved pathologic complete response or near complete response in one-third of men with high-risk, localized prostate cancer. Abiraterone is FDA-approved for...
Radiotherapy in Early-stage Hodgkin Lymphoma
The treatment of patients with Hodgkin lymphoma is one of the major success stories in medical oncology. Depending on clinical stage, clinical risk factors, and the treatment given, 60% to 90% of all patients can be cured of their malignancy long-term. Hodgkin lymphoma survivors represent one of...
Decoding the Genetic Blueprint of Cancer Cells: Findings in Multiple Myeloma and Breast Cancer
Advances in next-generation DNA sequencing technologies are allowing scientists to decipher the whole genome or whole exome (ie, the coding region of the genome) of cancer specimens more quickly and inexpensively than ever before. And the results are revealing genes that had not previously been...
Expert Point of View: T-DM1 Proves More Effective, Less Toxic Than Standard Treatment for Metastatic Breast Cancer
“Stated simply, T-DM1 really works in this patient population,” said Louis Weiner, MD, Director of the Georgetown-Lombardi Cancer Center in Washington, DC, and the invited discussant of the presentation. “It is an important new weapon in the therapeutic armamentarium for breast cancer.” While...
When It Comes to Scientific Exploration, Renowned Clinical Investigator Lets the Work Guide His Path
Internationally renowned clinical investigator Daniel D. Von Hoff, MD, FACP, attended grade school in a one-room schoolhouse on the rural outskirts of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Polio was a scourge at the time, and Dr. Von Hoff recalled lining up with his skittish classmates to get the newly developed...
New ASCO President Reflects on Value of Mentorship and Addressing Health-care Disparities
Sandra M. Swain, MD, Medical Director of the Washington Cancer Institute at the MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC, and ASCO President for the 2012 to 2013 term, is a leading authority on breast cancer treatment with a global reputation in cutting-edge clinical research. The...
Dana-Farber Researcher’s Work with Partners in Health Brings Quality Cancer Care to Rwanda
Lawrence N. Shulman, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, grew up in New York City. A product of the public school system, Dr. Shulman entered Syracuse University as a history major, only to realize that studying the past, although important, wasn’t for him. “I wanted a field...
Trailblazing Oncologist Had Instrumental Role in France’s War on Cancer
David Khayat, MD, PhD, Chair of the Department of Medical Oncology at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, was inspired to become an oncologist by an episode that could have been ripped from the pages of one of his best-selling novels. At the age of 18, Dr. Khayat was the witness at his best...
After 3 Decades at MD Anderson, Leukemia Researcher Shows No Sign of Slowing Down
Hagop M. Kantarjian, MD, Chair of the Department of Leukemia at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, was born in Lebanon. The only member of his family to have pursued a career in medicine, he received his medical degree from the American University of Beirut (AUB), which was founded...
Tracing Breast Cancer Luminary’s Path to Oncology, from Hungary to Houston
Gabriel N. Hortobagyi, MD, FACP, ASCO Past President (2006-2007), grew up under the oppressive regime of communist Hungary during the Cold War. “As college-educated intellectuals, my family was among the ‘politically undesirables,’ and if we had not escaped Hungary, neither my two sisters nor I...
On the Early Days of Breast-conserving Therapy and the Unique Relationship between Oncologists and Their Patients
Jay R. Harris, MD, Chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, helped pioneer the use of breast-conserving therapy in women with early-stage breast cancer. When asked why he chose to pursue a career in radiation...
Trailblazing Neurologist Leads the Way in Advancing Treatment of Cancer Pain
Kathleen M. Foley, MD, began her life’s work in cancer pain management at a time when suffering was a universally accepted consequence of the disease. Since then, Dr. Foley’s tireless work in the clinic and public forum has advanced not only the clinical treatment of cancer pain, but also the...
Reflections on the Evolution of Clinical Cancer Research and Turning Points in a Distinguished Career
Since May 1, 2005, Karen H. Antman, MD, has served as Dean of Boston University School of Medicine and Provost of the Boston University Medical Campus, located in the historic South End of Boston. Her road to this esteemed institution was paved with prominent positions, such as former ASCO...
From Small-town House Calls to Bone Marrow Transplants, Nobel Laureate Continues Father’s Legacy
“I echo the sentiments of many previous Nobel laureates when I say that the success we celebrate today was made possible by the work of many others in this and in related fields.” So ended the Nobel Lecture by E. Donnall Thomas, MD, the famed investigator and 1990 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or...
Special Anniversary Issue: Narratives in Oncology
The ASCO Post is pleased to present this special anniversary edition in recognition of the publication's 3rd year serving the oncology community. We hope you enjoy this special commemorative issue profiling several of the many leaders in the oncology community. In coming issues ofThe ASCO Post and...
