On October 16, Bristol-Myers Squibb announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted for priority review its supplemental Biologics License Application (sBLA) for nivolumab (Opdivo) to treat patients with melanoma who are at high risk of disease recurrence following complete...
In discovering how certain chemotherapy drugs cause peripheral neuropathy, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have found a potential approach to preventing this common and troublesome side effect of cancer treatment. Their findings were published by Pease-Raissi et al in Neuron. The...
On October 25, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved intravenous (IV) rolapitant (Varubi) in combination with other antiemetic agents in adults for the prevention of delayed nausea and vomiting associated with initial and repeat courses of emetogenic cancer chemotherapy, including,...
On October 16, Exelixis announced that its global phase III CELESTIAL trial met its primary endpoint of overall survival, with cabozantinib (Cabometyx) providing a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in median overall survival compared to placebo in patients with...
Patients with chordoma—a rare bone cancer of the skull and spine—could be helped by existing treatments, suggest scientists from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, University College London Cancer Institute, and the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust. In the largest...
On October 18, AstraZeneca and Merck & Co announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted and granted Priority Review to a supplemental New Drug Application (sNDA) for the use of olaparib (Lynparza) tablets in patients with germline BRCA-mutated, HER2-negative...
In a feasibility trial of people with advanced lung cancer receiving radiation therapy and their caregivers, yoga was beneficial to both parties. These findings will be presented by Milbury et al at the upcoming 2017 Palliative and Supportive Care in Oncology Symposium in San Diego (Abstract 125). ...
A study of 100 people with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) receiving chemotherapy found that patient and physician perceptions of treatment risk and the likelihood of a cure varied widely. Overall, patients tended to overestimate both the risk of dying due to treatment and the likelihood of a cure....
In the September 25, 2017, issue of The ASCO Post, page 1, the date of approval was cited incorrectly for the genetically engineered T-cell therapy tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah). The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved tisagenlecleucel on August 30, 2017. The T-cell therapeutic is approved for...
Moffitt Cancer Center has made a lasting commitment to the prevention and cure of cancer, working fervently in the areas of patient care, research, and education to advance further in fighting this disease, according to Alan F. List, MD, Moffitt’s President and Chief Executive Officer. Dr. List,...
In 1988, 38-year-old Rita Lawrence found herself in a desperate situation. The lymphoma she’d been battling had recurred after 2 years of remission. She’d endured multiple rounds of tough chemotherapy, but it couldn’t stave off the swiftly growing tumors. When she learned of a radioimmunotherapy...
Although a cancer diagnosis is daunting at any age, adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with the disease often face unique challenges and are at risk for poor psychosocial outcomes than older patients. A randomized study investigating whether a brief, age-appropriate, skills-based intervention...
Although the use of electronic health records in oncology care has led to improved care for patients, results from a new study show that oncologists need to be cautious about using computers during exam room visits, especially for patients with advanced cancer. The randomized study compared...
THE U.S. FOOD & DRUG ADMINISTRATION (FDA) and the Oncology Center of Excellence (OCE) will host a complimentary public workshop, Assessment of Cardiovascular Toxicities in Immuno-Oncology Trials, on December 1. ASCO is supporting the workshop with the American College of Cardiology (ACC), the...
ASCO’S BOOKLET on Managing Cancer-Related Pain helps you work together with your patients to develop an individualized plan for pain management before they start treatment. Patients and their caregivers will learn about the importance of pain relief, including its causes, how it is diagnosed, and...
Applications are now being accepted for ASCO’s Quality Training Program (QTP), a comprehensive program designed to train oncology health-care providers to investigate and implement data-driven quality improvement, as well as manage clinical and nonclinical processes and outcomes. The program...
APPLICATIONS ARE now being accepted for ASCO’s 2018 Health Policy Fellowship program. The Health Policy Fellowship aims to provide oncology fellows and early-career physicians with the necessary skills to shape cancer policy and to help increase the involvement of ASCO members in policy, advocacy,...
Oncology luminaries. Thought leaders. The soul of chemotherapy. These are just a few of the phrases used to describe Emil Frei, MD, FASCO, Emil J Freireich, MD, FASCO, James F. Holland, MD, FASCO, Georges Mathé, MD, and their historic contributions to the world of oncology. Inspired by these...
WOMEN WHO CONQUER CANCER (WWCC) funds the promising careers of the best and brightest women researchers through the Conquer Cancer Foundation’s Young Investigator Award (YIA) program. Thanks to the generosity of supporters, five awards were granted in 2017. Right now, gifts to the WWCC Endowment...
ASCO has created a series of clinical practice guidelines to benefit clinicians, public health leaders, and policymakers in all resource settings. These resource-stratified guidelines help medical professionals outline appropriate methods of treatment and care based on the level of health-care...
Research presented at the 9th World Congress of Melanoma supports the updated guideline recommendation that sentinel lymph node biopsy be performed in more patients newly diagnosed with melanoma, as it has the potential to save lives due to the information the procedure provides. This biopsy can...
OncoSec Medical Incorporated presented new clinical data on ImmunoPulse IL-12 (intratumoral pIL-12 [tavokinogene telseplasmid] with electroporation) at the 9th World Congress of Melanoma. “We are excited to share updated data from our phase II clinical monotherapy trial with ImmunoPulse ...
BerGenBio ASA announced that the randomized phase Ib/II clinical study of the Axl inhibitor BGB324 in combination with either the MAP kinase inhibitors trametinib (Mekinist) plus dabrafenib (Tafinlar) or the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in patients with advanced melanoma is...
On October 17, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted a supplemental Biologics License Application (sBLA) for durvalumab (Imfinzi) for the treatment of patients with locally advanced (stage III) unresectable non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose disease has not progressed ...
THE U.S. FOOD and Drug Administration (FDA) has awarded numerous new clinical trial research grants, totaling more than $22 million over the next 4 years, to boost the development of products for patients with rare diseases. These new grants were awarded to principal investigators from academia and ...
WITH THE INCLUSION of proteasome inhibitors and immunomodulatory agents first into salvage and then as components of first-line, consolidation, and maintenance regimens, response rates, depth of response, and median progression-free and overall survival have all improved for patients suffering...
AS REPORTED BY David P. Carbone, MD, PhD, of The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbus, and colleagues in The New England Journal of Medicine, the phase III CheckMate 026 trial has shown no progression-free survival benefit for first-line nivolumab (Opdivo) vs platinum-based...
Honoring National Cancer Institute researchers Douglas R. Lowy, MD, and John T. Schiller, PhD, with the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for advances in technology that enabled the development of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines to prevent cervical cancer and other tumors caused by ...
AS REPORTED BY Paul J. Hesketh, MD, of Lahey Hospital and Medical Center, Burlington, Massachusetts, and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, ASCO has updated its clinical practice guideline on the use of antiemetics in patients with cancer.1 The update was based on an expert panel...
Edward E. Partridge, MD, has been named Chief Medical Officer of the Birmingham, Alabama–based Guideway Care, according to an announcement by Craig Parker, the company’s President and Chief Executive Officer. Dr. Partridge, a gynecologic oncologist, is highly regarded for his work to improve...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) awarded Julie R. Palmer, ScD, the AACR Distinguished Lecture on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities, funded by Susan G. Komen. Dr. Palmer was recognized for her work as a cancer epidemiologist who has devoted most of her career to...
THE U.S. FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION (FDA), in partnership with international regulatory and law enforcement agencies, recently took action against more than 500 websites that illegally sell potentially dangerous, unapproved versions of prescription medicines, including opioids, antibiotics, and...
Neuro-oncologist Howard A. Fine, MD, of Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian, will receive a 5-year, $6 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s Pioneer Award for brain cancer research. The award will support Dr. Fine’s approach to modeling deadly brain cancers in the...
I’ve always had dense breasts and avoided doing breast self-exams because I couldn’t tell if the lumpiness I was feeling was something serious or merely normal fibrous tissue. Instead I relied on my yearly mammogram to spot any early signs of cancer. Four years ago, I was once again relieved to...
No matter what a person does in life, for good and bad, his or her inherited genetic makeup follows along the way. Such was the case with British journalist Sarah Gabriel, who inherited the BRCA1 mutation from her mother, who died of ovarian cancer when Ms. Gabriel was in college. Much of her...
RESULTS OF TWO separate phase III trials confirm the activity of alectinib (Alecensa) in the central nervous system (CNS) in patients with anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Results lend support for alectinib as the better first-line treatment option over...
ABIRATERONE ACETATE (Zytiga) plus prednisone and docetaxel have moved up from the castrate-resistant metastatic setting to earlier in the course of disease as treatment of high-risk hormone-sensitive prostate cancer in men who are initiating androgen-deprivation therapy, based on level 1 evidence...
NEW RESEARCH examining patient-physician communication, yoga as supportive care, and psychosocial support for people with cancer will be featured at the 2017 Palliative and Supportive Care in Oncology Symposium on October 27–28, 2017, in San Diego. Featured sessions include randomized trials on...
ASCO HAS PRESENTED Representative Leonard Lance, of New Jersey’s 7th district, with its second annual Congressional Leadership Award in recognition of the lawmaker’s exceptional commitment to supporting cancer research and treatment. ASCO President Dr. Bruce Johnson presented the award to...
ASCO SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT and Chief Medical Officer, Richard L. Schilsky, MD, FACP, FASCO, FSCT, will participate in a panel discussion at the ECRI Annual Conference "Workflow, Workarounds, and Overworked Health Systems: Innovations and Challenges for Quality, Safety, and Technology," on...
RAMUCIRUMAB (CYRAMZA) added to docetaxel improved progression-free survival and almost doubled the overall response rate compared with docetaxel alone in patients with advanced or metastatic urothelial cancer that has progressed on platinum-based chemotherapy. These results of the phase III RANGE...
THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR RADIATION ONCOLOGY (ASTRO) has awarded $275,000 in research awards to four early-career scientists as part of the Society’s efforts to retain and foster the intellectual research talent currently entering the field of radiation oncology. For 2017, the Research Grants...
The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) has selected 23 distinguished members to receive the ASTRO Fellow designation. The 2017 class of Fellows was recognized during the Awards Ceremony at ASTRO’s 59th Annual Meeting, which was held September 24–27 in San Diego. The Fellows Program,...
BRIAN G. CZITO, MD, a radiation oncologist at Duke Cancer Institute in Durham, North Carolina, commented on the study presented by Iyengar et al at the 2017 American Society for Radiation Oncology Annual Meeting. “This study of focal high-dose radiation in stage IV patients with limited...
TWO STUDIES published this year examining the incidence of colorectal cancer in adolescents and young adults (AYAs) show an undeniable and sobering trend: Colorectal cancer rates are increasing in this age group, and younger people are dying of the cancer at slightly higher rates than in previous...
Four cancer researchers from the University of Pittsburgh will share $882,000 in grants recently awarded by the American Cancer Society (ACS) as part of a $45 million funding program. Sarah M. Belcher, BSN, of Pitt’s Department of Health and Community Systems, will further her research on patients...
Physical exercise and psychosocial interventions in patients with advanced-stage lung cancer improved functional capacity, which may be linked to quality-of-life benefits. Morten Quist, PT, PhD, MSc, of the University of Copenhagen, presented these findings at the International Association for the...
Community-based interventions implemented in minority community sites resulted in changes in participants’ knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about cancer, as well as perceived benefits and self-efficacy measures regarding lung cancer screening. Lovoria Williams, PhD, APRN-BC, FAANP, of...
As non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) survival rates have increased over time, new research sheds light on how NSCLC outcomes are significantly influenced by the type of treatment facility where patients undergo care. Bhagirathbhai Dholaria, MD, of the Moffitt Cancer Center, presented these...
A targeted therapy studied at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has produced high response rates among patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) that carries a highly treatment-resistant mutation. Preliminary results were presented at the International...