In the phase II Alliance A091401 trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, D’Angelo et al found evidence of activity of nivolumab plus ipilimumab in advanced sarcoma. Study Details The study comprised two noncomparative randomized phase II trials in which a total of 85 eligible patients...
STEPHEN LEONG, MD, of the University of Colorado Comprehensive Cancer Center, Aurora, discussed the RAINFALL findings at the symposium, commenting, “The study did meet its primary endpoint of progression-free survival; however, it was disappointing not to see a benefit in overall survival or...
BASED ON EFFICACY seen in the second-line setting for the treatment of metastatic gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma, ramucirumab (Cyramza) was evaluated as first-line therapy in the international phase III RAINFALL trial. Although the study met its primary endpoint, with a 25%...
AS REVIEWED in this issue of The ASCO Post, ASCO and Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) have issued an updated guideline on the role of bone-modifying agents in metastatic breast cancer.1 The updated guideline supports a change in clinical practice for our patients with breast cancer and bone metastasis....
CLINICAL TRIALS are an essential research tool to advance medical knowledge and patient care. Traditionally, the majority of pharmaceutical-sponsored clinical trials have been implemented in Western Europe and North America. More recently, however, large pharmaceutical companies have increased...
DISCUSSANT ZSOFIA KINGA STADLER, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, found the nivolumab (Opdivo)/ipilimumab (Yervoy) combination results very encouraging but was also impressed with the monotherapy arm. Both approaches are significant advances in treatment, she said. “The treatment of ...
IN THE FIRST REPORT of the full cohort of CheckMate-142, nivolumab (Opdivo) plus ipilimumab (Yervoy) led to a 1-year overall survival rate of 85% in previously treated patients with metastatic colorectal cancer who have DNA mismatch repair–deficient (dMMR) or microsatellite instability–high...
On January 26, 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved lutetium Lu-177 dotatate (Lutathera) for the treatment of gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (GEP-NETs). The drug is indicated for adult patients with somatostatin receptor–positive GEP-NETs. GEP-NETs can be...
The Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation and the American Lung Association’s LUNG FORCE welcome the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer as a new member of the Lung Cancer Patient Registry, a place to gather and store detailed patient information, providing a real-world view...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Pavel and colleagues, no significant difference in deterioration of health-related quality of life was observed with everolimus (Afinitor) vs placebo in the phase III RADIANT-4 trial, which included patients with advanced nonfunctional well-differentiated...
The phase III ACT IV study has shown no survival benefit of adding rindopepimut, a vaccine targeting the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) deletion mutation EGFRvIII, to temozolomide in patients with newly diagnosed EGFRvIII-positive glioblastoma. These findings were reported in The Lancet...
The use of chemotherapy to treat women with early-stage breast cancer “declined markedly over time,” according to analysis of data from 2,926 women between the ages of 20 and 79. The trends documented “are remarkable for their steepness of decline, independent of clinical factors and despite no...
What I thought after feeling a large, hard lump—similar to the feel of a granola bar—in my left breast was that I probably pulled a muscle while playing with my two young children, ages 7 and 5. Cancer never entered my mind until I asked my husband to feel the lump, and he immediately said, with...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the “Art of Oncology” as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
Oncology drug labels, especially those that have been on the market for more than 15 years, may not always be up-to-date. Critical data about safety, efficacy, or prescribing information may be missing. Modernizing the labeling process can correct inaccurate information, add data for indications ...
On June 16, 2017, daratumumab -(Darzalex) was approved for use in combination with pomalidomide (Pomalyst) and dexamethasone for treatment of patients with multiple myeloma who have received at least two prior therapies including lenalidomide (Revlimid) and a proteasome inhibitor.1,2 Supporting...
On May 23, 2017, pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was granted accelerated approval for treatment of adult and pediatric patients with unresectable or metastatic microsatellite instability–high (MSI-H) or mismatch repair deficient (dMMR) solid tumors progressing following prior treatment and who have no...
On August 1, 2017, the IDH2 inhibitor enasidenib (Idhifa) was granted regular approval for treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with an isocitrate dehydrogenase-2 (IDH2) mutation as detected by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved...
On July 11, 2017, blinatumomab (Blincyto) was approved for the treatment of relapsed or refractory B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in adults and children.1,2 Blinatumomab received accelerated approval in December 2014 for the treatment of Philadelphia chromosome (Ph)-negative...
In an analysis of more than 120,000 women diagnosed with and treated for early-stage breast cancer, researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center determined the rate of additional breast biopsies needed for these patients during their follow-up care. The findings, reported by...
The following essay by Shaker R. Dakhil, MD, FACP, 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 past September, Olivier Elemento, PhD, Associate Director of the Institute for Computational Biomedicine and Director of the Laboratory of Cancer Systems Biology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, was named Director of Weill Cornell’s Englander Institute for Precision Medicine. In this...
Now that we have entered 2018, let’s take a moment to reflect on how far we have come and what lies ahead in integrative oncology care. Overview To cope with the physical, emotional, and spiritual effects of cancer, and in search of relief from symptoms that their conventional treatments have not...
Updated results from the ELIANA clinical trial of tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah), formerly CTL019, in relapsed or refractory pediatric and young adult patients with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) have been published by Maude et al in The New England Journal of Medicine. New data include...
Holly G. Prigerson, PhD, Co-Director of the Weill Cornell Medicine’s Center for Research on End-of-Life Care, was born in Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, where her father had been a resident. Her family moved to Long Island, first living in Islip, where Dr. Prigerson’s father practiced medicine...
In a single-center phase II study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Kantarjian et al found that the addition of inotuzumab ozogamicin (Besponsa) to low-intensity chemotherapy produced promising outcomes in older patients with newly diagnosed Philadelphia chromosome–negative acute lymphoblastic ...
As reported by Aparicio et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, a French phase III trial (PRODIGE 9) showed no benefit of maintenance bevacizumab (Avastin) during postinduction chemotherapy-free intervals in metastatic colorectal cancer. Study Details In the open-label trial, 491 patients from ...
A type of cancer that occurs in the lower stomach has been increasing among some Americans under the age of 50, even though in the general population, the incidence of all stomach cancers has been declining for decades. These findings were published by Anderson et al in the Journal of the National...
To ensure that clinicians stay apace and provide optimal patient care, three leading medical societies—the College of American Pathologists (CAP), the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), and the Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP)—have updated their...
Among postmenopausal women with normal body mass index (BMI), those with higher body fat levels had an increased risk for invasive breast cancer, according to data presented at an American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Special Conference titled Obesity and Cancer: Mechanisms...
On January 30, Bellicum Pharmaceuticals announced it has received notice from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that U.S. studies of BPX-501—an agent being studied to improve outcomes for patients undergoing stem cell transplant who lack a matched donor—have been placed...
As reported by de Haan et al in The Lancet Oncology, data from the International Network on Cancer, Infertility and Pregnancy (INCIP) registry indicate that use of chemotherapy during pregnancy has increased over a 20-year period, and that infants exposed to antenatal chemotherapy may be more...
A pooled analysis by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has shown a benefit of treatment beyond progression, as defined by RECIST criteria, in many patients receiving anti–programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) antibodies for unresectable or metastatic melanoma. The analysis was ...
In a phase IIa multiple-basket study (MyPathway) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Hainsworth et al found that agents targeting specific molecular alterations produced responses in tumors outside of current labeling for the agents, with high response rates being observed in some tumor...
As reported by Chi et al in The Lancet Oncology, the addition of abiraterone and prednisone to androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) in the phase III LATITUDE trial was associated with improved patient-reported outcomes in patients with newly diagnosed metastatic castration-naive prostate cancer. The...
A new and unique new way to treat cancer—chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy—is poised to transform the outlook for children and adults with certain otherwise incurable cancers. ASCO named this type of adoptive-cell immunotherapy the Advance of the Year in its annual...
Researchers at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) and GeneDx, a genetic testing company, have identified two new genetic mutations associated with breast cancer: MSH6 and PMS2. The researchers’ study—published by Roberts et al in Genetics in Medicine—suggests that...
Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers developed a single blood test that screens for eight common cancer types and also helps identify the location of the cancer. The test, called CancerSEEK, is a unique noninvasive, multianalyte test that simultaneously evaluates levels of eight cancer...
In a Dutch/Belgian phase III trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by van Driel et al, the addition of hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy to interval cytoreductive surgery following neoadjuvant chemotherapy was associated with significantly improved recurrence-free and...
In the POSH study in the UK population reported in The Lancet Oncology, Copson et al found women with young-onset breast cancer who carry a germline BRCA mutation have survival similar to noncarriers, and BRCA-mutation carriers vs noncarriers with triple-negative breast cancer may have an early...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Kenneth Anderson, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and colleagues, ASCO has issued a clinical practice guideline update on the role of bone-modifying agents in multiple myeloma. The update was informed by an expert panel systematic literature...
In a systematic review and meta-analysis reported in JAMA Oncology, Waxman et al found that any-grade and grade ≥ 3 cardiovascular adverse events occurred in 18.1% and 8.2% of patients receiving carfilzomib (Kyprolis) for multiple myeloma in clinical trials. Study Details The study involved...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Motwani et al have developed a predictive model for acute kidney injury following a first course of cisplatin that includes patient age, cisplatin dose, hypertension, and serum albumin level. Study Details The study involved data from 2,118...
Interim results of the phase III CATNON trial (EORTC study 26053-22054) indicate a survival benefit of adjuvant temozolomide in 1p/19q non-codeleted anaplastic glioma. These findings were reported in The Lancet by Martin J. van den Bent, MD, of the Brain Tumour Centre at Erasmus MC Cancer...
In a study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Sekhar and colleagues found that the increasing proportion of lymph node–positive disease associated with enhanced detection techniques has led to nodal stage migration in anal cancer, which may reduce prognostic discrimination on the basis of lymph...
We don’t feel our liver or pancreas working, but we all feel our hearts beating—the drumbeat of our mortality since we all have a finite number of heartbeats from birth to death. And unlike with most other organs, we are painfully aware of how fragile this mighty muscle can be. About 610,000 people ...
FROM WILHELM RÖNTGEN’S groundbreaking discovery of x-rays in 1895, the history of radiotherapy has been rich with colorful paradigm-changing researchers and physicians who over the past century have transformed the field into one of the pillars of cancer treatment. One such trailblazer who...
Understanding what consciousness is, and why and how it evolved, is perhaps the greatest mystery known to science. With its 100 billion or so neurons and a processing rate of about 4 billion bits per second, the human brain is a miraculously complicated entity, much of which is still under...
This past December, nearly 400 medical professionals from a variety of fields—including medical oncology, palliative care, science, nursing, social work, and psychology—and 23 countries traveled to Atlanta, to attend the 2nd Global Adolescent & Young Adult (AYA) Cancer Congress. The 3-day...
The days leading up to our daughter Emily’s diagnosis of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) on May 28, 2010, when she was just 5, offered few clues about the terrifying, life-and-death months and years we were about to experience. She was happy and seemingly healthy, literally until the day before...