In a single-center retrospective review reported in JAMA Dermatology, Sanlorenzo et al found that cutaneous adverse events in patients receiving the anti–PD-1 agent pembrolizumab (Keytruda), currently approved for treatment of melanoma, may indicate better treatment response. Study Details...
In women with breast cancer, taxane-based chemotherapy—docetaxel and paclitaxel—did not appear to increase the incidence of lymphedema, according to a study by Swaroop et al in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment. However, the investigators did note that adjuvant chemotherapy with...
In a retrospective European study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Markar et al found that salvage esophagectomy after definitive chemoradiotherapy was associated with similar survival outcomes vs neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by planned esophagectomy in treatment of...
A first-of-its-kind study published by Bradley Palmer et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology found that music therapy lessened anxiety for women undergoing surgical breast biopsies for cancer diagnosis and treatment. The 2-year study, conducted at University Hospitals (UH) Seidman Cancer Center, ...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) as post–autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation consolidation treatment for patients with classical Hodgkin lymphoma at high risk of relapse or progression, Seattle Genetics has announced. The...
A study from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center researchers—the first to examine the effects of combined radiation and chemotherapy on the healthy brain tissue of glioblastoma patients—revealed not only specific structural changes within patients’ brains, but also...
Researchers have shown that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can detect the earliest signs of breast cancer recurrence and fast-growing tumors through detecting micrometastases, breakaway tumor cells with the potential to develop into dangerous secondary breast cancer tumors elsewhere in the body....
In an equatorial African region known as the “lymphoma belt,” children are ten times more likely than in other parts of the world to develop Burkitt lymphoma. This area is also plagued by high rates of malaria, and scientists have spent the past 50 years trying to understand how the two ...
Results of a phase I trial show that an investigational topical drug, resiquimod gel, causes regression of both treated and untreated tumor lesions and may completely remove cancerous cells from both sites in patients with early-stage cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. Currently, there is no cure for...
Scientists have known for years that a mutation in the BRAF gene makes moles start to grow but until now have not understood why they sometimes do not become cancerous. Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have identified a major genetic factor that...
In the phase III E3805 trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Sweeney et al found that chemohormonal therapy with docetaxel plus androgen-deprivation therapy produced a significant 13.6-month increase in median overall survival vs androgen-deprivation therapy alone in men with...
Duke University researchers found that packaging the widely used cancer drug paclitaxel into nanoparticles more than doubled the drug’s effectiveness in destroying tumors in preclinical models. Their findings were published by Bhattacharyya et al in Nature Communications. Paclitaxel has been ...
Although cisplatin-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy before cystectomy is the standard of care for muscle-invasive bladder cancer, only between 25% and 50% of patients achieve a pathologic response. A study investigating biomarkers that can predict response to chemotherapy in patients with...
High-grade serous ovarian cancer often responds well to the chemotherapy drug carboplatin, but it frequently recurs after the first line of treatment. A team of University of California, Los Angeles, researchers has discovered that a subset of tumor cells that don’t produce the protein CA125, ...
More than 80,000 people undergo resection of a pulmonary tumor each year, and currently the only method to determine whether the tumor is malignant is histologic analysis. A new study reported that a targeted molecular contrast agent can be used successfully to render lung adenocarcinomas...
In a phase III VALOR trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Ravandi et al found that the addition of the quinolone derivative vosaroxin to cytarabine did not significantly improve overall survival in patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML). However, differences favoring...
Pharmaceutical firms underinvest in long-term research to develop new cancer-fighting drugs due to the greater time and cost required to conduct such research, according to a newly published study authored by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) economists. These findings were published by...
Cancer can be caused solely by protein imbalance within cells, a study of ovarian cancer has found. Until now, genetic aberrations have been seen as the main cause of almost all cancer. The research, published by Timsah et al in Oncogene, demonstrates that protein imbalance is a powerful prognostic ...
In a patient-level meta-analysis of randomized trials reported in The Lancet by the Early Breast Cancer Trialists’ Collaborative Group (EBCTCG), 5 years of aromatase inhibitor treatment significantly reduced the recurrence risk vs 5 years of tamoxifen therapy during the first 4 years and...
In a patient-level meta-analysis reported in The Lancet by the Early Breast Cancer Trialists’ Collaborative Group (EBCTCG), adjuvant bisphosphonate treatment in early breast cancer was associated with a reduced risk of bone recurrence and breast cancer mortality, with the benefit limited to...
In a phase III trial (National Cancer Institute of Canada [NCIC] Clinical Trials Group MA.20) reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Whelan et al found that the addition of regional nodal irradiation to whole-breast irradiation did not improve overall survival in women with node-positive...
A new study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, reveals a protein’s critical—and previously unknown—role in the development and progression of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The finding offers a novel target for better treating AML, and...
In a phase III noninferiority trial (SIOP WT 2001) reported in The Lancet, Pritchard-Jones et al in the SIOP (International Society of Paediatric Oncology) Renal Tumours Study Group found that omission of doxorubicin from postoperative chemotherapy for stage II to III histologic intermediate-risk...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted lenvatinib (Lenvima) Breakthrough Therapy designation for investigational use in patients with advanced or metastatic renal cell carcinoma who were previously treated with a vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-targeted therapy. Lenvatinib...
In their bid to find the best combination of therapies to treat anaplastic thyroid cancer, researchers at Mayo Clinic's Florida campus demonstrated that all histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors are not created equal. In testing multiple HDAC inhibitors in combination with the chemotherapy drug...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved carfilzomib (Kyprolis) in combination with lenalidomide (Revlimid) and dexamethasone for the treatment of patients with relapsed multiple myeloma who have received one to three prior lines of therapy. The approval was based on a demonstration of ...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved sonidegib (Odomzo) for the treatment of patients with locally advanced basal cell carcinoma that has recurred following surgery or radiation therapy or those who are not candidates for surgery or radiation therapy. The approval was based on...
In a phase III trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Scagliotti et al found that the addition of the MET receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor tivantinib to erlotinib (Tarceva) did not improve overall survival in previously treated patients with locally advanced or metastatic nonsquamous ...
Lapatinib plus trastuzumab improves outcomes vs lapatinib in heavily pretreated HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer. In the phase II TBCRC 003 study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Lin et al found that earlier use of lapatinib plus trastuzumab was active in HER2-positive metastatic ...
Researchers led by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists have developed new diagnostic criteria to enable clinicians to distinguish malignant cancerous chest cavity masses from those caused by fungal histoplasmosis infection. Their findings were published by Naeem et al in the...
Results from a clinical trial investigating a new T-cell receptor therapy demonstrated a clinical response in 80% of patients with multiple myeloma who had advanced disease after undergoing autologous stem cell transplants. Researchers at Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center modified T cells to ...
In a single-institution study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Momtaz et al found that the rate of infusion-related reactions remained acceptably low when ipilimumab (Yervoy) 3 mg/kg was infused over 30 minutes in patients with advanced melanoma. The currently approved dose of...
Although the prevalence of genetic risk factors, such as Lynch syndrome and familial adenomatous polyposis, has been studied in the general population of individuals with colorectal cancer, patients diagnosed as adolescents and young adults are not well represented in colorectal cancer studies. A...
In a phase II trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Garcia-Aguilar et al found that adding neoadjuvant mFOLFOX6 (modified fluorouracil [5-FU], leucovorin, oxaliplatin) after chemoradiation improved the pathologic complete response rate in patients with locally advanced rectal cancer undergoing...
A clinical trial has shown that patients with a specific molecular subtype of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma are more likely to respond to ibrutinib (Imbruvica) than patients with another molecular subtype of the disease. The study was published by Wilson et al in Nature Medicine. In this phase II...
In a phase III study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Hofheinz et al found that 10% urea cream was better at preventing capecitabine-related hand-foot syndrome than a new ointment (Mapisal) available in Germany that contains several antioxidants and exhibits high radical protection....
A study comparing the effects of moderate to vigorous aerobic exercise on body fat in inactive postmenopausal women has found that 300 minutes of vigorous exercise each week was superior in reducing total fat and other adiposity measures, especially in obese women, than shorter amounts of exercise. ...
More than two-thirds of adolescents and young adults dying of cancer utilized one or more aggressive interventions in the last month of life, according to a retrospective study from researchers at Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center and Kaiser Permanente Southern...
UCLA Jonsson Cancer Center scientists have identified a new mechanism that delivers a key substance that fuels the growth of pancreatic and prostate cancer cells, a finding that offers new hope in the fight against two of the deadliest forms of the disease. Their findings were published by...
In an analysis of FDA Adverse Event Reporting System data reported in JAMA Oncology, Jhaveri et al found that the BRAF inhibitors vemurafenib (Zelboraf) and dabrafenib (Tafinlar) were associated with nephrotoxicity. Their findings suggest a need to monitor renal function and electrolyte levels ...
By combining two modalities of imaging, investigators from Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth, led by Keith Paulsen, PhD, and collaborators from Xijing Hospital in Xian, China, demonstrated that a dual breast exam using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and near-infrared spectral tomography is ...
In the phase II BELIEF trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, O’Connor et al found that the pan–histone deacetylase inhibitor belinostat (Beleodaq) produced durable responses in patients with relapsed/refractory peripheral T-cell lymphoma. The study supported the U.S. Food...
In patients with early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with stereotactic body radiotherapy, outcomes were similar between patients with biopsy-proven lesions and those with radiographically diagnosed disease, according to a study by Fischer-Valuck et al in Tumori Journal....
Women with cervical or endometrial cancer who require treatment to the para-aortic lymph nodes can safely receive extended-field intensity-modulated radiation therapy without increased risk of duodenal toxicity, according to a study by Xu et al in Practical Radiation Oncology. Extended-Field...
Despite findings of previous studies and published guidelines, nearly two-thirds of patients with T4a laryngeal cancer are not receiving a total laryngectomy—the recommended form of treatment—and, as a result, have significantly worse survival rates vs those treated with a total...
A prospective study examining weight gain in breast cancer survivors compared with cancer-free women from a familial risk cohort has found that, overall, breast cancer survivors gained significantly more weight than cancer-free women of the same age and menopausal status. According to the study...
A study of screening mammography across U.S. counties found that “the clearest result of mammography screening is the diagnosis of additional small cancers” but without a “concomitant decline in the detection of larger cancers, which might explain the absence of any significant...
Clinicians testing the drug dasatinib (Sprycel), approved for several blood cancers, had hoped it would slow the aggressive growth of the deadly brain cancer glioblastoma; however, clinical trials to date have not found any benefit. Researchers at Mayo Clinic, who conducted one of those clinical...
In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Kwan et al found that women with basal-like tumors were less likely to have breastfed than those with luminal A tumors and that breastfeeding was associated with a significantly reduced risk of recurrence and breast...
In the randomized phase II KEYNOTE-002 trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Ribas et al found that treatment with the anti–PD-1 antibody pembrolizumab (Keytruda) prolonged progression-free survival vs investigator-choice chemotherapy in patients with advanced melanoma progressing on...