I’m sure every cancer survivor feels this way, but my diagnosis, in 1997, of stage III germ cell testicular cancer couldn’t have come at a worse time in my life. I was nearing the end of a 60-city tour with my figure skating show Stars on Ice, when a nagging pain in my abdomen became so severe I...
At the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), Michael Gnant, MD, FACS, of the Medical University of Vienna presented the 9-year median follow-up of a trial looking at the length of extended aromatase inhibitor therapy. At least four other recently presented or published trials have...
The Consortium of Universities for Global Health, Perlmutter Cancer Center, and the Department of Population Health at NYU Langone Health are issuing the “New York Challenge,” an ambitious campaign to end cervical cancer worldwide. They are challenging all nations to achieve a 70% human...
The information contained in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting clinical studies focused on preventing cancer. These studies are investigating a multitude of methods, including educational interventions; imaging devices; dietary changes/supplements; weight management;...
Survival of patients with Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphomas is increasing, and with that comes the need, in some cases, for solid organ transplantation, often because of treatment-related toxicity. The factors involved in organ transplant among lymphoma survivors were discussed by Philip J....
The following essay by Elias Jabbour, 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...
“This is a very exciting study. Acupuncture is another tool to address arthralgias associated with aromatase inhibitor therapy,” said Kathryn Ruddy, MD, of the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. “I don’t think every patient with joint pain will opt for this for a variety of reasons, including...
Participation in clinical trials may overcome health disparities in the treatment of advanced or recurrent ovarian cancer, according to a study presented at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology’s (SGO) 2018 Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer (Abstract 6). The study evaluated the effect of ...
Although aromatase inhibitors are highly effective as adjuvant therapy in metastatic breast cancer and for prevention of breast cancer, the side effects can be difficult to tolerate and often lead to discontinuation of therapy. A phase III randomized trial has found that acupuncture may relieve...
The phase III IMpower150 study met its coprimary endpoint of overall survival (OS) at interim analysis and showed that first-line treatment with the combination of atezolizumab (Tecentriq) and bevacizumab (Avastin) plus carboplatin and paclitaxel (chemotherapy) helped patients with advanced...
The average number of moderate or marked side effects reported by patients with breast cancer is lower if they are treated with radiotherapy to part of the breast or a reduced dose to the whole breast, rather than with standard whole breast radiotherapy (WBRT), according to new findings presented...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Gettinger et al, 5-year follow-up of patients receiving nivolumab (Opdivo) in a phase I study (CA209-003) in previously treated advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has shown prolonged survival and durable responses in a subgroup...
In a Korean study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Choi et al found that antibiotic treatment for Helicobacter pylori was associated with a significant reduction in metachronous gastric cancer in patients who had undergone endoscopic resection of early gastric cancer or high-grade...
Women with small, low-grade, well-defined breast tumors and a genetic profile that shows they are at low risk of the cancer metastasizing have only a 1.4% risk of locoregional recurrence within 5 years, according to new results from a large randomized trial of nearly 7,000 patients. This low risk...
Skin cancer is the most common cancer in the United States, and nonmelanoma skin cancer is the most common type of skin cancer, affecting more than 3 million Americans every year. Moreover, nonmelanoma skin cancer incidence is growing at an exponential rate—between 1976–1984 and...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Michalski et al, long-term follow-up in the NRG Oncology/RTOG 0126 trial showed no significant difference in overall survival with dose-escalated vs standard-dose radiotherapy in patients with intermediate-risk prostate cancer. High-dose radiotherapy was associated...
In an Asian phase III noninferiority trial (AXEPT) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Xu et al found that modified XELIRI (mXELIRI, capecitabine plus irinotecan) was noninferior in overall survival vs standard FOLFIRI (leucovorin, fluorouracil, and irinotecan), both given with or without bevacizumab...
In the phase III MURANO trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Seymour et al, the combination of the BCL2 inhibitor venetoclax (Venclexta) with rituximab (Rituxan) markedly improved progression-free survival vs bendamustine plus rituximab in patients with relapsed or refractory...
A combination of the immunotherapy pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and the DNA repair–blocking agent niraparib (Zejula) can be significantly more effective than either drug alone in women with hard-to-treat ovarian cancer, a phase I/II clinical trial led by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers...
Sentinel lymph node biopsies may be safely avoided for some women, according to research presented at the 11th European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC-11). Two new studies show that women with either triple-negative or HER2-positive types of breast cancer, whose cancers respond well to chemotherapy ...
According to the American Cancer Society, lung cancer is the leading cause of death among men and women, killing about 84,000 men and 71,000 women each year. Although lung cancer–related death rates in the United States have declined steadily since 1990 in men, they did not start to decline...
Linda D. Bosserman, MD, FACP, FASCO, has been named Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP), an ASCO publication. Dr. Bosserman is a recognized leader in cancer care delivery with a deep understanding of the issues impacting all types of oncology practices. "We are delighted ...
In the E3805 trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Morgans et al found that chemohormonal therapy with docetaxel and androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) was associated with poorer quality of life (QOL) at 3 months but better QOL at 12 months vs ADT alone in metastatic hormone-sensitive ...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Stanulla et al found that a gene profile including somatic deletions in the lymphoid transcription factor–coding gene IKZF1 and deletions in other genes was associated with minimal residual disease (MRD)-dependent very-poor prognosis...
Frozen section evaluation of sentinel lymph nodes after neoadjuvant chemotherapy has a higher false-negative rate than in the primary surgical setting, particularly for small tumor deposits. However, it is unknown whether similar false positive rates occur after chemotherapy. Researchers led by...
One in five women diagnosed with cervical cancer in the United States will be diagnosed after the age of 65, suggesting that the recommended age to stop cervical cancer screening should be reconsidered, according to research presented at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology’s (SGO) 2018 Annual ...
Healthy women who carry a breast cancer–causing mutation in the BRCA1 gene not only reduce their risk of developing the disease but also their chances of dying from it if they have both breasts removed, according to new research presented at the 11th European Breast Cancer Conference...
Parents are less likely to vaccinate adolescent boys than girls with the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, and they are twice as likely to report their main reason as a lack of provider recommendation, according to a study presented at the 2018 Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) Annual Meeting ...
Immunotherapy has transformed the treatment of metastatic melanoma, with 3-year survival rates surpassing 50% for appropriate patients. However, many of these patients still require surgery, but very little research has been done on this group of patients to determine whether surgery after...
Patients with ovarian cancer with genetic amplification in the PARP-7 protein survived longer than those without the mutation, according to a presentation at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology’s (SGO) 2018 Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer. These results call for researchers to further...
On March 20, Genentech announced that the phase III IMpower131 study met its coprimary endpoint of progression-free survival (PFS) and demonstrated that the combination of atezolizumab (Tecentriq) plus chemotherapy (carboplatin and nanopartical albumin-bound [nab]-paclitaxel [Abraxane])...
In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Depuydt et al identified two genomic copy number aberrations associated with risk of extremely poor survival in patients with high-risk neuroblastoma. Study Details The international collaborative study included normalized...
In a phase II trial reported in JAMA Oncology by Debra L. Richardson, MD, of Stephenson Cancer Center, Oklahoma University Health Science Center, and colleagues, the addition of pazopanib (Votrient) to paclitaxel did not improve progression-free survival among women with persistent or recurrent...
An interim analysis of a phase II trial reported by Jones et al in The Lancet Oncology indicates that venetoclax (Venclexta) produces a response in a high proportion of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) progressing on or after ibrutinib (Imbruvica) treatment. John C. Byrd, MD, of The ...
A phase II study (ACE-LY-004) reported in The Lancet by Michael Wang, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and colleagues showed durable responses with the Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitor acalabrutinib (Calquence) in patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma....
When I was 15, and just 6 weeks into my sophomore year in high school, I heard a loud sound similar to a gunshot in my head and minutes later I was engulfed in a grand mal seizure, now called tonic-clonic seizure, and rushed to the hospital. A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan found a small...
In 2017, more than 63,000 women in the United States were diagnosed with in situ breast cancer. The overwhelming majority of those women, about 83%, were diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), a condition characterized by the presence of abnormal cells confined to the breast milk ducts;...
“At Microphone 1” is an occasional column written by Steven E. Vogl, MD, of the Bronx, New York. When he is not in his clinic, he can generally be found at major oncology meetings and often at the microphone, where he stands ready with critical questions for presenters of new data. The opinions...
“THE GOOD NEWS is cancer survivors are living longer. The bad news is they’re living long enough to experience the late consequences of curative treatment,” said Julia Rowland, PhD, formerly of the National Cancer Institute and now with Smith Center for Healing and the Arts, Washington, DC, at the ...
COMPARED TO the general population, the risk of cardiovascular disease among colorectal cancer survivors was significantly increased more than 10 years after their cancer diagnosis, according to research presented by David Baraghoshi, MSTAT candidate, of the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the...
Prevention in Oncology is guest edited by Jennifer Ligibel, MD, Chair of ASCO’s Energy Balance Working Group and a member of ASCO’s Cancer Survivorship and Cancer Prevention Committees. Dr. Ligibel is Director of the Leonard P. Zakim Center for Integrative Therapies at Dana-Farber Cancer...
AT A PREMEETING webinar, American Society of Hematology then President Kenneth C. Anderson, MD, Director of the Lebow Institute for Myeloma Therapeutics and Jerome Lipper Myeloma Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, commented: “This study demonstrates this new treatment has good...
CD19-DIRECTED chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of leukemia (tisagenlecleucel [Kymriah]) and lymphoma (axicabtagene ciloleucel [Yescarta]), but another type of CAR T-cell therapy is generating interest as a...
The population of bacteria in the pancreas increases more than a thousandfold in patients with pancreatic cancer and becomes dominated by species that prevent the immune system from attacking tumor cells. These are the findings of an early study conducted on pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma,...
On March 21, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued updated information about its understanding of breast implant–associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL). The agency is providing an updated number of medical device reports (ie, adverse event reports) and medical...
A large international study has shown that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can reduce the number of invasive prostate biopsies by up to 28%. The PRECISION trial showed that using MRI to target prostate biopsies leads to more harmful and fewer harmless prostate cancers being diagnosed. The results...
A major international survey has found that around a quarter of patients with penile cancer are not receiving the recommended treatment, and that these patients had half the survival rate of those who were treated according to guidelines. The study, presented at the European Association of Urology...
In the UK-based CAP trial reported in JAMA, Martin et al found that a single prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening was not associated with better 10-year prostate cancer-specific survival vs the standard practice of no screening. Screening was associated with greater detection of prostate...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Katz et al found that less than half of patients with clinical indications received formal genetic counseling after breast cancer diagnosis. Study Details The study involved surveys of 5,080 patients aged 20 to 79 years diagnosed with early ...
In a phase III trial (SUMIT) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Carvajal et al found that the addition of the oral MEK1/2 inhibitor selumetinib to dacarbazine did not significantly improve progression-free survival in patients with metastatic uveal melanoma. Study Details In the...