The American Society of Hematology (ASH) will honor James R. Downing, MD, of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, with the 2017 E. Donnall Thomas Lecture and Prize for his discoveries related to the hematopathology and molecular biology of childhood leukemia. This lectureship and prize is named...
Cancer memoirs come in a variety of literary styles and voices. Not surprisingly, the most poignant cancer memoirs are by those who are writing, in essence, their final words before departing this earth. The most widely read of that variety has been the beautifully written best seller When Breath...
THE U.S. FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION (FDA) approved a number of novel drugs and new indications in November 2017. Several of them are listed here. Fulvestrant/Abemaciclib Combination in Breast Cancer ON NOVEMBER 15 , the FDA approved fulvestrant (Faslodex) in combination with abemaciclib...
MORE THAN A QUARTER of patients with recurrent high-grade glioma treated with the retroviral vector Toca 511 and the prodrug of the chemotherapy fluorouracil (5-FU), Toca FC, were alive more than 3 years after treatment, according to data from a subset of patients in a phase I clinical trial, Toca ...
INTENSE MEDIA COVERAGE of the opioid crisis has ranged from the dire statistics of addiction and death to some hopeful stories of treatment and recovery, but what may raise questions and concerns are the reports of people who start with a prescription opioid and then in a few weeks or months are...
“WE’VE GOT A CHALLENGING TIME right now, trying to relieve pain during the time of an opioid epidemic,” Judith A. Paice, RN, PhD, acknowledged at the 2017 Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium in Chicago.1 She cited a recent study reporting that up to 40% of cancer survivors are living with pain, and...
THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF HEMATOLOGY (ASH) will honor Luigi Naldini, MD, PhD, of the San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy in Milan, and Marina Cavazzana, MD, PhD, of Paris Descartes University, Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital, and Imagine Institute of Genetic Diseases, AP-HP, Inserm in...
On October 12, 2017, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and 11 leading biopharmaceutical companies launched the Partnership for Accelerating Cancer Therapies (PACT), a 5-year public-private research collaboration totaling $215 million as part of the Cancer Moonshot. PACT will initially focus...
Timothy Gilligan, MD, FASCO, Co-Chair of ASCO’s Expert Panel on Patient-Physician Communications Guideline and Vice-Chair for Education and Associate Professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute, spends half of his professional time treating patients with urologic...
The Perlmutter Cancer Center at New York University (NYU) Langone Health, a National Cancer Institute–designated center, has announced the creation of a new interdisciplinary center bringing together new and existing programs to study, diagnose, treat, and prevent the nation’s leading cancer: lung ...
In September 2017, ASCO published a new guideline in the Journal of Clinical Oncology that outlines best practices for communicating effectively with patients and their family members.1 The guideline is the result of recommendations from a multidisciplinary panel of experts in a number of fields,...
Although it has long been known that certain cancer types disproportionately affect individuals from underserved and underrepresented populations, the sources of these disparities are still not entirely clear. In a “Facebook Live” session at the 2017 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)...
Staying up-to-date with peer-reviewed oncology literature is a daunting task. To assist readers, The ASCO Post has summarized a number of studies recently published in the Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP) and the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO). Survival as Quality Metric in Cancer Care In a...
Individuals and organizations looking to contribute to advancements in metastatic breast cancer research can now do so by participating in Susan G. Komen’s inaugural crowdfunding initiative. Through this initiative, donors have the opportunity to contribute directly to the pioneering work of four...
A deeper understanding of biology has allowed significant advances in the treatment of breast cancer. In the early-stage setting, standard pathology measures can help identify which subset of patients with hormone receptor–positive breast cancers are more likely to experience benefit from...
THE AMERICAN SOCIETY of Hematology (ASH) will recognize Josef T. Prchal, MD, of the University of Utah, and Sherrill J. Slichter, MD, of Bloodworks Northwest and the University of Washington, with the 2017 Henry M. Stratton Medal for their seminal contributions in the areas of basic and clinical/ ...
THE AMERICAN Society of Hematology (ASH) will present the 2017 William Dameshek Prize to Benjamin L. Ebert, MD, PhD, of Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute for his seminal discoveries in multiple areas of nonmalignant and malignant hematology....
As reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, Losk and colleagues from Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center report their institution’s implementation of a protocol of surgeon-initiated genomic profiling of estrogen receptor–positive tumors in women with early breast cancer that resulted in ...
The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy announced that researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have joined its network. Dana-Farber brings a team of experts who will collaborate with Parker Institute investigators to enhance and expand research projects and clinical trials. Dana-Farber’s...
AT THE 2017 ASCO ANNUAL MEETING, the leaders of the newly formed Value in Cancer Care Consortium (vi3c; vi3c.org) met to discuss the group’s plan to study how to improve the affordability of cancer drugs and make them more accessible to patients. The goal of the Value in Cancer Care Consortium is...
A new electronic curriculum delivered via e-mail with push technology may provide an efficient, cost-effective solution to the shortage of palliative care faculty serving the nation’s oncology fellowship programs. According to data presented at the 2017 Palliative and Supportive Care in Oncology...
For 50 years, clinicians in the United States have had a legal duty to disclose to patients with cancer the risks, benefits, and alternatives to a proposed cancer treatment. Until recently, however, it has been unclear whether clinicians have a similar duty to discuss the costs of that treatment....
THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF HEMATOLOGY (ASH) has elected Stephanie Lee, MD, MPH, a member of the Clinical Research Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Fred Hutch), as its Vice President. Dr. Lee will begin her 1-year term after the 2017 ASH Annual Meeting & Exposition in December...
NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE (NCI) researchers have found that for the most common high-risk type of human papillomavirus (HPV) to cause cervical cancer, an important viral gene may need to have a precise DNA sequence. The findings, published by Mirabello et al in Cell,1 contribute to a better...
Addressing the need to integrate palliative and supportive care practices into medical specialties to ensure optimal patient-centered care across the cancer continuum and the evidence-based remedies to accomplish that goal were the focus of the nearly 300 study abstracts presented at the 2017...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies commonly used by patients with cancer. In this installment, Sheila N. Garland, PhD, R Psych, and Jun J. Mao, MD, MSCE, present...
In recognition of her work in value-based care, Barbara McAneny, MD, FASCO, MACP, was honored with the Annual Achievement Award of the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC). Her work in developing the grant-funded COME HOME oncology medical home initiative demonstrated reduced costs and...
The Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation (ALCF) and the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) announced they have awarded $300,000 in research funding to a Johns Hopkins University investigator studying the genetics of lung cancer. According to the organizations, Johns ...
Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah has announced David Gaffney, MD, PhD, as Senior Director for Clinical Research. In this position, Dr. Gaffney will oversee Huntsman Cancer Institute’s clinical research efforts, which include more than 200 active clinical cancer trials at...
On October 1, 2017, nutritional epidemiologist Marian Neuhouser, PhD, RD, became head of the Cancer Prevention Program in the Public Health Sciences Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Fred Hutch). She replaces Acting Program Head Johanna Lampe, PhD, RD, Associate Director of...
Action to Cure Kidney Cancer (ACKC) was instrumental in securing a $10 million line item for the Kidney Cancer Research Program as part of the Department of Defense’s Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP). This represents the largest increase ever in the...
Seattle Children’s has opened the first chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell immunotherapy trial in the U.S. for children and young adults with relapsed or refractory CD19- and CD22-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) that will simultaneously attack two targets on cancer cells. With ...
A RECENTLY PUBLISHED STUDY in JAMA Oncology, led by Mohamed Sorror, MD, MSc, and Elihu Estey, MD, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Fred Hutch), involving five collaborating institutions, provides a novel model to predict 1-year survival rates of patients after beginning treatment...
CHILDREN WITH relapsed or refractory malignant rhabdoid tumors, epithelioid sarcomas, or poorly differentiated chordomas with a particular genetic defect were treated with the investigational drug tazemetostat and appeared to tolerate treatment well. Some patients had objective and durable...
MOFFITT CANCER CENTER recently announced that Andriy Marusyk, PhD, was awarded a $450,000 research grant from Susan G. Komen. Dr. Marusyk is receiving 1 of 37 research grants looking into novel treatments for aggressive types of breast cancer. This year, Susan G. Komen is focusing on new...
Oncologists are apt to give patients the worst news of their lives: You have cancer. Yet studies show that, by and large, despite the stressful aspects of treating people with a life-threatening disease, oncologists report one of the highest percentages of professional satisfaction among medical...
THE NATIONAL CANCER INSTITUTE (NCI) Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice (MATCH) clinical trial has achieved the goal of screening nearly 6,000 patients in just under 2 years, according to data presented at the 2017 American Association for Cancer Research–NCI–European Organisation for Research...
Bloodless stem cell transplantation, performed without the transfusion of allogeneic blood or blood products, has numerous clinical advantages, especially among populations of patients who prefer, for religious or other reasons, no blood methods of medical and surgical treatment. Patricia A. Ford, ...
ANGELA M. STOVER, PhD, Assistant Professor in Health Policy and Management at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Gillings School of Global Public Health, has won the 2017 Michael S. O’Malley Alumni Award for Publication in Excellence in Cancer Population Sciences. She was selected for her...
ARIF KAMAL, MD, MBA, MHS, Associate Professor of Medicine and Business Administration and Physician Director of Quality at the Duke Cancer Institute, was recently named by the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine as 1 of the 30 most influential leaders in hospice and palliative...
ON OCTOBER 18, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved axicabtagene ciloleucel (Yescarta), a cell-based gene therapy, to treat adult patients with certain types of large B-cell lymphoma who have not responded to or who have relapsed after at least two other kinds of treatment....
According to Alberto Sobrero, MD, Head of Medical Oncology at Ospedale San Martino in Genova, Italy, the results of the pivotal IDEA trial, which evaluated the optimal duration of adjuvant chemotherapy for stage III colon cancer, were not clear to clinicians.1 The combined analysis of six...
CANCERLINQ LLC, a wholly owned nonprofit subsidiary of ASCO, has announced that West Cancer Center in Tennessee has signed an agreement to participate in the CancerLinQ® platform. “The CancerLinQ® rapid learning system continues to be enriched through the participation of remarkable cancer care...
VISIT ASCO’S patient information website, Cancer.Net, for comprehensive information on understanding bone marrow/stem cell transplantation, donating bone marrow, and extensive information for caregivers. Stock your practice with copies of the ASCO Answers Guide to Caregiving and Understanding...
SIXTEEN DISTINGUISHED ASCO members have been selected by the ASCO Nominating Committee as candidates for open leadership positions within the Society, including: The offices of President-Elect and Treasurer Four seats on the Society’s Board of Directors Two seats on the Nominating Committee...
EARLIER THIS FALL, Congress voted to pass a 3-month Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the government, while the House of Representatives and the Senate work to finalize a Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 funding bill. The CR, viewed as a temporary measure to keep the federal government operating, keeps...
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, marks the 6th consecutive year of #GivingTuesday, a global day of giving that celebrates philanthropy. Taking place on the heels of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, #GivingTuesday serves as a reminder that the holiday season is about giving back as well as giving gifts. Those...
Howard A. “Skip” Burris III, MD, FACP, FASCO, of Sarah Cannon and Tennessee Oncology, and Therese Marie Mulvey, MD, FASCO, of Massachusetts General Hospital North Shore Cancer Center, were selected by the ASCO Nominating Committee as candidates for ASCO President-Elect. Below, the candidates share...
RECOMMENDATIONS FROM an ASCO “Summit on Addressing Obesity Through Multidisciplinary Collaboration” have been published in a new article in the journal Obesity. The recommendations cover four key areas in response to the current issues providers face in addressing obesity prevention and treatment...
The ASCO Nominating Committee, which is itself elected by ASCO members, is charged with selecting candidates for future Society leadership. This job is both a great pleasure and a real challenge, since ASCO has so many dedicated members who have the desire, insight, and ability to lead our...