The University of Southern California (USC) Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and Keck Medicine of USC have announced the appointment of oncologist and cancer researcher Steven Grossman, MD, PhD, as the center’s Cancer Physician in Chief. In this inaugural position, Dr. Grossman will provide...
The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) President David J. Cole, MD, FACS, has announced the appointment of MUSC College of Medicine Dean Raymond N. DuBois, MD, PhD, to the additional role as Director of the MUSC Hollings Cancer Center. Dr. DuBois has headed the College of Medicine for more ...
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital has appointed Heather Brandt, PhD, a behavioral scientist with expertise in cancer prevention and control, to lead community outreach and research programs focused on the prevention of human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated cancers through vaccination. In...
William G. Kaelin, Jr, MD, will receive a Distinguished Scientist Award from the Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI) on October 12, during the 2020 AACI/Cancer Center Administrators Forum Annual Meeting. Due to COVID-19–related restrictions on travel and gatherings, the meeting will...
Following an extensive national search, Bert W. O’Malley, Jr, MD, has been appointed as the new President and Chief Executive Officer of the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC), the flagship academic hospital for the University of Maryland Medical System and an anchor institution in...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms of action, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On July 31, 2020, tafasitamab-cxix, a CD19-directed...
A vaccine for COVID-19 is currently the Holy Grail, but even if an effective vaccine were developed on a fast-track timetable, it may be effective in only a percentage of people, judging by existing flu vaccines, which show efficacy rates of approximately 45% and vary year by year. Until we have a...
In May 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved ripretinib for patients who have received prior treatment with three or more kinase inhibitors, including imatinib, for advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST). The approval was largely based on the findings of the...
As reported inThe Lancet Oncology by Jean-Yves Blay, MD, of Centre Léon Bérard, Lyon, France, and colleagues, the phase III INVICTUS trial has shown that the oral KIT and PDGFRα tyrosine kinase inhibitor ripretinib significantly prolonged progression-free survival vs placebo in patients with...
Oncologists should consider screening all patients with cancer for the hepatitis B virus (HBV) prior to starting systemic anticancer therapy, with a focus on tests that use the hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), hepatitis B core antibody (anti-HBc), total Ig or IgG, and antihepatitis B surface...
At the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer 2020 Virtual, Milind Javle, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, and colleagues reported that third- and later-line treatment with the selective fibroblast growth factor...
In the time of COVID-19, there is much to learn about the intersection of coronavirus and cancer. One area of concern has been whether immunotherapies increase the risk of mortality in patients with cancer who also have COVID-19 infection. “To what extent immune checkpoint inhibition affects...
Three years ago, ASCO updated its clinical practice guideline on the integration of palliative care into standard oncology care for patients with advanced cancer. The update was based on multiple randomized clinical trials showing better results with concurrent care than with usual oncology care...
Palliative care services are so crucial to the well-being of patients with cancer that, in 2017, ASCO updated its clinical practice guideline on the integration of palliative care into standard oncology care.1 The updated guideline recommends that all patients with advanced cancer receive dedicated ...
As chemotherapy and chemoimmunotherapy regimens reach their maximal impact in follicular lymphoma and mantle cell lymphoma, clinicians are turning to chemotherapy-free approaches to achieve better control, less toxicity, and (hopefully) a cure. During the ASCO20 Virtual Education Program, Sonali M. ...
My husband and I adopted our cat, Franklin, on a cold November day. It was one of the last days Andrew felt well enough to leave the house to go anywhere other than to chemotherapy or a doctor’s appointment. Our news at these appointments had shifted toward the negative, with disease progression...
As evidenced at this year’s ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program, oncology science, technology, and clinical practice are evolving at a rapid pace, bringing new challenges to the efficient and ethical practice of cancer care at all levels. To shed light on some of the large-scale public health and...
A trend of higher lung cancer incidence rates in young Black people vs young White people in the United States has flipped, with the Black-White gap disappearing in men and reversing in women. The changing trends coincide with steeper declines in smoking among Black Americans, according to a new...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Abida and colleagues, the phase II TRITON2 trial has shown that rucaparib produces durable responses in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer with deleterious BRCA1 or BRCA2 alterations. The trial supported the May 2020...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Duffy et al, final results of the UK Age Trial show that initiation of annual mammography screening for breast cancer at age 40 was associated with a significant reduction in breast cancer mortality at 10 years compared with screening beginning at age 50 years, ...
Paul Baas, MD, PhD, of the Netherlands Cancer Institute, discusses results of the CheckMate 743 trial, which suggests nivolumab plus ipilimumab should be considered the new standard of care in first-line treatment of unresectable malignant pleural mesothelioma, regardless of the histology subtype...
This week on The ASCO Post Podcast, we'll first hear about a study that found a steep decline in non–small cell lung cancer mortality from 2013 to 2016. Then, we'll close out with a review of a report on the addition of locoregional radiotherapy to chemotherapy in patients with...
On August 20, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved daratumumab (Darzalex) in combination with carfilzomib (Kyprolis) and dexamethasone (DKd) for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma who have received one to three previous lines of therapy....
ASCO has released an update to its Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer Guideline that includes recommendations for second-line treatment, including early biomarker testing for actionable genomic alterations.1 Last updated in 2018, this new version was triggered by novel evidence related to targeted...
Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Priority Reviews for a novel dosing regimen for durvalumab as well as for trilaciclib in small cell lung cancer; granted Fast Track designations to treatments for glioblastoma and B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia; and issued reports...
In a Chinese phase III trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Xuan et al found that sorafenib maintenance after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation significantly reduced the risk of relapse vs no maintenance therapy in patients with FLT3–internal tandem duplication (ITD)–positive...
In a retrospective cohort study reported in JAMA Surgery, Xiao et al found that low skeletal muscle index and low skeletal muscle radiodensity were associated with an increased risk of complications and poor outcomes following surgery for colon cancer. Study Details The study involved data on...
Researchers have found that greater gut microbial diversity in patients with metastatic kidney cancer is associated with better treatment outcomes in those receiving immunotherapy. These findings were published by Salgia et al in European Urology. “We also reported the changes over time in the gut...
The results of an online questionnaire of 609 breast cancer survivors in the United States suggest that nearly half of patients experienced delays in care during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study was published by Papautsky et al in the journal Breast Cancer Research and ...
“The distressing intersection of COVID-19 and cancer requires the use of large registries to acknowledge diversity,” stated Solange Peters, MD, PhD, President of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), in her keynote speech at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Virtual...
In a systematic review and meta-analysis reported in JAMA Network Open, Yang et al found overall survival benefits with immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment vs non–immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment of advanced cancers irrespective of sex, age < 65 years vs ≥ 65 years, or Eastern Cooperative ...
In a Korean study reported in the American Journal of Surgical Pathology, Lee et al identified clinicopathologic and immunohistochemical characteristics of neuroendocrine carcinomas of the gallbladder. Study Details The study involved data from 34 patients with gallbladder neuroendocrine carcinomas ...
In a Chinese phase III trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Wang et al found that hypofractionated radiotherapy (HFRT) and conventionally fractionated radiotherapy (CFRT) following breast-conserving surgery were associated with similar low 5-year local recurrence rates in women with...
The development of complex biomarkers such as tumor mutational burden (TMB) has enabled clinicians to identify patients more likely to respond to treatment of a variety of cancers, leading to more accurate diagnoses and improved outcomes. Differences in testing assays, however, have produced...
Scientists have newly discovered three genetic changes that increase the risk of breast cancer in men. These findings were published by Maguire et al in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The researchers identified three common variations in DNA that predispose men to developing breast...
Public health screening guidelines for lung cancer followed by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) undercount eligible Black individuals, according to a study by Mary Pasquinelli, DNP, FNP-BC, and colleagues in press at the...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Salama et al, the NCI-MATCH trial subprotocol H (EAY131-H) has shown durable responses with dabrafenib plus trametinib in previously treated patients with BRAF V600E–mutant tumors. Study Details The study enrolled 35 patients with mixed-histology...
In a retrospective study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Farjah et al found that patients who underwent resection for lung cancer at hospitals and with surgeons meeting Volume Pledge criteria did not have better short-term outcomes compared with patients who received care from...
In the phase III VIALE-A trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Courtney D. DiNardo, MD, and colleagues found that venetoclax plus azacitidine significantly improved overall survival vs azacitidine alone in previously untreated patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who were...
“In line with the emergence of targeted therapies, molecular biomarker testing in metastatic colorectal cancer has evolved over the past decade,” noted Jeanne Tie, MD, MBChB, FRACP, who acknowledged there is confusion about the best ways to use molecular testing in the clinic. Dr. Tie, who is...
Nineteen of the 20 nations with the highest cervical cancer death rates are in sub-Saharan Africa. Now an international team has published the first comprehensive genomic study of cervical cancers in sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on tumors from 212 Ugandan patients with cervical cancer. Their...
In a phase II trial reported by Vivek Subbiah, MD, and colleagues in The Lancet Oncology, the combination of dabrafenib, a BRAF inhibitor, and trametinib, a MEK inhibitor, achieved a 51% overall response rate in patients with BRAF V600E–mutated cholangiocarcinoma. This trial represents the first...
Project N95, a not-for-profit organization, is offering access to ASCO’s qualifying U.S. members who are having difficulty obtaining personal protective equipment (PPE) for their patients and staff. Qualifying ASCO members will be able to make a one-time bulk purchase of the following PPE...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by D. Ross Camidge, MD, PhD, and colleagues, a second prespecified interim analysis of the pivotal phase III ALTA-1L trial has shown maintained progression-free survival benefit with brigatinib vs crizotinib in ALK inhibitor–naive patients with...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Knörr et al, a trial of risk-stratified treatment for relapsed pediatric anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL) showed that allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT) was effective in patients with high-risk relapse, whereas autologous SCT was not...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Susan M. Domchek, MD, and colleagues, the combination of olaparib and durvalumab showed activity in a cohort of patients with germline BRCA-mutated, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer enrolled in a phase I/II basket study (MEDIOLA). Study Details In the...
Novel targeted therapies have increased the likelihood of cure and prolonged survival in many patients with advanced breast cancer (Table 1), but these new agents also carry toxicity profiles that vary greatly from those of traditional chemotherapy. During the ASCO20 Virtual Education Program,...
Results from a recent clinical trial indicated that for older adults with advanced cancer, initiating aspirin treatment may increase their risk of disease progression and mortality. These findings were published by McNeil et al in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Study Background and...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Pieternella Johanna Lugtenburg, MD, PhD, and colleagues, the phase III Haemato-Oncology Foundation for Adults in the Netherlands (HOVEN)/ Nordic Lymphoma Group HOVON-84 trial showed that early rituximab intensification in R-CHOP-14 (rituximab plus...
In a prospective lymphedema screening trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Naoum et al found that although regional lymph node radiation increased the incidence of breast cancer–related lymphedema, the primary driver of risk was the type of axillary surgery used. Study Details The...