MAY Lymphoma: State-of-the-Art in Biology Therapy, and Patient CareMay 13-14 • New York, New YorkFor more information: msklymphoma2016.com NCI “Sandpit” on Individual and Contextual Factors of Population-Level Cancer ControlMay 16-18 • Montgomery County, MarylandFor more...
Phase I Study Title: A Phase I Study to Examine the Toxicity of Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation for Relapsed or Therapy-Refractory Ewing Sarcoma Study Type: Interventional/nonrandomized/single-group assignment Study Sponsor and Collaborators: University of Louisville Purpose: To examine the...
Myriad Genetics announced results from a study of the prognostic information provided by its Prolaris test in patients with prostate cancer and a Gleason score < 7 at the 111th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA) (Abstract MP02-20). Prolaris is a novel 46-gene ...
The ASCO Annual Meeting, which will be held June 3–7, 2016, in Chicago, brings together more than 30,000 oncology professionals from around the world to learn about and discuss the latest therapies, treatment modalities, research, and controversies in the field. Attendees are able to personalize...
Not all men with prostate cancer benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy after radical prostatectomy; however, African American men and men with a higher tumor stage may, according to a new U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) study (Abstract PI LBA 06) featured at the 111th Annual Scientific...
As reported by Larsen et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, final data from the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) AALL0232 trial indicate that the event-free survival benefit of high-dose methotrexate was maintained in children/young adults with high-risk B-acute lymphoblastic leukemia....
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 March 30, 2016, defibrotide sodium (Defitelio) was approved for...
As our understanding of the complexities of breast cancer expands, so does our treatment armamentarium—and along with it the range of factors that must be included in our treatment decisions. Gone is the simple algorithm of adjuvant chemotherapy for almost every patient with a ≥ 2-cm tumor, except...
It was over 2 decades ago that my colleagues and I reported in The New England Journal of Medicine that a first-generation oral antiandrogen, flutamide, when added to a luteinizing hormone–releasing hormone (LHRH) agonist, improved survival by nearly 6 months compared to an LHRH agonist alone in...
In the randomized phase II TERRAIN trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Neal D. Shore, MD, of Carolina Urologic Research Center, Myrtle Beach, and colleagues found that use of the androgen receptor inhibitor enzalutamide (Xtandi) more than doubled median progression-free survival vs bicalutamide...
On April 25, 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved cabozantinib (Cabometyx) tablets for the treatment of advanced renal cell carcinoma in patients who have received prior antiangiogenic therapy. Cabozantinib is a dual tyrosine kinase inhibitor of MET and VEGFR2. The capsule...
At the 2016 Society of Gynecologic Oncology’s (SOG’s) Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer, Thomas J. Herzog, MD, Clinical Director, University of Cincinnati (UC) Cancer Institute and Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at UC College of Medicine, provided commentary on several noteworthy ovarian...
In the discussion session, Gini Fleming, MD, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Gynecologic Oncology and Medical Oncology Breast Program at the University of Chicago Medical Center, analyzed the three previous, large trials on which the presumed benefits of intraperitoneal therapy in women...
A phase III trial of bevacizumab (Avastin) with intravenous vs intraperitoneal chemotherapy showed no improvement in progression-free survival for first-line treatment of patients with optimally surgically resected stage II and III ovarian, peritoneal, or fallopian tube cancer.1 When compared with...
The BMT Tandem Meetings are the combined annual meetings of the Center for International Blood & Marrow Transplant Research and the American Society of Blood and Marrow Transplantation. Held recently in Honolulu, Hawaii, this year’s BMT Tandem Meetings drew 3,000 attendees from 35 countries,...
Invited discussant Harold Burstein, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Boston, called MINDACT “a heroic effort” whose results show that combining stage, pathology, and...
The primary analysis of the MINDACT trial confirms the value of genomic profiling for patients with early breast cancer with zero to three positive lymph nodes, according to MINDACT investigators and breast cancer specialists who heard the results at the 2016 American Association of Cancer Research ...
Squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck that progresses after platinum-based therapy has a dismal prognosis, and there is no effective standard of care. No treatment has improved survival for this patient population, but that may be about to change. Nivolumab (Opdivo), an anti–PD-1 (programmed ...
John Farrow, a 67-year-old Vietnam veteran, had not been able to sleep for days. A week ago, his primary care doctor at his local outpatient Veterans Administration (VA) clinic told him that his prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood level was rapidly increasing, and his prostate was abnormal on...
“We are at a fortunate time to have multiple routes to ‘lifetime’ (T-cell) memory (including ipilimumab [Yervoy] and nivolumab [Opdivo]),” said Jedd D. Wolchok, MD, PhD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, who was the formal discussant of the CA909-003 trial at the American...
The news is good from the longest follow-up survival study of patients with advanced melanoma who were treated with the anti–programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) agent nivolumab (Opdivo).1 Thirty-four percent of patients who received the drug in a phase I trial (CA909-003) were alive 5 years...
As reported by Vasen et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, surveillance for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma in high-risk individuals appears to be of benefit in individuals at risk due to CDKN2A mutation, with the advantage being less clear among individuals at risk due to familial clustering ...
Cetuximab (Erbitux) exhibited little apparent activity in refractory metastatic colorectal cancer harboring the KRAS G13D mutation, according to the findings of the phase II Australasian Gastro-Intestinal Trials Group ICECREAM study, which were reported by Segelov et al in the Journal of Clinical...
Dual HER2 inhibition with trastuzumab (Herceptin) and lapatinib (Tykerb) was active in patients with refractory, KRAS codon 12/13 wild-type, HER2-positive metastatic colorectal cancer, according to an Italian phase II trial reported by Sartore-Bianchi et al in The Lancet Oncology. Study Details...
The PD-1 (programmed cell death protein 1) inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was active in advanced Merkel cell carcinoma in both Merkel cell polyomavirus (MCP)-positive and -negative tumors, according to Nghiem et al, who reported their phase II study findings in The New England Journal of...
Amgen announced on May 3 that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted for priority review the supplemental Biologics License Application (sBLA) for blinatumomab (Blincyto) to include new data supporting the treatment of pediatric and adolescent patients with Philadelphia...
In a phase III trial (EORTC 20012 Intergroup Trial) reported by Carde et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, similar outcomes were achieved with eight cycles of ABVD (doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine, dacarbazine) vs four cycles each of escalated BEACOPP (bleomycin, etoposide, doxorubicin,...
A large study of testicular cancer patients showed that radiation therapy was more effective than chemotherapy for patients with stage IIa disease (where one or more regional lymph nodes contain cancer cells, but they are less than 2 cm in diameter). These findings, presented at the ESTRO 35...
Long-term exposure to ambient fine particulate matter, a mixture of environmental pollutants, was associated with increased risk of mortality for many types of cancer in an elderly Hong Kong population, according to a study published by Wong et al in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers &...
Researchers have found that treating patients who have early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) is associated with a small but increased risk of death from causes other than cancer, according to findings presented at the European Society...
A new study by University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers published by Van Dyk et al in JAMA Oncology found that commonly used chemotherapy drugs showed no association with cognitive decline following treatment in women with breast cancer. The report addresses recent concerns that the ...
As reported in JAMA Oncology, Sacher et al have prospectively validated a plasma droplet digital polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR) assay for detecting common EGFR and KRAS mutations in patients with advanced nonsquamous non–small cell lung cancer. Study Details The study involved 180...
In a Canadian retrospective population-based cohort study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Thavendiranathan et al found that trastuzumab (Herceptin)-based regimens were associated with an increased risk of treatment-related cardiac dysfunction among women with breast cancer, with an...
ASCO has adapted a Clinical Care Ontario (CCO) clinical practice guideline on the selection of optimal adjuvant chemotherapy for early breast cancer and adjuvant targeted therapy for HER2-positive breast cancer, as reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The adaptation was based on review by...
In an analysis of the phase III BOLERO trials reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, André et al found that the addition of everolimus (Afinitor) to trastuzumab (Herceptin) and chemotherapy was associated with a progression-free survival benefit in advanced HER2-positive breast cancer ...
On April 25, 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved cabozantinib (Cabometyx) tablets for the treatment of advanced renal cell carcinoma in patients who have received prior antiangiogenic therapy. Cabozantinib is a dual tyrosine kinase inhibitor of MET and VEGFR2. The...
The irreversible ErbB family inhibitor afatinib (Gilotrif) was associated with improvement in progression-free survival and time to treatment failure vs the reversible EGFR (epidermal growth factor receptor) inhibitor gefitinib (Iressa) in the first-line treatment of EGFR-mutant non–small...
Using the National Cancer Institute’s Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (CTCAE), researchers from Columbia University, New York, and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, identified six severe adverse event clusters in patients with advanced prostate cancer. The clusters...
Three measures of aggressive end-of-life care “were associated with relatively large differences in family member–reported quality ratings for end-of-life care and a lower likelihood that patients with advanced-stage cancer received care congruent with their preferences,” according to a study in...
Women diagnosed with breast cancer who chose contralateral prophylactic mastectomy reported improvement in psychosocial well-being and breast satisfaction, but “the magnitude of the effect may be too small to be clinically meaningful,” according to a study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.1...
APRIL 16th Pan Arab Cancer ConferenceApril 28-30 • Cairo, EgyptFor more information:www.pacc16.org ONS 41st Annual CongressApril 28-May 1 • San Antonio, Texas For more information: http://congress.ons.org 11th European International Kidney Cancer SymposiumApril 29-30 • Barcelona, Spain For more...
Immunotherapy is on its way. A few agents have already been approved: ipilimumab (Yervoy) in 2011 for melanoma; nivolumab (Opdivo) in 2015 for non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and then later that year for renal cell carcinoma; and pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for NSCLC. In addition, many clinical...
The median age of patients at the first diagnosis of cancer in the United States is 65 years, and the majority of patients with cancer are older adults.1 As we have learned from previous articles in this series, older patients with cancer require more complex care. Older adults are more likely to...
Use of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines should be rapidly expanded to protect thousands of young people in the United States—and millions worldwide—from life-threatening cancers, ASCO said April 11 in a policy statement. Published by Bailey et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology,1 the...
The American Cancer Society (ACS) and ASCO have issued a Breast Cancer Survivorship Care guideline, published jointly in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.1,2 The guideline recommendations were formulated by a multidisciplinary expert work group and are based...
The advent of targeted therapies along with complex personalized treatment regimens has added many effective tools to the oncology armamentarium. But progress has a price tag. Although the oncology community needs new drugs, there is growing concern that the price of many newer compounds is...
Researchers, patient advocates, and global oncology community leaders dedicated to enhancing cancer prevention, treatment, and patient care will be honored with ASCO’s highest honor, its Special Awards, during the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting. Among this year’s awardees are a lung cancer luminary who...
In a French phase III trial reported in The Lancet, Ribrag et al showed that adding rituximab (Rituxan) to dose-dense chemotherapy improved event-free survival among adults with Burkitt lymphoma. Study Details In the open-label trial, 260 patients were randomized between October 2004 and...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies commonly used by patients with cancer. We chose Boswellia for this issue because of its increasing use by patients with cancer....
Studies presented at the 2015 ASH Annual Meeting bolstered support for elotuzumab (Empliciti) given in combination with lenalidomide (Revlimid) for the treatment of multiple myeloma. Elotuzumab is an immunostimulatory monoclonal antibody. It has a dual mechanism of action, directly activating...