As reported in JAMA Oncology by Tsakiridis et al, the Canadian phase II OCOG-ALMERA trial, which was closed early due to slow accrual, showed that the addition of metformin to chemoradiation therapy was associated with worse outcomes in patients with unresected locally advanced non–small cell lung ...
In a single-institution study reported in the journal Cancer, Hu et al found that use of a dedicated nurse navigation program contributed to redressing the recognized inequities in care and outcomes between minority patients and White patients with aggressive large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL). As...
In the German phase II VidazaAllo study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Kröger et al found that switching from azacitidine to reduced-intensity conditioning allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) contingent upon donor availability was associated with better outcomes ...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Boddicker et al found that women older than age 65 in the general population who carry germline pathogenic variants in established high-risk breast cancer predisposition genes remain at significant risk of late-onset breast cancer and should...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is alerting patients and health-care professionals that a clinical trial (OCEAN, Study OP-103; ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT03151811) evaluating melphalan flufenamide with dexamethasone to treat patients with multiple myeloma showed an increased risk ...
Worldwide, the global average surface temperature has risen at a similar rate of 0.17°F per decade since 1901, with the warmest year on record occurring in 2016 and the second warmest occurring in 2020. However, according to NOAA, since the late 1970s, the United States has warmed faster than the...
In the CAVA trial reported in The Lancet, Moss et al found that among central venous access devices used for the delivery of systemic anticancer therapy, totally implanted ports (PORTs) were associated with significantly reduced rates of complications compared with Hickman-type tunneled catheters...
Over 90% of patients with head and neck cancer receiving curative-intent chemoradiation therapy found weekly palliative care visits to be a valuable addition to their treatment, a recent study published by Bauman et al in the Journal of Palliative Medicine found. Although palliative care is known...
Individuals with cancer or a history of cancer should be eligible for clinical trials—including COVID-19 vaccine trials—unless there is safety justification for exclusion, ASCO and Friends of Cancer Research (Friends) asserted in a recently released joint position statement. To date, clinical...
ASCO is calling on Congress to continue its bipartisan support of federally funded research. Robust, sustained, and predictable funding growth for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) baseline budgets are critical in advancing our nation’s work toward...
On March 3, 2021, lorlatinib was granted regular approval for treatment of patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with ALK-positive tumors as detected by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved test.1,2 The FDA simultaneously approved the Ventana ALK (D5F3) CDx Assay ...
On March 22, 2021, pembrolizumab was approved for use in combination with platinum- and fluoropyrimidine-based chemotherapy for patients with metastatic or locally advanced esophageal or gastroesophageal junction (tumors with epicenter 1 to 5 cm above the gastroesophageal junction) carcinoma who...
Created more than a decade ago, the Office of Minority Health (OMH) and the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities have a mission to advance the health of racial and ethnic minority populations through policies, programs, and partnerships at the Centers for Medicare and...
Prostate cancer experts have often stated it is important to add a bone-protecting agent for patients on treatment for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. Recent evidence in support of this recommendation comes from a study presented during the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting, confirming a...
Invited study discussant Jaishri O. Blakeley, MD, Director of the Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Neurofibromatosis Center, Baltimore, changed the title of her talk to “Finding Needles in Haystacks,” “because this is what we do with CNS [central nervous system] tumors,” she told listeners. “ALK...
Targeting mutations appears to be bearing fruit in the treatment of some difficult-to-treat tumors. For instance, in one study of adult-onset neuroblastoma, targeting ALK mutations in ALK-positive tumors demonstrated activity, even in patients who had not responded to their first ALK inhibitor. Of...
On April 22, 2021, the PD-1 inhibitor dostarlimab-gxly was granted accelerated approval for treatment of adults with mismatch repair–deficient recurrent or advanced endometrial cancer, as determined by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved test, that has progressed on or following a...
Canada’s publicly funded health-care system has a complex drug approval and funding process. Due to multiple assessment steps and bureaucratic processes, newly developed cancer drugs can often experience long delays before oncologists may use them to treat their patients with cancer. Several...
“Learning never exhausts the mind.” —Leonardo da Vinci To complement The ASCO Post’s continued comprehensive coverage of the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, here are several abstracts selected from the meeting proceedings focusing on treatments under study ...
In patients with recurrent ovarian cancer, the antibody-drug conjugate mirvetuximab soravtansine, given with bevacizumab, showed antitumor activity leading to durable responses in platinum-agnostic patients with strong expression of folate receptor alpha (FRα), researchers reported at the 2021 ASCO ...
Native Americans are among the most underserved minority populations in the United States and are disproportionately affected by cancer. They have the lowest survival rates for nearly all types of cancer of any minority population and much higher rates of certain types of cancer, including lung,...
Fixed-duration ibrutinib and venetoclax as a first-line treatment yielded superior outcomes compared with chlorambucil plus obinutuzumab in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), based on the primary analysis of the phase III GLOW trial presented during the European Hematology...
Commenting on the updated results of the MAIA trial1 for The ASCO Post was Philip McCarthy, MD, Professor of Oncology and Internal Medicine and Director of the Transplant and Cellular Therapy Center at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, Buffalo, New York. Dr. McCarthy described how the...
From a dramatic drop in caseloads to missed screenings and diagnoses as well as the emergence of telemedicine, COVID-19 turned the world of oncology upside down. During the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Virtual Oncology Policy Summit, “Defining the ‘New Normal’ 2021 and the State of...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Scott N. Gettinger, MD, and colleagues, the phase III Lung Cancer Master Protocol S1400I trial showed no improvement in overall survival with the addition of ipilimumab to nivolumab in previously treated, immune checkpoint inhibitor–naive patients with stage IV...
In advanced ovarian cancer, the duration of maintenance bevacizumab should remain 15 months, according to the European multicenter phase III ENGOT/GCIG trial. These results were presented during the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting by Jacobus Pfisterer, MD, PhD, of the AGO Study Group and Gynecologic...
In the phase III IPATential150 trial reported in The Lancet, Christopher Sweeney, MD, and colleagues found that the addition of the AKT inhibitor ipatasertib to abiraterone and prednisolone produced a significant improvement in progression-free survival among patients with metastatic...
In a Swedish cohort study reported in JAMA Surgery, de Boniface et al found that breast-conserving surgery plus radiation therapy for women with breast cancer was associated with better survival vs mastectomy with or without radiotherapy in analysis adjusting for comorbidities and socioeconomic...
A study from the UNC Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention (HPDP) estimates that annual costs associated with metastatic breast cancer treatment among women in the United States will total $152.4 billion in 2030—nearly two and a half times the estimate for 2015 costs—due to an increase ...
In a Swiss phase II trial (SAKK 16/14) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Rothschild et al found that the addition of perioperative durvalumab to neoadjuvant cisplatin/docetaxel resulted in a high major pathologic response rate and an event-free survival rate of 73% in patients with...
As reported in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology by Christian Rolfo, MD, PhD, and colleagues, the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) has issued a consensus statement on the use of liquid biopsy in advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Select recommendations are...
During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, elective medical procedures, including screenings for breast cancer, were curtailed to prioritize urgent medical needs and reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus in health-care settings. A study showed that, as of May 2020, preventive...
Long-term analysis of the Short-HER trial showed that 9 weeks of adjuvant trastuzumab conveyed benefits comparable to a 1-year course in patients with early HER2-positive breast cancer deemed to be at low or intermediate risk for recurrence. High-risk patients, however, derived considerably more...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Sperger et al found that use of a novel liquid biopsy technology resulted in identification of a prognostic transcriptional profile in circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from patients with metastatic prostate cancer. The profile was prognostic...
Obese patients with colorectal cancer receive lower cumulative doses of adjuvant chemotherapy relative to their body surface area than nonobese patients, according to results from a large meta-analysis reported by Slawinski et al at the ESMO World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer 2021 (Abstract...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Marcia S. Brose, MD, and colleagues, the phase III COSMIC-311 trial has shown that cabozantinib produced a numerically higher objective response rate and significantly prolonged progression-free survival vs placebo in patients with previously treated,...
In a phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, John Mascarenhas, MD, and colleagues found that treatment with the telomerase inhibitor imetelstat at a dose of 9.4 mg/kg produced clinical benefit in patients with relapsed or refractory myelofibrosis after Janus-associated kinase...
India has witnessed a major paradigm shift in the field of breast cancer and its management over the past 4 decades. The discipline of medical oncology has evolved exponentially over this period—a growth that few other scientific disciplines have experienced. Interventions at the individual,...
In a single-institution study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Ellen K. Chang, MD, of the Division of Hematology/Oncology, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and colleagues found that atrial fibrillation occurs in a substantial proportion of patients who have undergone allogeneic...
Perhaps my 35-year career as a surgical oncologist and researcher specializing in soft-tissue sarcomas should have prepared me to recognize the signs of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) when they first appeared a few days before Christmas in 2016, but it did not. In fact, my symptoms were so...
For the second-line treatment of advanced EGFR T790M–mutated non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the performance of osimertinib alone was not found to be different from that of osimertinib plus bevacizumab in the phase II ETOP 10-16 BOOSTER trial, reported at a European Society for Medical...
“Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.” –Kahlil Gibran To complement The ASCO Post’s continued comprehensive coverage of the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting &...
The novel, selective BCL2 inhibitor lisaftoclax (APG-2575) has shown activity in the treatment of relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) in a phase I study reported at the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 Preliminary data suggest that lisaftoclax stands out for its favorable safety...
Invited discussant Jacqueline C. Barrientos, MD, MS, of Northwell Health Cancer Institute, Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell in Great Neck, New York, noted that, although both ibrutinib and venetoclax have shown superior results to chemotherapy, each drug is associated with toxicity....
In this installment of the occasional department on Global Health-Care Equity, Guest Editor, Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with Augusto Leon, MD, a surgical oncologist and Head of the Program of Cancer at Pontifical University of Chile, Santiago. Dr. Are is JL & CJ Varner...
Although we are just halfway through 2021, the outlook for improvements in global cancer trends looks grim. According to new estimates by the International Agency for Research on Cancer’s Global Cancer Observatory, the global cancer burden rose to 19.3 million cases and 10 million deaths in 2020...
The results of Cohort 1 of the phase II trial TROPHY-U-01 (IMMU-132-06; ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT03547973), published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Tagawa et al and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, led to the recent accelerated U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)...
In a cohort of the phase II TROPHY-U-01 trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Scott T. Tagawa, MD, MS, of Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, and colleagues, found that the antibody-drug conjugate sacituzumab govitecan-hziy produced durable responses in patients with metastatic...
Patients with multiple myeloma had a wide variety of responses to COVID-19 vaccines—in some cases, no detectable response at all—pointing to the need for antibody testing and precautions for these patients after vaccination, according to a study published by Van Oekelen et al in Cancer Cell. Mount...
In the phase Ib/II CARTITUDE-1 trial reported in The Lancet, Jesus G. Berdeja, MD, and colleagues found that ciltacabtagene autoleucel (cilta-cel), a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy with two B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA)-targeting single-domain antibodies, produced a high rate of...