Bexarotene is a retinoid approved for the treatment of patients with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL) who have not responded to at least one previous treatment regimen. Hypertrigylceridemia is the most frequent adverse event related to treatment with bexarotene in CTCL. Even with prophylactic...
Stefanie C. Fischer, MD, of Manchester Cancer Research Centre and The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, discusses an international retrospective analysis of the rare clinical scenario of men relapsing after adjuvant treatment with bleomycin/etoposide/cisplatin for clinical stage I nonseminoma...
Karim Fizazi, MD, PhD, of the University of Paris-Sud and Gustave Roussy, discusses study findings on the efficacy and safety of darolutamide in men with nonmetastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (Abstract 140).
Karim Fizazi, MD, PhD, of the University of Paris-Sud and Gustave Roussy, discusses final phase III findings on men with newly diagnosed, high-risk, metastatic, castration-naive prostate cancer who were treated with abiraterone acetate plus prednisone added to androgen-deprivation therapy (Abstract ...
In the phase III ARAMIS trial reported by Fizazi et al at the 2019 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium (Abstract 140) and simultaneously published in The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers found that the androgen receptor antagonist darolutamide significantly prolonged metastasis-free...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, AlDubayan et al found that inherited pathogenetic variants in the checkpoint kinase 2 gene (CHEK2), among inherited pathogenetic DNA-repair gene (DRG) alterations, were associated with susceptibility to testicular germ cell tumors. The study involved screening ...
A large, retrospective study analyzing 5 years of data from the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) found that African American men with chemotherapy-naive, metastatic, castration-resistant prostate cancer who were treated with abiraterone acetate or enzalutamide lived 20% longer compared with...
A single-arm, phase II trial in men with prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-positive, metastatic, castration-resistant prostate cancer that progressed despite standard therapies found that a majority of men treated with a novel, targeted radiation therapy called lutetium-177 PSMA-617...
Discussions of benefits and harms from screening of high-risk populations for lung cancer have missed the point. The National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) showed an early and statistically significant major benefit in all-cause mortality from computed tomography (CT) screening.1 Those referred for...
For patients at the end of life, palliative care can prolong survival and improve the quality of life for patients with a life-threatening illness and for their families—but studies have found that racial and ethnic minorities are less likely to receive end-of-life palliative care than...
Data on the risk factors for the development of skin cancer after a solid organ transplant are limited. In a retrospective cohort study, researchers sought to determine the relationship between human leukocyte antigen (HLA) mismatch and risk of skin cancer after transplant. Their findings were...
In a population-based study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Downing et al found little difference in health-related quality of life (HRQOL) between men with advanced vs localized prostate cancer. Sexual function problems were common among all patients—and often not addressed—and use of ...
World Cancer Day 2019—February 4—highlights the need for urgent action to increase early-stage cancer detection, screening, and diagnosis to significantly improve patients’ chances of survival. Taking place with the theme of “I Am and I Will,” World Cancer...
In a letter to the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, Goodman et al reported a long-term follow-up of the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial indicating that finasteride treatment was not associated with an increased risk of death from prostate cancer. Study Details As previously...
In a systematic review and meta-analysis reported in JAMA Oncology, Wallis et al found no difference in overall survival benefit in women vs men receiving immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment for advanced solid tumors. The authors noted that a prior analysis had suggested men derived a greater...
Forty-six medical advocacy organization and professional societies have called on President Donald Trump, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to end the government shutdown and, in...
According to a new American Cancer Society report published by Susan M. Gapstur, PhD, MPH, American Cancer Society Senior Vice President of Behavioral and Epidemiology Research, and colleages in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, the highest priority in a national cancer control plan is the...
A steady 25-year decline has resulted in a 27% drop in the overall cancer death rate in the United States between 1991 and 2016. The data come from “Cancer Statistics, 2019,” the American Cancer Society’s annual report on cancer rates and trends. The report was published by Siegel et al in CA: A...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Islami et al assessed the population attributable fraction (PAF)—the proportion of a given outcome attributable to a given risk factor—of incident cancer cases associated with excess body weight among individual U.S. states during 2011 to 2015. The...
A subset of patients with aggressive prostate cancer are carriers of germline BRCA2 mutations, which are also linked to hereditary breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and pancreatic cancer. Study findings also showed family members of patients with prostate cancer who carry BRCA2 and DNA-repair...
A steady 25-year decline has resulted in a 27% drop in the overall cancer death rate in the United States between 1991 and 2016. The data come from “Cancer Statistics, 2019,” the American Cancer Society’s annual report on cancer rates and trends. The report was published in CA: A...
In an analysis reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Halabi et al found that overall survival was improved for black men vs white men receiving regimens containing docetaxel and prednisone for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. As noted by the investigators, several studies...
Black men diagnosed with prostate cancer classified as low risk may actually have a more aggressive form of the disease that is more likely to be fatal than in nonblack men placed in the same prognostic category, according to results from a new study published as a research letter by Mahal et al in ...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Marcoux et al provided further evidence that EGFR-mutant non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) can undergo transformation to small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and identified factors associated with such transformation. It has been estimated...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Dignam et al, analysis of outcomes in the phase III NRG/RTOG 9202 trial indicates that the time interval to biochemical failure (IBF) could serve as a surrogate endpoint for clinical outcomes in patients receiving radiotherapy plus long-term...
As reported by Denham et al in The Lancet Oncology, 10-year results of the phase III TROG 03.04 RADAR trial have shown that 18 months of androgen suppression plus radiotherapy is more effective than 6 months of androgen suppression plus radiotherapy in locally advanced prostate cancer, but no...
On December 21, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved tagraxofusp-erzs (Elzonris) infusion for the treatment of blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN) in adults and in pediatric patients aged 2 years and older. “Prior to [this] approval, there had been no...
AS REPORTED in The New England Journal of Medicine by Scott J. Antonia, MD, PhD, of H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, and colleagues, the phase III PACIFIC trial has shown significantly improved overall survival, a coprimary endpoint, with the programmed cell death ligand 1...
Although most major cancer organizations agree on the guidelines for prostate cancer screening, there is still uneven application of the test, such as in the older patient population, resulting in overdiagnosis and waste in an already fiscally challenged health-care system. Researchers from the...
The burden of mortality related to liver cancer is increasing worldwide. Prevention and control of viral hepatitis will be vital in combating this burden, but curbing the growing epidemic of obesity must also be seen as a key part of liver cancer prevention, according to Rosmawati Mohamed, MD, of...
Two years ago, Rick Avila, MS, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Accumetra, LLC, was using rolls of Scotch tape as a research tool. The Scotch tape was a phantom, or reference object, and his company was working with computed tomography (CT) lung screening sites around the world to determine the...
In a phase III trial reported at the recent American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting & Exposition and in The New England Journal of Medicine by Woyach et al, ibrutinib (Imbruvica) and ibrutinib/rituximab (Rituxan) were associated with superior progression-free survival vs...
A program that provided individually tailored lifestyle recommendations for patients undergoing screening for colorectal cancer helped encourage healthy behavior, according to results published by Knudsen et al in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. “It is well known that...
Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in recipients of a solid organ transplant. When organ transplant recipients are diagnosed with SCC, they are also at higher risk for a more aggressive disease course, metastasis, and death than the general population. Researchers ...
In a trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Manson et al, vitamin D supplementation was found to have no benefit in reducing risk of invasive cancer vs placebo over 5 years of follow-up. Study Details The trial was a randomized, placebo-controlled trial, with a two-by-two...
ONE OF the pressing issues in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer is the development of resistance to therapies directed at the androgen receptor (AR), such as enzalutamide (Xtandi) and abiraterone acetate (Zytiga). Research is ongoing to identify mechanisms of resistance in the hope of ...
FORMAL DISCUSSANT Joaquin Mateo, MD, PhD, of the Prostate Cancer Translational Research Group, Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, said that the TRITON2 findings were encouraging, although still preliminary. “We should interpret these results with caution, because this interim analysis ...
THE SEARCH for biomarkers in prostate cancer has proved frustrating, partly due to the complexity of the disease and its heterogeneity. A preliminary analysis of a phase II (TRITON2) study suggests that rucaparib (Rubraca), a poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor, may be active in men with...
IN PATIENTS with a controlled primary tumor and up to 5 oligometastatic lesions, delivering stereotactic ablative radiotherapy was associated with a 13-month improvement in overall survival when compared with palliative standard-of-care treatments alone (41 months vs 28 months; P = .09).1...
BOOKMARK Title: Doing Harm: The Truth About Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and SickAuthor: Maya DusenberyPublisher: HarperOnePublication date: March 2018Price: $27.99, hardcover, 400 pages Over the past year or so, there have been several books by women focused...
Integrative Oncology is guest edited by Jun J. Mao, MD, MSCE, Laurance S. Rockefeller Chair in Integrative Medicine and Chief, Integrative Medicine Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York. GUEST EDITOR The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the...
As the global burden of cancer grows, cancer control measures must be tailored to regional and national priorities, underscoring the need for high-quality cancer registries, according to Christopher P. Wild, PhD, Director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France. Earlier...
In a cohort study reported in JAMA Oncology, Tilki et al found that patients with Gleason score 9–10 prostate cancer treated with multimodality therapy known as MaxRP (radical prostatectomy [RP] plus adjuvant external-beam radiotherapy [EBRT] with or without androgen-deprivation therapy...
In a trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Manson et al, marine n-3 (omega-3) fatty acid supplementation was found to have no benefit in reducing the risk for invasive cancer vs placebo over 5 years of follow-up. Higher intake of n-3 fatty acids has been associated with a reduced ...
Changes to the National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service (NCRAS) in England have allowed more accurate data analysis of primary and metastatic cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) since 2013. Developed by experts at Queen Mary University of London and Public Health England, and...
A population-based study examining patient receipt of a surveillance colonoscopy 3 years after the removal of high-risk adeonomatous polyps has found that the procedure was underutilized and varied by health-care system, patient age, and number of adenomas found. Strategies to improve adherence to...
YouTube videos on prostate cancer often offer misleading or biased medical information that poses potential health risks to patients, an analysis of the social media platform published by Loeb et al in European Urology showed. For the latest analysis, researchers, which included social...
The following essay by Stan Winokur, MD, is adapted, with permission, from The Big Casino: America’s Best Cancer Doctors Share Their Most Powerful Stories, which was coedited by Stan Winokur, MD, and Vincent Coppola and published in May 2014. The book is available on Amazon.com and...
“‘Sickness’ is what is happening to the patient. Listen to him. Disease is what is happening to science and to populations.” —Lawrence Weed, MD, 1978 America’s massive health-care system is highly complex, with its own unique language, methods, technologies, and scientific approaches, developed and ...
In this installment of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, interviewed Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP, FASCO, ASCO’s Chief Executive Officer. Prior to his current position, Dr. Hudis served in a variety of roles at ASCO, including President during ASCO’s 50th anniversary...