In the phase III LILAC equivalence trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, von Minckwitz et al found similar efficacy and safety with the trastuzumab biosimilar ABP 980 vs reference trastuzumab (Herceptin) in HER2-positive early breast cancer. On local review, the risk difference and risk ratio (RR) ...
In an analysis of the LUX-Lung 8 trial in squamous non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) reported in JAMA Oncology, Goss et al found that outcomes among patients treated with afatinib (Gilotrif) were better for those with vs without ERBB mutations. The LUX-Lung 8 trial showed that afatinib was...
New research led by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute investigators suggests that patients treated for nonmetastatic colon cancer may sharply reduce the risk that the disease will return by following a diet low in carbohydrates and other foods that raise insulin levels. In a study published by...
As of June 20, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has restricted the use of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and atezolizumab (Tecentriq) for patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial cancer who are not eligible for cisplatin-containing therapy. The restriction results from a...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Wang et al found that germline pathogenic/likely pathogenic mutations significantly contributed to the risk of subsequent neoplasms in long-term survivors of childhood cancers. Study Details The study involved whole-genome sequencing on...
As reported by Slamon and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the phase III MONALEESA-3 trial has shown significant improvement in progression-free survival with the addition of the CDK4/6 inhibitor ribociclib (Kisqali) to fulvestrant (Faslodex) in hormone receptor (HR)-positive,...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently accepted a supplementary premarket approval (PMA) application for BRACAnalysis CDx to be used as a companion diagnostic with the poly ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor talazoparib. The new drug application (NDA) for...
Austrian researchers have discovered that a small number of patients taking targeted drugs known as Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors to treat myelofibrosis may develop aggressive lymphomas. They also speculate that screening for a preexisting B-cell clone before starting therapy may help prevent this...
In a first-in-human study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Brudno et al found that chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) autologous T cells targeting B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA) produced responses in patients with poor-prognosis relapsed multiple myeloma. Study Details The current...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently granted accelerated approval to the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for use in combination with chemotherapy as a first-line treatment for patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). KEYNOTE-021 This...
In a phase II trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Cortes et al found that the next-generation FLT3 inhibitor quizartinib had good activity in patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML), with greater activity in patients with FLT3-ITD mutations. Study Details The study...
In an analysis of long-term outcomes in the SOFT and TEXT trials reported at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting and in The New England Journal of Medicine, Francis et al found that the addition of ovarian suppression to adjuvant tamoxifen significantly improved 8-year rates of disease-free and overall...
THANK YOU for publishing the excellent article “We Need to Fill the Gap Between Pediatric and Adult Oncology Care” by Sarah Stream (as told to Jo Cavallo) in the March 25, 2018, issue of The ASCO Post. Sarah’s story and her connection to Teen Cancer America actually go much deeper than she reported ...
THE U.S. FOOD and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for the treatment of adult and pediatric patients with refractory primary mediastinal large B-cell lymphoma or who have relapsed after two or more prior lines of therapy on June 13, 2018. The newest ...
The final results of a phase III trial reported by Roger Stupp, MD, of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, and colleagues in JAMA indicate that adding antimitotic treatment with tumor-treating fields to maintenance temozolomide is associated with improved...
I hold a cold, lifeless mouse instead of my patient’s heated hand, checking off the tiny box marked “Anxiety,” while she squirms under twisted blankets. I don’t remember when or how or why it happened, that the static screen wedged itself between my patients and me and compliance with the digital...
When I was diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) in 2013, I used to joke that if I had to get cancer, this wasn’t a bad one to have. At just 32, I was otherwise healthy, and my prognosis for a cure was good, according to my oncologist. So I felt confident that once I underwent...
THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (WHO) has designated St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital as the first WHO Collaborating Center for Childhood Cancer. With this collaboration, both organizations aim to expand efforts to develop strategies to strengthen the global resources, organization, and planning ...
DESPITE STEADY declines in death rates in recent years, lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer deaths in wealthy countries. In a study published by Anita Andreano, MD, of the University of Milan-Ciocco, and colleagues in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology,1 Yale researchers collaborated with ...
THE INFORMATION contained in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting clinical studies focused on pancreatic cancer. These studies are investigating radiotherapy; cancer vaccines; combination treatments; novel cell therapies; response prediction; and more. All of the studies ...
Cardiovascular complications, such as anthracycline-related heart failure, are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in survivors of childhood cancer, often developing at a time when these survivors are least engaged in long-term survivorship care, prompting the need for new paradigms in...
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, recently issued the following statement: Over the past decade, advances in our understanding of the basic biology of serious and life-threatening diseases has led to the development and FDA approval of targeted treatments for ...
Building on the efficacy of colorectal cancer screening, the American Medical Association (AMA) endorsed a plan at its Annual Meeting to work with physicians and payers to make the screening more available and affordable. Challenges with insurance coverage remain a barrier to colorectal cancer...
In a study of National Cancer Database data reported in Blood Advances, Bhatt et al found that 25% of patients with newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia (AML) did not receive initial chemotherapy, despite evidence that chemotherapy is associated with a survival benefit and improvement in symptoms ...
Valentina Nardi, MD, is a staff pathologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and her current clinical work includes implementing molecular assays for hematologic malignancies at the Center for Integrated Diagnostics. “I was born in Rome, but I did my high school and college education in Genoa. I ...
THE 2018 JACOBSON INNOVATION AWARD of the American College of Surgeons was recently presented to Steven A. Rosenberg, MD, PhD, Chief of the Surgery Branch at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) as well as Professor of Surgery at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences and at the...
It may sound too good to be true, but asking patients a simple question about what is on their bucket list can actually spark a dialogue about how best to make their cancer care and survivorship fit into their life plans, as well as be an effective way to identify their end-of-life care goals,...
AT THE 71ST World Health Assembly in Geneva, the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) delivered two statements positioning cancer as a priority on the global agenda of the World Health Organization (WHO). Presenting its recommendations for action to the international community, ESMO...
Terminally ill patients with cancer will sometimes ask their clinicians for help with assisted or hastened death.1 Although palliative care and hospice care can usually address the concerns of most patients, some have physical or existential suffering that is refractory to comfort and supportive...
RESEARCHERS AT the University of California (UC), Davis, have shown that patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who received their care at a National Cancer Institute (NCI) cancer center in California had a dramatically reduced risk of early mortality. Using data from the California Cancer...
This year’s ASCO Research Community Forum (RCF) 2018 Annual Meeting will not be one to miss! Though still a few months away, I am thrilled to share the work that is already underway to bring the research community together for 2 days of learning and collaboration. During my term as Chair of the...
A career in oncology can be extremely rewarding. Fast-paced advances in research and treatment, exciting changes in the practice environment, and the opportunity to build strong relationships with and provide critical support to patients can be incredibly professionally satisfying—but they can...
A STUDY evaluating the impact of breast cancer screening has shown that the benefits of regular mammograms extend well beyond reduced mortality. According to data presented at the American Society of Breast Surgeons (ASBrS) 2018 Annual Meeting, women with breast cancer who underwent regular...
THE RECENTLY issued 8th revision to the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) Breast Cancer Staging System incorporates tumor biology and prognostic stage groups and thus has become more accurate and clinically relevant, according to two speakers at the 2018 Miami Breast Cancer Conference.1,2...
The ASCO updated guidelines on the treatment of metastatic non-castrate prostate cancer penned by Morris and his colleagues1 provide valuable information annotated to the strengths of evidence in recently reported prostate cancer studies. CHAARTED, GETUG-AFU 15, LATITUDE, and STAMPEDE have...
After about 70 years with no significant progress, the landscape for men with de novo metastatic prostate cancer has changed dramatically in the past 4 years, with statistically significant and highly clinically meaningful survival improvement reported from multiple phase III trials when...
A major new study of more than 140,000 men has identified 63 new genetic variations in the DNA code that increase the risk of prostate cancer. These findings were published by Schumacher et al in Nature Genetics. Researchers devised a new test combining these single-letter genetic variants with...
Parents of adolescents believed that the potential to prevent certain types of cancer is the best reason for their children to receive the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, whereas other reasons health-care providers often give were far less persuasive. Findings from this study were published by...
The Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP) has launched a new care delivery blog, JOP DAiS (Discussion & Analysis in Short), to serve as a forum for commentary and analysis on issues affecting the mechanisms of oncology care delivery. This new platform will be a way to collaborate, debate, and...
As reported at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting and in The New England Journal of Medicine by DiNardo et al, early-phase testing has shown activity of ivosidenib, an oral small-molecule inhibitor of mutant IDH1, in patients with IDH1-mutated relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML). IDH1...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Michael J. Morris, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medicine, and colleagues, ASCO has released a clinical practice guideline on optimizing anticancer therapy in men with metastatic non-castrate prostate cancer.1 To ...
“In CheckMate 227, the benefit of nivolumab [Opdivo] plus ipilimumab [Yervoy] was the same in tumor mutational burden–high patients whether or not they were programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1)–high or –low,” said formal discussant of this paper, Naiyer Rizvi, MD, Director of Thoracic Oncology...
The combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) plus ipilimumab (Yervoy) improved progression-free survival compared with chemotherapy as first-line treatment for patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and a high tumor mutational burden irrespective of programmed cell death ligand 1...
Biologics are credited with increasing median overall survival in colorectal cancer to approximately 30 months. Their optimal use was discussed by Axel Grothey, MD, Professor of Oncology at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, in an article he coauthored for the Journal of Oncology Practice 1...
Ivosidenib, an isocitrate dehydrogenase-1 (IDH1) inhibitor, yielded durable and molecular remissions in some patients with IDH1-mutated advanced relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML). At a dose of 500 mg/d, ivosidenib was associated with a low frequency of grade 3 or higher...
An updated analysis of a randomized phase III trial showed that taking a high dose of esomeprazole with low-dose aspirin for at least 7 years may moderately reduce the risk of developing high-grade dysplasia or esophageal cancer and may delay death from any cause in people with Barrett’s esophagus. ...
It is widely acknowledged that the costs of cancer care are much higher in the United States than in Canada, with outcomes that are thought to be similar. A new study presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting supports that view, by documenting and quantifying the differences in health-care costs...
Kenneth C. Anderson, MD, FASCO, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, noted that the iNNOVATE trial is the first randomized comparison of ibrutinib (Imbruvica) plus rituximab (Rituxan) vs “a very active control—rituximab—to which 50% of patients responded.” The study showed that “the...
“This is a very important study,” said ASCO expert Andrew Epstein, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), New York. “Hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy is used in the United States and elsewhere, even though the benefits are unknown. This study shows there are no benefits, and ...
With a growing emphasis on value in cancer care, some types of resource-intensive therapies may need to be reconsidered. One such treatment may be hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy, which showed no benefit during surgery for colorectal cancer confined to the peritoneum in the PRODIGE 7...