Immunotherapy has shown promising results in the first- and second-line treatment of metastatic bladder cancer in two phase II trials presented by Galsky et al and Balar et al at the 2016 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress in Copenhagen (Abstracts LBA31_PR and LBA32_PR,...
In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Unger et al found that use of finasteride vs placebo in the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial was associated with a modestly increased risk of depression and a modestly reduced risk of procedures for benign prostatic...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Chakravarthy et al found that human papillomavirus (HPV)-driven tumors accounted for 4.1% of nonoropharyngeal squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck. HPV-positive tumors were associated with poorer survival and reduced...
In a phase III trial reported at the recent European Society for Medical Oncology Congress and in The New England Journal of Medicine by Hortobagyi et al, first-line treatment with ribociclib, a selective inhibitor of cyclin-dependent kinases 4 and 6 (CDK4/6), resulted in significantly longer...
Ceritinib (Zykadia) provides longer progression-free survival than chemotherapy in crizotinib–pretreated patients with non–small cell lung cancer harboring an ALK rearrangement, according to results of the phase III ASCEND-5 study presented by Scagliotti et al at the European Society...
In the phase III IMPRINT trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Rini et al found no overall survival benefit of adding the multipeptide cancer vaccine IMA901 to sunitinib (Sutent) in the first-line treatment of locally advanced or metastatic renal cell carcinoma. IMA901 contains 10 tumor-associated ...
A phase III trial of sunitinib (Sutent) has met its primary endpoint of disease-free survival for adjuvant treatment of high-risk renal cell carcinoma after nephrectomy, reported Ravaud et al at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2016 Congress in Copenhagen (Abstract LBA11_PR)....
Neoadjuvant chemotherapy with an anthracycline plus ifosfamide was associated with significant survival gains in patients with soft-tissue sarcoma of the trunk or extremities who are at high-risk of recurrence, in an interim analysis that led to the early discontinuation of a trial presented by...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Etienne et al, long-term follow-up in the French Stop Imatinib (STIM1) study indicates imatinib can be safely stopped in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) with undetectable minimal residual disease sustained for at least 2 years. Study...
Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) is set to become a new option for first-line treatment of patients with advanced lung cancer and high programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression, according to the results of the phase III KEYNOTE-024 trial presented by Reck et al at the 2016 European Society for ...
The PARP inhibitor niraparib significantly improves the outcome of platinum-sensitive recurrent ovarian cancer, according to full data from the ENGOT-OV16/NOVA trial presented by Mirza et al at the 2016 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress in Copenhagen (Abstract LBA3_PR), and...
The addition of the CDK4/6 inhibitor ribociclib to letrozole therapy significantly improved progression-free survival in postmenopausal women with hormone receptor–positive advanced breast cancer, reported Hortobagyi et al at the 2016 European Society for Medical Oncology...
A partnership that added health navigation services to 2-1-1 call centers helped a significant number of underserved Texans receive cancer control measures such as Papanicolaou (Pap) tests and smoking cessation help, according to a study (PR12, C49) presented at the 9th Association for Cancer...
Triple-negative breast cancer in African American women is much more likely to lack the androgen receptor protein compared with triple-negative breast cancer in European American women, and this may contribute to the racial disparity in survival outcomes among these two populations, according to a...
In an exploratory analysis of the REACH trial in advanced hepatocellular carcinoma reported in JAMA Oncology, Zhu et al found a borderline survival benefit of second-line ramucirumab (Cyramza) vs placebo among patients with a Child-Pugh score of 5 and a significant benefit among patients with a...
In a pooled analysis reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Gadgeel et al found that alectinib (Alecensa) was associated with good central nervous system (CNS) response in patients with ALK-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) previously treated with crizotinib (Xalkori). Study ...
African American cancer survivors are more likely than whites to experience lasting debt or forgo necessary medical care as they struggle with the financial burden of cancer, while whites are somewhat more likely to use existing assets to pay for their cancer care, according to a study (C13)...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Luo et al found that a modified staging classification based on the European Neuroendocrine Tumor Society (ENETS) and the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) staging classifications may improve distinction among risk groups in pancreatic...
A collaborative modeling study evaluating outcomes for various screening intervals for women over the age of 50 based on breast density and risk for breast cancer has found that average-risk women with low breast density undergoing triennial screening and higher-risk women with high breast density...
In a prospective cohort study reported in JAMA Oncology, Shu et al found that risk for serous/serous-like endometrial carcinoma appeared to be increased after risk-reducing salpingo-oophorectomy (RRSO) without hysterectomy in women harboring the BRCA1 mutation. The overall risk of uterine cancer...
Long-term follow-up in the phase III QuiRedex trial indicates continued benefit of lenalidomide (Revlimid)/dexamethasone vs observation in preventing disease progression in patients with high-risk smoldering multiple myeloma, as reported by Maria-Victoria Mateos, PhD, of Instituto de Biologia...
The release of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Safety Communication “alerting women about the risks associated with the use of tests being marketed as ovarian cancer screening tests”1 and recommending against using these tests comes not as a result of startling new studies, but from an...
In a Safety Communication directed at women and physicians, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) alerted women “about the risks associated with the use of tests being marketed as ovarian cancer screening tests” and recommended “against using currently offered tests to screen for ovarian...
The University of Colorado Cancer Center has named Eric Clambey, PhD, Director of the Flow Cytometry Shared Resource. Dr. Clambey, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, is excited to assume his new role in a vital resource for the cancer center. “My research focuses on the...
Despite my breast cancer diagnosis 4 years ago, I feel really lucky. My cancer was detected relatively early, stage IIB, during a routine mammogram screening—a test that many of my lesbian friends skip because they don’t want to deal with a medical system steeped in a heterosexual culture that is...
We pass them every day on our way to the hospital, the street dwellers of our town in India. Their home consists of a plastic sheet suspended between four poles on the pavement. One day, two women sat under the plastic sheet in happy conversation. It had rained heavily the previous night, and I...
Mr. C is almost 90 now, but every summer the boxes of squash, pumpkins, tomatoes, and other vegetables from his truck farm still arrive like clockwork at our door. The cancer that required treatment 17 years ago has never recurred. He’s now struggling with a new problem, recovering from a broken...
Bruce E. Johnson, MD, FASCO, began his term as ASCO President-Elect in June 2016 and will serve as 2017–2018 President. A thoracic cancer specialist, Dr. Johnson is Chief Clinical Research Officer and institute physician at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical...
Susan M. O’Brien, MD, one of the nation’s foremost leukemia experts, told The ASCO Post that she wanted to become a doctor since her earliest memories. “The idea of being able to help sick people always appealed to me,” said Dr. O’Brien, who was born in Manhattan but spent her formative years in...
When it comes to cancer-causing viruses like human papillomavirus (HPV), researchers are continuing to find that infection with one strain may be better than another. In an analysis of survival data for patients with oropharyngeal cancer, researchers from the University of North Carolina (UNC)...
What are the factors that add up to the best outcomes for patients who have surgery to treat cancer? Looking for a better way to measure quality of care and share best practices in surgical oncology, a team from Roswell Park Cancer Institute developed a quality assessment tool and validated it in a ...
Pang et al found that the enrollment disparity in clinical trials in lung cancer has been reduced in recent years for older patients and women overall, according to a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. However, disparities persist for elderly women, blacks, Asian/Pacific Islanders, ...
In the phase III EORTC (European Organisation for Research and Treatment) 22033-26033 intergroup trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Baumert et al found no progression-free survival difference between temozolomide chemotherapy and radiotherapy alone in patients with high-risk low-grade glioma....
Ever since the immune checkpoint agents arrived, the pace of clinical investigation in oncology has continued to accelerate with an ever-increasing number of trials of single-agent and combination therapies with novel designs that are transforming our drug-development process. However, even in...
In a phase III trial (CA184-156) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Martin Reck, MD, PhD, of LungenClinic Grosshansdorf, Germany, and colleagues, the addition of the anti–CTLA-4 (cytotoxic T-lymphocyte–associated protein 4) checkpoint inhibitor ipilimumab (Yervoy) to...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Distinguished Lecture on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities, funded by Susan G. Komen, honors an investigator whose novel and significant work has had or may have a far-reaching impact on the etiology, detection, diagnosis, treatment, or...
The advent of more effective systemic therapies, which extend patients’ lives, has also resulted in an increasing incidence of brain metastases, for which clinicians must determine appropriate treatment. Whole-brain radiotherapy has been the traditional treatment modality, but stereotactic...
An international leader in harnessing a patient’s own stem cells to fight cancer and autoimmune diseases joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin (UW) Carbone Cancer Center on September 1. Jacques Galipeau, MD, FRCP(C), came from the Winship Cancer Center at Emory University, where he...
In the phase III CASTOR trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Antonio Palumbo, MD, of the University of Turin, and colleagues found that adding the anti-CD38 antibody daratumumab (Darzalex) to bortezomib (Velcade) and dexamethasone markedly improved progression-free survival among ...
In the 20th century, the field of statistics developed and was gradually applied to clinical research. The use of statistics allows clinical researchers to form reasonable and accurate inferences from collected information and to make sound decisions in the presence of uncertainty. Moreover,...
A session at the 2016 Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium focused on the special needs of cancer caregivers. In a large survey, caregivers of persons with cancer reported higher levels of stress and significantly more duties than caregivers of other patients. But, according to research from...
Clinicians and researchers in the field of palliative and supportive care are enjoying the recognition the field is now receiving and expecting the future to be ripe with opportunity. But one thought leader in this specialty had a suggestion for attendees at the 2016 Palliative Care in Oncology...
The advent of immunotherapies has created a number of interesting challenges for oncology providers. At the 2016 Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium, specialists in the field tackled these issues. “There is a lot of newness to how we approach patient care with immunotherapies on board,” said...
On October 4, 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted alectinib (Alecesna), an anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) inhibitor, a second Breakthrough Therapy designation. This latest designation was granted for the treatment of adult patients with advanced ALK-positive non–small...
The third annual Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium, held on September 9–10, 2016, in San Francisco, California, brought together more than 650 attendees from multiple countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and China. It featured over 250 study...
The Community Oncology Alliance (COA) released the 2016 Community Oncology Practice Impact Report today, which tracks the changing landscape of cancer care in the United States. It documents a 121% increase in community cancer clinic closings and a 172% increase in consolidation into hospitals...
Kerr et al found that adding adjuvant bevacizumab (Avastin) to capecitabine did not improve disease-free survival in unselected patients with stage III or high-risk stage II colorectal cancer. The results of the phase III QUASAR 2 trial were reported in The Lancet Oncology. Study Details In the...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Bagrodia et al found that alterations in TP53 and MDM2 were associated with cisplatin resistance and poorer outcome in patients with advanced germ cell tumors. Actionable alterations were found in a high proportion of cases of cisplatin...
Here is a brief look at the study findings and clinical implications of several recent clinical trials on newer treatment options in neoplastic hematology. Attention is focused on several types of leukemia, Hodgkin lymphoma, and multiple myeloma. Leukemia Clinical Trial: INO-VATE ALL phase III...
In August 2016, the Healthcare Delivery Research Program of the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences at the National Cancer Institute convened a group of experts in a variety of fields to identify a research agenda for optimizing employment outcomes among cancer survivors. A core...