Regular exercise appears to help mitigate the increased cardiovascular risk faced by women treated for breast cancer, according to a study scheduled for presentation at the American College of Cardiology's 66th Annual Scientific Session (ACC.17). The study found that women with breast cancer who...
Cedars-Sinai investigators have identified a stem cell–regulating gene that affects tumor growth in patients with brain cancer and can strongly influence survival rates of patients. The findings, published by Edwards et al in Nature Scientific Reports, could move physicians closer to their...
In a Dutch study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Hummel et al found that use of an Internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy intervention improved sexual functioning among breast cancer survivors. Study Details In the study, 169 women with a diagnosis of sexual dysfunction from 10 ...
In the UK phase III LUNGSTAR study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Seckl et al found that adding pravastatin to first-line standard chemotherapy did not improve overall survival in patients with small cell lung cancer (SCLC). Numerous large prospective cohort and registry studies...
On January 19, ibrutinib (Imbruvica) was granted accelerated approved for treatment of patients with marginal zone lymphoma who require systemic therapy and have received at least one prior anti-CD20–based therapy.1 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was based on overall response rate in a...
Diffuse infiltrating low-grade gliomas include oligodendrogliomas and astrocytomas and account for about 5% of all primary brain tumors. Treatment strategies for these low-grade gliomas in adults have recently changed, as detailed in a recent review in the Journal of Oncology Practice.1 The...
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (RSAS) has decided to award the inaugural Sjöberg Prize 2017 to James P. Allison, PhD, Professor and Vivian L. Smith Distinguished Chair in Immunology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Tony Hunter, PhD, American Cancer Society...
It’s no secret that cancer drug costs have skyrocketed out of control, with some treatments costing as much as $100,000 to $200,000 per year and even upward. This has put tremendous strain on the U.S. health-care system, while causing financial toxicity and bankruptcy for many patients. Peter B....
In the phase II Active8 trial, a novel immunotherapy agent, motolimod, failed to improve outcomes over chemotherapy plus cetuximab (Erbitux) in patients with recurrent or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. In a post hoc analysis, however, patients with injection-site...
Richard ‘Rick’ Boulay, MDChief of Gynecologic Oncology Institution: Lehigh Valley Health Network Member since: 2016 Three years ago, Richard ‘Rick’ Boulay, MD, Chief of Gynecologic Oncology at Lehigh Valley Health Network, walked onto the stage at TEDx Lehigh River and confronted his audience...
Chronic viral hepatitis is a major causative factor for hepatocellular carcinoma, but antiviral therapy might reduce the incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma by preventing or eliminating chronic hepatitis infections, according to Adrian M. Di Bisceglie, MD, Professor of Internal Medicine at Saint ...
A new study by researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center–Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC– James) has identified a mechanism by which cancer cells develop resistance to a class of drugs called fibroblast growth...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Shaikh et al, of the Children’s Oncology Group, found that event-free survival rates were not maintained with the use of reduced and compressed cisplatin-based regimens in children and adolescents with intermediate-risk extracranial...
In the phase II extension component of the phase I/II AURA trial, reported by Yang et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, osimertinib (Tagrisso) was found to be highly active in epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitor–pretreated T790M-positive advanced...
In the Spanish phase II PAMELA study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Llombart-Cussac et al found that the HER2-enriched subtype was associated with the highest likelihood of pathologic complete response after neoadjuvant trastuzumab (Herceptin) and lapatinib (Tykerb) without chemotherapy in...
A widely reported study found that cervical cancer mortality was higher and the racial disparity between black and white women greater than previously reported.1 The study omitted from the mortality estimates those women who had undergone hysterectomies, usually involving removal of the cervix....
Cervical cancer mortality rates were significantly higher, particularly among black women, when national data were corrected to exclude women who have had hysterectomies. For black women, the cervical cancer mortality rate rose from 5.7 to 10.1 per 100,000 when corrected for hysterectomy, an...
“This is a big deal. This is going to change all of oncology, not just head and neck cancer,”1 Tanguy Seiwert, MD, remarked following a summary by Jeffrey Sosman, MD, on advances in immunotherapy for treating cancer.2 Dr. Sosman, Director of the Melanoma Program and Clinical Director of Cancer...
Immunotherapy has been a major advance in lung cancer, but it is not without its challenges, according to Sanjay Popat, PhD, FRCP, a consultant medical oncologist and reader in cancer medicine at the Royal Marsden Hospital, London, UK. He reviewed some of the challenges pertaining to the use of...
As reported by Elizabeth R. Plimack, MD, of Fox Chase Cancer Center, Temple Health, and colleagues in The Lancet Oncology, pembrolizumab (Keytruda) has shown activity in patients in the locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma cohort included in the phase Ib KEYNOTE-012 trial. In the...
In a phase II trial (Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group–American College of Radiology Imaging Network Cancer Research Group E3205) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Garg et al found that the addition of cetuximab (Erbitux) to definitive chemoradiotherapy appeared to reduce the rates of...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Pearlman et al found that 16% of patients with early-onset colorectal cancer had germline cancer susceptibility mutations, with a wide array of such mutations being identified. Heather Hampel, MS, CGC, of The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center,...
The news that I had breast cancer came at an especially difficult time in my life and was quite shocking to hear. My father had died of lung cancer just 1 month before my diagnosis, and I was still grieving his death when I suddenly had to confront my own mortality. In retrospect, the diagnosis...
If you Google the search term “breast cancer,” about 155,000,000 results will pop up in .83 seconds. Add to that pamphlets, journal articles, and library shelves bending under the weight of books written about breast cancer. That’s a mind-bending amount of information to parse through for the...
A multicenter study of North American testicular cancer survivors treated with platinum-based chemotherapy has found a high prevalence of metabolic syndrome, a cluster of cardiovascular risk factors that doubles the risk of cardiovascular disease.1 According to the results of this trial,...
Last year’s inaugural Cancer Survivorship Symposium stressed the importance of bringing together the fields of medical oncology and primary care to ensure a coordinated effort to help patients with cancer transition to long-term survivorship care. Building on that goal, the 2017 Cancer Survivorship ...
Speaking at the 2016 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, before the hold on pacritinib was lifted (in January 2017), Selina Luger, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, commented, “I think the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) needs to revisit ...
The investigational drug pacritinib met the primary endpoint of the phase III PERSIST-2 trial in high-risk patients with myelofibrosis and thrombocytopenia. Treatment with the Janus kinase (JAK)1/2 inhibitor pacritinib achieved a significant reduction in spleen volume compared with best available...
For patients with multiple myeloma, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is gaining ground in pilot studies. At the 2016 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, researchers presented their latest findings for this innovative therapy, which has proven...
In the international phase III FALCON trial, reported in The Lancet, John F.R. Robertson, MD, of the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom, and colleagues found that progression-free survival was improved with intramuscular fulvestrant (Faslodex) vs oral anastrozole in endocrine therapy–naive...
Sandra J. Horning, MD, Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President of Global Development for Roche/Genentech, was named the 2017 recipient of the Duane Roth Memorial Award. The award was presented February 16 at the annual Industry/Academia Translational Oncology Symposium at the University ...
To summarize the lessons learned from the development of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-targeted therapy, one only has to go back about 10 years, according to Frances A. Shepherd, MD, Scott Taylor Chair in Lung Cancer Research at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and Professor of Medicine at ...
In a rigorous study of tumor tissue collected from 125 patients with aggressive brain cancers, researchers at Johns Hopkins said they have found no evidence of cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection and concluded that a link between the two diseases, as claimed by earlier reports, likely does not exist. A ...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Fung et al found that although adverse health outcomes were common among testicular cancer survivors, there did not appear to be differences in such outcomes according to chemotherapy regimens commonly used to treat favorable-risk disease....
Combining immunotherapies with each other or with other agents such as chemotherapy and growth factor inhibitors holds promise for better tapping their benefit in patients with lung cancer, data from several studies suggest. Results show that strategic combinations can achieve higher response...
Although “treatment advances” and “precision medicine” are today’s buzz words in oncology, they don’t apply equally to all malignancies. For instance, median overall survival for newly diagnosed patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer has not improved much over the past 20 years, according to...
An older trial designed to evaluate the benefits of adjuvant therapy following radical prostatectomy in patients with high-risk prostate cancer showed no difference in overall or disease-free survival between 2 years of androgen-deprivation therapy and 2 years of androgen-deprivation therapy plus...
A novel approach using intravesical gene therapy showed promising activity in a phase II trial that enrolled patients with bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG)-refractory or -relapsed nonmuscle invasive bladder cancer.1 The rate of high-grade relapse-free survival at 12 months was 35% in patients treated ...
Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection worldwide. It affects 80% of individuals, with the initial infection usually occurring between the ages of 15 and 24. Persistent infection with oncogenic HPV genotypes, primarily 16 and 18, is the cause of virtually all...
In 1995, Matthew Zachary, an aspiring concert pianist and composer, was en route to graduate school to study film composition when he lost all fine-motor coordination in his left hand, was diagnosed with pediatric brain cancer (medulloblastoma), told he would never play again, and was given 6...
Endocrine therapy for breast cancer has evolved over the years. Initial endocrine therapies consisted of ablative procedures (oophorectomy, adrenalectomy, and hypophysectomy). With the availability of pharmaceutical estrogens, progestins, and androgens, ablative procedure utilization begin to...
In a study reported at the 2017 Quality Care Symposium by Zheng et al (Abstract 3) and published in the Journal of Oncology Practice by Jackman et al, researchers explored the use of clinical pathways to support clinical decision-making and manage resources for patients with late-stage...
In a single-institution study reported in the Journal of Oncology Practice, de Souza et al found that two-thirds of patients with locally advanced head and neck cancer had to use a financial coping strategy to help pay for care within the first 6 months of treatment. Study Details The study...
In a phase I study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Aggarwal et al found evidence that the histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor abexinostat may act to reverse resistance to the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) inhibitor pazopanib (Votrient) via epigenetic modulation of VEGF in ...
In a phase II trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Morris et al found that nivolumab (Opdivo) was active in previously treated unresectable metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the anal canal. This malignancy is associated with human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, with the rationale for...
A study by researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center investigating factors associated with slow participant accrual into phase I to III cancer clinical trials at their institution has found trials initiated through national cooperative groups and the time taken from trial...
Exercise and/or psychological therapy may work better than medications to reduce cancer-related fatigue and should be recommended first to patients, according to a Wilmot Cancer Institute-led study published by Mustian et al in JAMA Oncology. “If a [patient with cancer] is having trouble...
In a prospective cohort study reported in JAMA, Rugo et al found that use of a scalp-cooling device reduced hair loss in women receiving nonanthracycline chemotherapy for early-stage breast cancer. Study Details In the study, 101 evaluable patients from 5 U.S. centers with stage I or II breast...
In a single-institution experience reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Gershenson et al at MD Anderson Cancer Center found that hormonal maintenance therapy was associated with improved progression-free survival among women with stage II to IV low-grade serous carcinoma of the ovary or...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Borchmann et al, a phase III German Hodgkin Study Group trial in advanced Hodgkin lymphoma showed no progression-free survival benefit of adding rituximab (Rituxan) in patients with positive positron-emission tomography (PET) findings after two courses (PET-2)...