Law and Ethics in Oncology explores the legal and ethical issues oncologists must be aware of in this era of precision medicine and changing health-care policy, both to protect patients’ rights and to safeguard against potential legal jeopardy. Increasingly, across the United States, hospitals are...
TOPLINE RESULTS of the phase III ARROW trial (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT02412878) were recently announced by Amgen. The study showed carfilzomib (Kyprolis) administered once weekly at 70 mg/m2 with dexamethasone allowed patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma to live 3.6 months ...
OBESE PATIENTS with metastatic melanoma who are treated with targeted or immune therapies live significantly longer than those with a normal body mass index (BMI), according to a study published in The Lancet Oncology of 1,918 patients in 6 independent clinical cohorts.1 This effect—referred to as ...
AS REPORTED in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Arlene A. Forastiere, MD, of The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, and colleagues, ASCO has issued a clinical practice guideline update on the use of larynx-preservation strategies in the treatment of laryngeal cancer.1...
SINCE SEPTEMBER 2017, the national nonprofit organization CancerCare has raised nearly $665,000 to provide direct financial assistance for people with cancer who have been impacted by hurricanes. The majority of this support has been allocated to people with cancer in Puerto Rico, many of whom are...
FEBRUARY 4 was World Cancer Day, which raises awareness for the millions of people worldwide facing unequal access to cancer detection, treatment, and care services. Oncology leaders, health-care professionals, and supporters across the world are pushing for urgent action to reduce the rate of...
As reported by Petrylak et al in JAMA Oncology, long-term follow-up of patients in a phase I study expansion cohort indicated enduring clinical benefit and maintained tolerability of atezolizumab (Tecentriq) in patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma. Study Details The study involved...
In a study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Kleppe et al found that a novel marker for chromatin organization in tumor cell nuclei was associated with outcome in a variety of cancer types. Study Details In the study, machine learning algorithms analyzed chromatin organization in 461,000 images of ...
In a European phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Dimopoulos et al found that pomalidomide (Pomalyst) plus low-dose dexamethasone produced responses in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma and renal impairment. Study Details In the study, 81 patients with ...
Combining ultrasound imaging with a blood test for high alpha fetoprotein levels may improve detection of early-stage liver cancer by as much as 40%, researchers at UT Southwestern’s Simmons Cancer Center found. Their findings were presented by Tzartzeva et al in Gastroenterology....
A family history of breast cancer continues to significantly increase chances of developing invasive breast tumors in women aged 65 years and older, according to research published by Braithwaite et al in JAMA Internal Medicine. The findings could impact mammography screening decisions later in...
Carrie R. Howell, PhD, of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, discusses study findings on a web-based exercise intervention for adolescent survivors, who are at increased risk for obesity and metabolic syndrome. The program was designed to improve fitness, cognition, and quality of life...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Roemer et al found that programmed death cell ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression and major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II positivity on Hodgkin Reed-Sternberg (HRS) cells may predict favorable outcome with programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1)...
When Yelak Biru was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 1995, he and his physicians had one main posttreatment goal: to detect and treat any relapse early and to prolong survival as long as possible with the limited drugs available. Then, in the early 2000s, came newer treatments. Myeloma survival...
On January 30, Bellicum Pharmaceuticals announced it has received notice from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that U.S. studies of BPX-501—an agent being studied to improve outcomes for patients undergoing stem cell transplant who lack a matched donor—have been placed on a clinical hold ...
“The simple questions are whether ovarian function suppression adds clinical benefit in premenopausal women, and is ovarian function suppression better with an aromatase inhibitor or tamoxifen,” said formal discussant of these trials, Ann H. Partridge, MD, MPH, FASCO, Professor of Medicine at...
Temporary ovarian suppression during chemotherapy as a means of preserving ovarian function and fertility in young women with early breast cancer is controversial. An eagerly awaited meta-analysis including individual patient data from five randomized controlled trials found that the use of...
Matthew J. Ellis, MB, PhD, Director of the Lester and Sue Smith Breast Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, commented on the POETIC trial for The ASCO Post. “This is a wonderful study that validates a point that our research team has also made over the years—that Ki67 is much more...
Updated analysis from the United Kingdom’s POETIC trial found no evidence that perioperative aromatase inhibitor therapy slows or prevents time to recurrence of breast cancer. However, the study did show that tumor Ki67 levels after 2 weeks of perioperative aromatase inhibitor therapy are...
We have covered many of the important presentations from the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in the pages of The ASCO Post and in our online Evening News. Here are summaries of additional noteworthy studies presented at the meeting. We hope you will find them of interest. Predicting...
“To what extent do treatments for prostate cancer impact sexual functioning? To a great extent,” Christian Nelson, PhD, Chief, Psychiatry Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, told participants at the 11th Annual Oncofertility Consortium Conference in Chicago.1 Most men with...
The BBVA Foundation awarded its Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Biomedicine category to American immunologist James P. Allison, PhD, whose innovative research has almost single-handedly transformed cancer treatment. His seminal research in immunotherapy has paved the way for the development of ...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Gregory P. Kalemkerian, MD, and colleagues, ASCO has endorsed the College of American Pathologists (CAP), International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), and Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP) updated guideline on molecular...
An international group of clinicians and scientists representing the Clinical Pharmacogenetics Implementation Consortium (CPIC) published the first-ever clinical practice guidelines for using CYP2D6 genotype to guide tamoxifen therapy. Their research was published by Goetz et al in Clinical...
As innovations in immunotherapies multiply, cancer programs and practices must overcome care coordination and communication challenges across the nation’s health-care system to integrate these advances into effective patient care. A new report from the Association of Community Cancer Centers...
Invited discussant Brian M. Wolpin, MD, MPH, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said the results of the LAPACT trial will be useful as an aid to patient counseling as well as in designing and interpreting future studies. However, he added, they are not “practice-changing,” as nanoparticle...
Patients newly diagnosed with locally advanced pancreatic cancer who received induction therapy with nanoparticle albumin-bound (nab)-paclitaxel (Abraxane) and gemcitabine achieved a time to treatment failure and median progression-free survival that exceeded the protocol-specified target by more...
Discussant Jordi Bruix, MD, PhD, Head of the Barcelona Clinic Liver Cancer Group at the University of Barcelona in Spain, said the results of the CELESTIAL trial show that cabozantinib (Cabometyx) provides a clinically meaningful survival benefit to patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma ...
Patients with previously treated advanced hepatocellular carcinoma derived a survival benefit from cabozantinib (Cabometyx), in the phase III CELESTIAL trial.1 “Cabozantinib represents a new treatment option for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma after prior systemic anticancer...
In the December 10, 2017, issue of The ASCO Post, I authored an article in which I raised the possibility of curing follicular lymphoma without the dreaded chemotherapy. Clearly, no good deed goes unpunished: My good friend and The ASCO Post’s editor Jim Armitage, MD, challenged me to defend that...
Following the publication of two landmark studies in the United States,1,2 laryngeal preservation with combined chemoradiotherapy has become standard practice as opposed to laryngectomy for patients with locally advanced laryngeal cancer. The Department of Veterans Affairs Laryngeal Cancer Study...
“This is a large, well-done study,” said Ravindra Uppaluri, MD, PhD, Chief of the Division of Otolaryngology in the Department of Surgery at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Director of Head and Neck Surgical Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, who underscored the small number of...
Results from the first and largest prospective trial to determine the safety of multisite ablative stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) in combination with anti–programmed cell death protein 1 (anti–PD-1) immunotherapy pembrolizumab (Keytruda) suggest the combination regimen may improve outcomes...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Overman et al, findings in the nivolumab (Opdivo) plus ipilimumab (Yervoy) cohort of the CheckMate-142 study indicate a high response rate and durable responses with the combination in previously treated patients with DNA mismatch...
Immunotherapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors is the first of a new generation of immunotherapy treatments, revolutionizing treatment for many different types of cancer. By unleashing the body's immune system to attack cancer, these treatments can send even the most hard-to-treat cancers into...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Lin et al found that specific ALK variants may be associated with the development of resistance mutations to ALK tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) in ALK-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Study Details The study involved...
Despite survivorship guidelines from ASCO and other organizations regarding follow-up care after cancer treatment ends, follow-up care is generally lacking for adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer survivors. Since AYA cancer survivors are at an increased risk for late effects from their cancer...
Cancer care guidelines recommend that cancer survivors who experience sexual dysfunction after cancer treatment use therapeutic aids to help improve their sexual health. However, a new study of 25 leading cancer centers found that 87% of the centers reported having no sexual aids available on site...
New findings from a clinical trial of women with breast cancer suggest that guided exercise with a physical therapist after lymph node dissection helps women regain their range of arm motion more quickly. These findings will be presented by Paskett et al at the upcoming 2018 Cancer Survivorship...
A follow-up study to a randomized clinical trial reveals that exercising during adjuvant chemotherapy helps people engage in more physical activity years later. Four years later, people with breast or colon cancer who had participated in an 18-week exercise program while receiving chemotherapy...
Survivors of childhood cancer are at increased risk for obesity and metabolic syndrome, which can lead to other serious health conditions, including heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. However, engaging in regular physical activity may help remediate these health issues in young survivors. A...
In a study of National Cancer Database data reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Neuman et al found that synchronous distant recurrence was identified in 27% of women with stage II or III breast cancer experiencing locoregional recurrence. Study Details The study—an American...
Results from the phase III PROSPER trial in patients with nonmetastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer were presented by Hussain et al at the 2018 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium (Abstract 3). The results show that the use of enzalutamide (Xtandi) plus androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT)...
Data on CB-839, a first-in-class glutaminase inhibitor, will be presented by Tannir et al at the 2018 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium in San Francisco (Abstract 603). The data are from the CX-839-001 study, which includes cohorts evaluating the safety, efficacy and recommended phase II dose of ...
Combining the antiangiogenic agent axitinib (Inlyta) with the immunotherapy pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was found to have promising antitumor activity and no unexpected side effects in an early-phase clinical trial in patients with advanced kidney cancer who had not been previously treated. The full...
On February 7, 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) tablets in combination with prednisone for metastatic high-risk castration-sensitive prostate cancer. The FDA initially approved abiraterone acetate with prednisone in 2011 for patients with...
Gateway for Cancer Research has renewed and expanded its support for the Conquer Cancer Foundation Young Investigator Award Program. The organization will underwrite the Gateway for Cancer Research Young Investigator Award (YIA) for each of the next 3 years to enable promising physician-scientists...
CancerLinQ LLC and the National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC), the professional society for genetic counselors, announced that they have entered into a strategic alliance. With the collaboration, NSGC leaders and members will provide expertise to CancerLinQ®, ASCO’s health information...
AS REPORTED BY Catherine Van Poznak, MD, FASCO, of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, ASCO and Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) have collaborated in providing a focused update for the ASCO clinical practice guideline on the role of bone-modifying...
AS REVIEWED in this issue of The ASCO Post, Patel and colleagues have presented data from the phase I JAVELIN study evaluating avelumab (Bavencio) in platinum-refractory patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma.1 The drug is active with durable responses when compared with historical...