As invited discussant of the GAMMA-1 trial, Martine Extermann, MD, PhD, of Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, Tampa, Florida, first commented on the “teaser” in the findings—the potential for benefit of andecaliximab in older patients. “The drug works better in older patients. As a...
The large phase III GAMMA-1 trial failed to replicate the encouraging findings from a previous smaller study of andecaliximab plus chemotherapy in untreated HER2-negative gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma, according to Manish A. Shah, MD, of Weill Cornell Medicine/New York...
KEYNOTE-181’s invited discussant, Harry H. Yoon, MD, Associate Professor of Oncology at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, said the findings have a “potentially immediate clinical impact” for second-line treatment of esophageal cancer, including esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and Siewert...
In the global phase III KEYNOTE-181 trial, pembrolizumab as second-line therapy for advanced esophageal cancer did not improve overall survival in the whole population, vs chemotherapy, but did improve survival for patients with strong expression of programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1),...
ELIHU H. ESTEY, MD, Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington and Director of Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) Clinical Research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, added that with these “robust” outcomes, future trial patients may “not be eager to wind up in the...
IN AN OPEN-LABEL phase I study of 153 patients newly diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and mutations in isocitrate dehydrogenase-1 (IDH1) or IDH2, treatment with standard chemotherapy plus the oral IDH inhibitors ivosidenib and enasidenib led to high response rates and possibly impressive ...
AT THE SAN ANTONIO Breast Cancer Symposium, several breast cancer experts interviewed by The ASCO Post noted that the approved dose of tamoxifen was arbitrarily set, and the optimal dose is actually unknown. Studies of lower-dose tamoxifen, therefore, are welcomed. Virginia G. Kaklamani, MD,...
A VERY LOW DOSE of tamoxifen—5 mg/d, given for 3 years rather than 5 years—halved the risk of breast cancer recurrence or new lesions over placebo in women with breast intraepithelial neoplasia, without producing the usual toxicities seen with the standard dose, Italian researchers reported at the...
The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2018 Congress featured an assortment of study findings, many with far-reaching clinical implications for the treatment of patients with various cancers. Many of these trials were covered in-depth in recent issues of The ASCO Post. Here, we present...
For patients with advanced melanoma, the concept of treating to disease progression does not always apply. With many patients responding to checkpoint inhibition for years, when can treatment be safely discontinued? This important clinical question was addressed at the European Society for Medical...
“Bringing pembrolizumab (Keytruda) early into therapy is a bold move,” commented the invited discussant of this trial, Charles G. Drake, MD, PhD, Professor of Oncology and Immunology at the Herbert Irving Cancer Center at Columbia University, New York. The study enrolled patients who can be cured...
The addition of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) to a chemoradiotherapy regimen yielded complete response rates of 85% in patients with human papillomavirus (HPV)-positive advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. These findings from a phase Ib study were presented at the 2018 Society for...
In interviews with The ASCO Post, Kenneth Shain, MD, PhD, Director of the Myeloma Working Group at Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, Florida, and Vincent Rajkumar, MD, Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, commented on the findings of the MAIA trial. “The study shows that...
In patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma who are not eligible for stem cell transplantation, the addition of daratumumab (Darzalex) to lenalidomide (Revlimid) and dexamethasone significantly reduced the risk of death or disease progression by 44%, according to a late-breaking abstract...
Commenting on the findings of the KATHERINE trial were Eric P. Winer, MD, Director of the Breast Oncology Program in the Susan F. Smith Center for Women’s Cancers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Thompson Senior Investigator in Breast Cancer Research andProfessor of Medicine at Harvard...
In patients with HER2-positive early breast cancer and residual disease after neoadjuvant chemotherapy, adjuvant treatment with trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1; Kadcyla) reduced the risk of invasive disease by 50% over trastuzumab (Herceptin).1 The phase III KATHERINE study was presented at the 2018...
JULIEN TAIEB, MD, Professor of Medicine at Paris Descartes University in France, said the MODUL cohort was based on a clear rationale for adding atezolizumab (Tecentriq) to bevacizumab (Avastin) in the metastatic colorectal cancer setting. In immunodeficient mice, the combination of an...
ADDING ATEZOLIZUMAB (Tecentriq) to a fluoropyrimidine plus bevacizumab (Avastin) did not improve outcomes for patients with BRAF wild-type metastatic colorectal cancer enrolled in the umbrella MODUL trial.1 “Despite activity in other, immune-responsive tumor types, there was no improvement in...
KEYNOTE-022’S invited discussant, Reinhard Dummer, MD, Professor of Dermatologic Oncology at the University Hospital Zurich Skin Cancer Center in Switzerland, told attendees, “We’ve been waiting for this small prospective randomized phase II trial, and the initial results appear very promising.”...
AS FIRST-LINE treatment of advanced BRAF-mutant melanoma, pembrolizumab (Keytruda) added to dabrafenib (Tafinlar) and trametinib (Mekinist) produced a nonsignificant improvement in progression-free survival. It also increased the rate of grade 3 to 5 treatment-related adverse events in the phase II ...
CARA HAYMAKER, PhD, of MD Anderson Cancer Center, said the researchers have made a “crucial” discovery: adoptive cellular therapy can be expanded beyond academic centers and be “taken to the masses.” Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes can now be manufactured and shipped to patients treated at centers...
STEVEN A. ROSENBERG, MD, PhD, Chief of Surgery at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), began his pioneering research in adoptive cell transfer using interleukin (IL)-2 in the mid-1970s. His IL-2 studies were among the clinical trials that led to the first U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval ...
AT THE 2018 Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Annual Meeting, Aung Naing, MD, FACP, of the Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, commented on studies evaluating novel drugs to be combined with programmed cell death ...
THE 2018 Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Annual Meeting hosted a meeting of the minds of the world’s premier cancer immunologists. In addition to the cutting-edge laboratory science explored and presented at the meeting, numerous phase I clinical trials and a few phase II studies offered ...
THE STUDY’S discussant, Susan M. O’Brien, MD, Associate Director for Clinical Science, Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of California Irvine Health, said the results of the Alliance North American Intergroup Study A041202—demonstrating that ibrutinib (Imbruvica) is more...
IBRUTINIB (IMBRUVICA) as a front-line agent proved superior to standard-of-care chemoimmunotherapy for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) in older patients in A041202, an Alliance-led National Clinical Trials Network study.1 At a follow-up of 38 months, the median progression-free survival was not ...
“The data are in, and they are clear and convincing. Palliative care leads to better outcomes for patients. The major challenge now is to make it part of standard cancer care everywhere in the United States and then everywhere else in the world, said Charles von Gunten, MD, PhD, a medical...
The study’s invited discussant, Sandro Pignata, MD, of the Istituto Nazionale Tumori di Napoli in Italy, called the data from AGO OVAR 2.21 “very strong.” He added: “We now have robust evidence from a trial of more than 600 patients, in which previous bevacizumab (Avastin) was allowed, that...
For patients with recurrent ovarian cancer who receive platinum-based retreatment, the more suitable partner for bevacizumab (Avastin) may be carboplatin plus pegylated liposomal doxorubicin, rather than carboplatin and gemcitabine, according to the results of a phase III ENGOT/GCIG Intergroup...
The paper’s invited discussant, Caroline Robert, MD, PhD, of the Institut de Cancérologie Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France, said OpACIN-neo attained its goal of reducing toxicity and maintaining efficacy. The regimen of two courses of ipilimumab (Yervoy) at 1 mg/kg plus nivolumab (Opdivo) at 3...
In patients with stage III melanoma, a reduced-dose neoadjuvant immunotherapy combination was well tolerated and led to high pathologic response rates, in the phase II OpACIN-neo trial presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2018 Congress.1 “Neoadjuvant ipilimumab (Yervoy) at...
Invited discussant Jean-Pascal Machiels, MD, PhD, Head of the Department of Medical Oncology at the Cliniques universitaires Saint-Luc, UCLouvain, Brussels, called the study “very important,” especially for showing that in patients with high expression of programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1),...
An overall survival advantage has now been shown for first-line immunotherapy in recurrent or metastatic head and neck cancer, researchers reported at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2018 Congress.1 In the phase III KEYNOTE-048 trial, treatment with the anti–programmed cell death...
The invited discussant for the CheckMate-142 findings was Julien Taieb, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine at Paris Descartes University in France. Dr. Taieb called the findings “impressive” but said longer follow-up is needed, especially since median outcomes have not yet been reached. After a...
In previously untreated patients with metastatic colorectal cancer and tumors demonstrating microsatellite instability–high (MSI-high) or mismatch repair deficiency (dMMR), immunotherapy with nivolumab (Opdivo) and low-dose ipilimumab (Yervoy) produced a durable clinical benefit in the...
In a small study of patients with early-stage colon cancer, neoadjuvant ipilimumab (Yervoy) plus nivolumab (Opdivo) produced major pathologic responses in 100% of patients with mismatch repair (MMR)-deficient tumors but in none of the patients with MMR-proficient tumors, researchers reported at the ...
Serving as European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) expert at a press briefing, Nadia Harbeck, MD, PhD, Head of the Breast Center at the University of Munich, called the findings “practice-changing” in some parts of the world and “practice-reinforcing” in others. She said the 10-month...
Much anticipated overall survival data for palbociclib (Ibrance) plus fulvestrant (Faslodex) in advanced breast cancer were presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2018 Congress.1 Although overall survival in PALOMA-3 was not designed to detect a statistically significant...
Three leading oncology practices have united with partners in technology and finance to launch OneOncology, a physician-driven company that aims to unite more than 225 community oncology providers from 60-plus locations. Altogether, OneOncology will treat nearly 158,000 cancer patients a year. The...
“IMPASSION130 IS a positive study of immuno-oncology that brings breast cancer into the immunotherapy era,” said the invited discussant of the trial, Giuseppe Curigliano, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Oncology at the University of Milan and Chair of Early Drug Development at the Institute of...
IMMUNOTHERAPY APPEARS to be the new upfront standard of care for patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, based on a late-breaking presentation at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2018 Congress1 and simultaneously published in The New England Journal of Medicine.2 In ...
“Patients with follicular lymphoma who relapse early after treatment are a minority of patients, fortunately, but they are clearly patients with a different disease,” according to Jonathon B. Cohen, MD, of Emory University School of Medicine. At Emory’s 2018 Debates and Didactics in Hematology and...
The Beat AML Master Clinical Trial seeks to change the treatment paradigm and outcomes in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) by personalizing therapy and ultimately facilitating the approval of novel targeted agents. Co-investigator William Blum, MD, of the Winship Cancer Institute at the Emory...
AS MORE is learned about the genomic landscape in non-Hodgkin lymphoma, clinicians are grappling with how to apply this information in the clinic. At the 2018 Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference, Andrew D. Zelenetz, MD, PhD, helped them understand this emerging area.1 Dr. Zelenetz is Professor of...
As novel therapies come on board for treating relapsed or refractory Hodgkin lymphoma, the field is advancing toward more personalized therapy. The goal, even in the advanced-disease setting, is to increase the chances of complete response and negative positron-emission tomography (PET), while...
Matthew S. Davids, MD, MMSc, is the recipient of the first James O. Armitage Clinical Investigator Award, presented at the 2018 Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference in July in Maui. Dr. Davids is Director of the Lymphoma BioBank and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and...
Although many agents have been able to successfully inhibit the proliferative capacity of cancer cells or disable mutations that spur cancer growth, one area that has proven elusive is the apoptotic pathway—the cell’s means of resisting death. That is until recently. Dysregulation of B-cell...
Although programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) blockade is highly effective in Hodgkin lymphoma, not all patients respond, and not all responses are durable. Stephen M. Ansell, MD, PhD, Chair of the Mayo Clinic Lymphoma Group and Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, described...
FOR THE TREATMENT of lymphoma, antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) are becoming an important class of drugs, as described at the 2018 Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference by Brad Kahl, MD, Professor of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis.1 “We have one ADC—brentuximab vedotin...
THE EMERGENCE of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has sparked a wave of optimism in hematologic malignancies, but as experience in using CAR T-cell therapy has grown, new challenges have surfaced. A pioneer in the field, David G. Maloney, MD, PhD, enlightened attendees on these issues ...