Search Results
Your search for ,WHo matches 20407 pages
Showing 12301 - 12350An Educational Program for Safe Handling of Opioids
Improper storage, use, and disposal of prescribed opioids can lead to diversion or accidental overdose. Given that opioids are the mainstay of cancer pain treatment, this issue is particularly germane in the oncology community. The ASCO Post recently spoke with Akhila Reddy, MD, and Maxine de la...
MammaPrint Test Addressed in ASCO Breast Cancer Guideline Update
New recommendations on the use of the MammaPrint genomic test issued on July 10 will help guide decisions on adjuvant systemic therapy for women with early breast cancer. The recommendations update the ASCO 2016 clinical practice guideline on the use of biomarkers in these patients. The guideline ...
First Oncologist Elected AMA President, Barbara L. McAneny, MD, Advocates for Access to Health Care for Everyone
Since the founding of the American Medical Association (AMA) in 1847, Barbara L. McAneny, MD, is the fourth woman and first oncologist to be elected President of the venerable medical association. “I’m a generic Midwesterner. I was born in Missouri and raised in Madison County, Illinois, and went...
Launch of Watson-Powered Genomic Sequencing Service to Help Physicians Bring Precision Cancer Treatments to Patients Nationwide
On July 27, IBM Watson Health and Quest Diagnostics announced the launch of IBM Watson Genomics from Quest Diagnostics, a new service that helps advance precision medicine by combining cognitive computing with genomic tumor sequencing. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) will...
Two San Diego Nonprofits to Receive 2017 ASTRO Survivor Circle Grants
The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) will award its annual Survivor Circle grants to two San Diego–based cancer support charities: Cancer Angels of San Diego and The Seany Foundation. Each organization will receive an $8,500 grant to support its programs for those who have been...
FDA Approves Enasidenib in Relapsed or Refractory Acute Myeloid Leukemia
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved enasidenib (Idhifa) for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who have a specific genetic mutation. The drug is approved for use with a companion diagnostic, the RealTime IDH2 Assay, which ...
FDA Grants Acalabrutinib Breakthrough Therapy Designation for the Treatment of Mantle Cell Lymphoma
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation for acalabrutinib for the treatment of patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) who have received at least one prior therapy. Acalabrutinib is a highly selective, potent Bruton tyrosine kinase (BTK)...
FDA Approves Nivolumab in MSI-H or dMMR Metastatic Colorectal Cancer
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved nivolumab (Opdivo) injection for intravenous use for the treatment of adult and pediatric (12 years and older) patients with microsatellite instability–high (MSI-H) or mismatch repair deficient (dMMR) metastatic colorectal cancer...
Asparaginase-Associated Pancreatitis in Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia
An observational study reported in The Lancet Oncology by Wolthers et al in the Ponte di Legno Toxicity Working Group identified characteristics and the course of asparaginase-associated pancreatitis in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Study Details The study involved merged data from...
Effect of BRCA1/2 Status on Response to Neoadjuvant Carboplatin in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer
An analysis of the GeparSixto trial in triple-negative breast cancer showed that adding carboplatin to neoadjuvant therapy improved pathologic complete response rate in patients without BRCA1/2 mutation and that response rates were higher overall in those with mutations, without additive effects...
New ASCO Recommendations for Controlling Nausea and Vomiting Related to Cancer Treatment
An update of the ASCO Clinical Practice Guideline covers new medicines for nausea and vomiting related to cancer treatment. The update, issued by Hesketh et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology today, provides new evidence-based information on the appropriate use of olanzapine, neurokinin 1...
FDA Grants Venetoclax Breakthrough Therapy Designation for Geriatric Patients With Acute Myeloid Leukemia
On July 28, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Breakthrough Therapy designation for venetoclax (Venclexta) in combination with low-dose cytarabine for elderly patients with previously untreated acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who are ineligible for intensive chemotherapy. FDA...
Fulvestrant Receives EC Approval as First-Line Therapy for Advanced Breast Cancer
On July 26, the European Commission (EC) approved fulvestrant (Falsodex) for the treatment of estrogen receptor–positive, locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer in postmenopausal women not previously treated with endocrine therapy. The EC approval is based on pivotal data from the...
FDA Grants Durvalumab Breakthrough Therapy Designation for Patients With Locally Advanced Unresectable NSCLC
On July 31, AstraZeneca and MedImmune (AstraZeneca’s global biologics research and development arm) announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Breakthrough Therapy designation for durvalumab (Imfinzi) for the treatment of patients with locally advanced,...
Standard-Dose Pembrolizumab Plus Reduced-Dose Ipilimumab in Advanced Melanoma
In the phase IB KEYNOTE-029 study, standard-dose pembrolizumab (Keytruda) plus reduced-dose ipilimumab (Yervoy) produced high response rates in patients with advanced melanoma. These results were reported by Long et al in The Lancet Oncology. Study Details In the study, 153 patients with...
Study Finds HER2 Mutations in 3% of Lung Cancers
The Lung Cancer Mutation Consortium at the University of Colorado Cancer Center reported that 24 of 920 patients (3%) with advanced-stage lung cancer in a recent study had mutations in the gene HER2. According to the study, published by Pillai et al in Cancer, 71% of these patients were...
Genetic Study Identifies Susceptibility Loci Modifying Risk for Breast Cancer After Radiation Therapy for Childhood Cancer
As reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Morton et al have identified gene loci associated with radiation-related risk of breast cancer in survivors of childhood cancer. Study Details The study was a genome-wide association study of breast cancer in female survivors of...
Guideline-Based Statin Eligibility and Cancer Risk
A study in the offspring and third-generation cohorts of the Framingham Heart Study showed that eligibility for statin therapy was associated with an increased risk for cancer and cancer mortality. These findings were reported by Pursnani et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Study Details...
NCI-COG Pediatric MATCH Trial to Test Targeted Drugs in Childhood Cancers
Today, investigators at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) announced the opening of enrollment for a unique precision medicine clinical trial. NCI-COG Pediatric Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice (Pediatric MATCH) is a nationwide trial to explore...
Poor Social Functioning in Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Survivors
A new study indicates many young adults who survived the disease struggle with “getting back to normal” as much as 2 years after their initial diagnosis. The longitudinal study, published by Husson et al in Cancer, is among the first seeking to understand the social functioning among...
COX-2 Inhibitors May Reverse IDO1-Mediated Immunosuppression in Some Cancers
In preclinical studies, tumors that consitutively expressed the protein indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO1) responded to the cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) inhibitor celecoxib (Celebrex) and had improved infiltration of certain subsets of T cells, making them more likely to respond to...
Concurrent Chemotherapy, Proton Therapy May Improve Survival in Patients With Advanced Lung Cancer
For patients with advanced, inoperable stage III lung cancer, concurrent chemotherapy and proton-beam radiotherapy offers improved survival compared to historical data for standard of care, according to a new study from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The research, published by...
Social Interaction May Affect Patients’ Response to Chemotherapy
How well patients with cancer fared after chemotherapy was affected by their social interaction with other patients during treatment, according to a new study by researchers at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health, and the University of...
Caregivers Have an Essential Role in Cancer Care. Help Them Be Prepared.
CANCER.NET offers caregiving tools and resources designed specifically for caregivers who are supporting someone with cancer. ASCO Answers Guide to Caregiving includes advice for talking with family and the health-care team, trackers for symptoms and medications, and more. Order this guide for...
Key Leadership in Place in Trump Administration
IN JUNE 2017, President Trump installed the final member of his cancer care leadership team, Norman “Ned” Sharpless, MD, who will serve as the Director of the National Cancer Institute. Director Sharpless is an accomplished researcher with experience leading a wide range of clinical and...
The Art of Networking: Advice for the Oncologist-in-Training
It was Friday night of the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago. I planned to meet a friend, another 2nd-year heme-onc fellow, at a “free drink thing,” as she called it. I sheepishly entered the hotel bar, made a nametag at the insistence of the greeter, and started edging my way through the crowd. ...
2017 ASTRO Gold Medalists Named
THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR RADIATION ONCOLOGY (ASTRO) has announced the 2017 ASTRO Gold Medalists. Søren M. Bentzen, DSc, PhD; Louis B. Harrison, MD, FASTRO; and Michael L. Steinberg, MD, FASTRO, have been awarded the annual honor given to ASTRO members who have made outstanding lifetime...
Khurshid Guru, MD, Named Chair of Urology at Roswell Park
KHURSHID GURU, MD, an acclaimed robotic surgeon, has been named Chair of the Department of Urology at Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Dr. Guru, who was recruited to Roswell Park in 2005 to direct the Institute’s robotic surgery program, will lead a team of more than 50 faculty members, clinicians,...
Solange Peters, MD, PhD, Elected 2020–2021 ESMO President
THE EUROPEAN SOCIETY for Medical Oncology (ESMO) has announced that the President of the Society for the 2020–2021 term will be Solange Peters, MD, PhD, Head of the Medical Oncology Service and Chair of Thoracic Oncology, Oncology Department at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois in...
Pembrolizumab and Cetuximab-Treated Head and Neck Cancer: Activity Confirmed But No Surprises
WITH THE RECENT efficacy findings, improvements in survival, and resultant U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals of programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) immune checkpoint inhibitors across multiple solid tumor indications, the publication of yet another positive trial adds to the...
Pembrolizumab in Second-Line Therapy for Advanced Urothelial Carcinoma
THE TREATMENT OF metastatic urothelial carcinoma experienced a long period of stagnation until the recognition that targeting the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) pathway could yield deep and durable responses.1-3 Cisplatin-based combination chemotherapy has been the reference standard for...
Insurance Approval Rates for Enrollment in Oncology Clinical Trials Increased Under Affordable Care Act
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 was the first federal law to mandate that group health insurance plans and state-licensed insurance issuers provide coverage of standard-of-care costs for patients enrolled in approved clinical trials, effective on January 1, 2014. Under...
Understanding and Managing Radiation-Induced Bystander Effect
More than half of patients with cancer undergo radiotherapy. Due to a phenomenon known as radiation-induced bystander effect, in which irradiated cells leak chemical signals that can travel some distance to damage unexposed healthy cells, many suffer side effects such as hair loss, fatigue, and...
Single-Center Trial of Stereotactic Radiosurgery for Completely Resected Brain Metastases
In a U.S. single-institution study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Mahajan et al found that stereotactic radiosurgery to the surgical cavity reduced local recurrence vs observation in patients with completely resected brain metastases. Study Details In the trial, 128 evaluable patients at MD...
Pembrolizumab Improves Overall Survival vs Chemotherapy in Second-Line Therapy for Advanced Urothelial Carcinoma
IN THE PHASE III KEYNOTE-045 trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Joaquim Bellmunt, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and colleagues found that pembrolizumab (Keytruda) significantly improved overall survival vs investigator choice of chemotherapy as second-line treatment ...
Breast Cancer and Brain Metastases: Whole-Brain Radiotherapy May Not Be the Answer
FOR PATIENTS WITH BREAST CANCER who have metastases to the central nervous system (CNS), clinicians should think twice before administering whole-brain radiotherapy, according to Kimberly Blackwell, MD, Professor of Medicine and Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology at Duke University Medical...
Checkpoint Inhibitors May Prove to Be Effective in Mesothelioma
CHECKPOINT INHIBITION was effective against malignant pleural mesothelioma in the MAPS-2 study of the French Cooperative Thoracic Intergroup. At the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting, researchers reported a disease control rate of up to 50% when patients were treated with immunotherapy after relapse in a...
Expert Point of View: Ritu Salani, MD, MBA
STUDY DISCUSSANT Ritu Salani, MD, MBA, of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, agreed with the LION trial investigators. “Omitting systemic lymph node dissection in patients who have both radiographic and clinically negative lymph nodes is acceptable,” she said. “I always...
Study Supports Omission of Lymphadenectomy in Node-Negative Advanced Ovarian Cancer
SYSTEMATIC LYMPHADENECTOMY in patients with advanced ovarian cancer and complete resection offered no improvement in progression-free or overall survival in the Gynecologic Cancer Intergroup’s LION trial, reported at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting by Philipp Harter, MD, PhD, of the German...
Combination Strategies for Jump-Starting the Immune Response
CHECKPOINT INHIBITORS have dramatically changed the landscape of the treatment of melanoma, lung, bladder, and other cancers. Researchers are focusing on exploring ways to extend the use of checkpoint inhibitors to other disease states and to combine them with novel agents and improve outcomes. At ...
Tumor ‘Sidedness’ in Colon Cancer: Studies Look for Explanations
TUMOR “SIDEDNESS” in colon cancer has become a topic of great interest, after right-sided tumors were shown to have a worse prognosis than left-sided ones and biologics were found to differ in efficacy based on side. At the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting, studies explored why this might be so. Three...
Radiation Therapy for Spinal Cord Compression: One Treatment Is Sufficient
SPINAL CORD COMPRESSION associated with metastatic cancer can be effectively treated with a single dose of radiotherapy, according to the results of a phase III British study that showed multiple radiotherapy doses to be no better than one treatment.1 Up to 10% of all patients with cancer will...
Pivotal CAR T-Cell Data Reported in Relapsed/Refractory B-Cell ALL
UPDATED RESULTS from the ELIANA clinical trial of CTL019 (tisagenlecleucel)—an investigational chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy—found that remission rates are maintained at 6 months in relapsed/refractory pediatric and young adult patients with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia....
Drug Combinations Prove Effective Against Melanoma Brain Metastases
STUDIES PRESENTED at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting have shown that for melanoma that metastasizes to the brain, the combined use of checkpoint inhibitors and targeted agents can be effective. In COMBI-MB, 58% of patients responded intracranially to the BRAF inhibitor dabrafenib (Tafinlar) plus the...
Maintaining Predictable Increases in NIH Funding for Cancer Research
CONGRESS RECENTLY passed its fiscal year (FY) 2017 spending bill, which contains an additional $2 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This marks the first time in more than a dozen years that Congress funded back-to-back increases for the NIH, demonstrating the bipartisan...
FDA Approves Three-Drug Combination Tablet for Hepatitis C
On July 18, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a combination tablet (Vosevi) to treat adults with chronic hepatitis C virus genotypes 1–6 without cirrhosis or with mild cirrhosis. This fixed-dose, combination tablet contains two previously approved drugs—sofosbuvir and ...
Understanding of Stage and Cancer Status Among Patients in a Community-Based Cancer Institute
As reported by Sivendran et al in the Journal of Oncology Practice, half of patients in a large community-based cancer institute did not know their stage of cancer, and one-third did not know of their cancer-free/in-remission status. Study Details The study involved 208 adult patients treated at...
Educating Young People on Sun-Safe Behaviors and Reducing the Risk of Melanoma
“If minors don’t tan, then they may never become adult tanners,” Jeffrey E. Gershenwald, MD, said in explaining the emphasis on teaching sun safety behaviors to young children as part of the Melanoma Moon Shot Program at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston. Dr. Gershenwald is ...
Prophylactic Cranial Irradiation vs Observation in Extensive-Disease Small Cell Lung Cancer
A Japanese phase III trial has shown no survival benefit of prophylactic cranial irradiation vs observation in patients with extensive-disease small cell lung cancer who had any response to platinum-based doublet chemotherapy and no brain metastases at baseline. These findings were reported in The...
Music Therapy: Relevance in Oncology
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, authors Karen Popkin, LCAT, MT-BC, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, present the case ...
