In his 1990 Nobel Prize Lecture, Eduard Donnall Thomas, MD, with characteristic humility, acknowledged that the success he celebrated “was made possible by the work of many others in this and related fields.” Dr. Thomas, whose groundbreaking work in bone marrow transplantation marked a new era in...
Nine women on my mother’s side of the family have been diagnosed with breast cancer, and nearly half have died from their disease, including my mother. With odds like these, I was determined to do what I could to stay ahead of this dreaded monster I thought was surely coming for me. First Tests...
The University of Tennessee Medical Center officially opened its new Cancer Institute in Knoxville at a ceremony attended by hundreds of patients, physicians, staff, and community leaders. At 108,000 square-feet, the new building nearly triples the size of the medical center’s previous cancer care...
As Drs. James Mohler and Donald Trump noted in their September 15 letter to The ASCO Post (“More Thoughts on PSA,” 3[14]:2, 2012), Richard Ablin, PhD, discovered a “prostate-specific antigen” of unknown properties, but his PSA is not the antigen in the PSA test we know today. Since Dr. Ablin has...
Insensitivity of HER2-amplified breast cancer to trastuzumab (Herceptin) has been associated with both changes in HER2 expression and activation of the PI3K-AKT pathway in laboratory studies. Chandarlapaty and colleagues from Memorial- Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and Fox Chase Cancer...
Shim and colleagues from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, and Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta have recently shown that the HIV protease inhibitor nelfinavir (Viracept) is a selective inhibitor of HER2-positive breast cancer...
The rise in obesity in the United States coincides with greater recognition of the role of obesity in cancer and other diseases.1 While decades of research have indicated a strong association between obesity and cancer, “several forces have made that association increasingly recognized,” according...
Richard L. Schilsky, MD, Chief of Hematology/Oncology in the Department of Medicine and Deputy Director of the University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center, has been named to the newly created position of Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of ASCO. A former ASCO President and Fellow of the American...
The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) recently announced the election of new leaders of its Board of Directors. These five new officers started their terms at the Annual Business Meeting at ASTRO’s 54th Annual Meeting in Boston, which was held October 28-31, 2012. “Exceptional...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) recently announced the election of four new members to its Executive Committee, the governing body of the organization, for terms to begin in January 2013. At the same time, ASH President-elect and Vice President will begin their tenures as ASH President and ...
Oncology continues to be one of the most sought-after specialties. Because of a shortage of oncologists and the accelerating pace of developments in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, oncology has become an increasingly competitive field. Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education...
Everyone understands the need for medical research, especially regarding cancer. However, only a minority of the public understand what is actually involved in taking part in a clinical trial. As professionals, we are responsible for designing relevant studies, for their conduct and analysis, and...
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recently announced the names of 70 new members and 10 foreign associates during its 42nd Annual Meeting, in Washington, DC. Election to the IOM is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine and recognizes individuals who have...
Many experts agree that at 18% of gross domestic product, health care (to paraphrase Shakespeare) is eating the country out of house and home. “The average cost of treating the most common cancers has increased, and as more expensive targeted therapies and other new technologies become the...
A recently reported National Cancer Institute of Canada (NCIC) Clinical Trials Group study, reported by Crook and colleagues in The New England Journal of Medicine, showed that intermittent androgen suppression was associated with noninferior overall survival when compared with continuous...
Accuray Incorporated has announced that the company received 510(k) clearance from the FDA for its new CyberKnife M6 Series. The CyberKnife M6 Series features expanded clinical capabilities and reduced treatment times. The new CyberKnife M6 FIM and FM Systems, featuring the InCise Multileaf...
The FDA has expanded labeling to include the results of an additional trial evaluating the safety and efficacy of pemetrexed (Alimta) for the initial treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic, nonsquamous, non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) followed by pemetrexed maintenance in...
Trials with pazopanib (Votrient) have “provided significant efficacy, toxicity, and tolerability data for pazopanib to be established as a first-line standard of care” for renal cell carcinoma,” Tim Eisen, PhD, of the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, stated at the 11th International Kidney...
The Conquer Cancer Foundation funds research focused on finding new therapeutics to conquer cancer and is also committed to funding research that other organizations may not, such as in palliative care, rare cancers, pediatric cancers, and high-risk areas. With donations from supporters like you,...
Conquering cancer requires the faith, talent, and resources of all members of our community. It requires the innovation of researchers and the insight of clinicians. It requires the courage of our worldwide community of patients and survivors, and it requires the generosity of everyone who believes ...
Breast cancer mortality has been found to be higher among black and Hispanic women than among white women, with the differences in outcome being attributed in part to more advanced disease stage and greater frequency of unfavorable tumor biology among black and Hispanic women. Studies to date have...
In ambulatory patients with cancer, the risk of catheter-related deep-vein thrombosis can be reduced by almost half with anticoagulation prophylaxis, according to a single-center French study presented at the 2012 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress in Vienna.1 Catheters implanted ...
Several sessions at the 2012 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress in Vienna focused on novel targeted therapies in various stages of development. Summarized here are data on two promising drugs for breast cancer and two for prostate cancer. E-3810 in Breast Cancer Two experimental...
The theme of this year’s International Conference of the Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO) was “Honoring Diversity in Cancer Prevention and Control.” The conference was held October 8–10, 2012, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and examined such varied topics as health-care disparities, novel...
AVEO Oncology and Astellas Pharma, Inc, recently announced that AVEO has submitted a New Drug Application (NDA) to the FDA for tivozanib, in patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Tivozanib is a potent, selective, long half-life inhibitor of all three vascular endothelial growth factor...
Trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) is an antibody-drug conjugate composed of trastuzumab bound to the cytotoxic microtubule inhibitor emtansine (DM1, derivative of maytansine) by a stable linker. Trastuzumab targets the conjugate to HER2 receptors, and the linker releases the cytotoxic agent when the...
The pendulum continues to swing in the treatment of stage II and III colon cancer. Not 5 years ago, our party line was that essentially all patients should receive 6 months of adjuvant FOLFOX (leucovorin, fluorouracil [5-FU], oxaliplatin): patients with stage II or III disease, whether rectal or...
The FDA has approved omacetaxine mepesuccinate (Synribo) to treat adults with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) whose cancer has progressed after treatment with at least two tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Omacetaxine is injected subcutaneously twice daily for 14 consecutive days over a 28-day cycle...
Overdiagnosis and the harms associated with unnecessary procedures is becoming a vibrant subject in today’s health-care dialogue, with serious implications for providers and patients alike. A new study from the Norwegian Screening Program concluded that 15% to 25% of breast cancers identified on...
At the Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference, held this year in Maui, Hawaii, Andreas Engert, MD, Chairman of the German Hodgkin Study Group, University Hospital of Cologne, Germany, led off the Hodgkin lymphoma section of the conference with a presentation on optimizing the use of BEACOPP (bleomycin,...
Widespread use of screening technologies has markedly increased early detection rates of cancer, saving countless lives. However, while screening technologies have remarkable sensitivity, their inability to identify which tumors will progress and which will not has created the phenomenon of...
The 35th European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress in Vienna broke all records for attendance, with about 16,000 attendees from all over the world. Some sessions were standing room only, including the Presidential Symposia, the ESMO-ASCO Joint Symposium on genomics in breast cancer, and ...
As John Goldman, DM, FRCP, FRCPath, FMedSci, discussed earlier, a substantial minority of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) experience treatment failure. Jorge Cortes, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, introduced this session with two patient cases to illustrate...
Imatinib (Gleevec) is a highly effective therapy for the majority of patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). In the IRIS study, only 30% of patients could be considered to have failed imatinib treatment after 6 years.1 However, these 30% of patients are a substantial minority. John Goldman,...
Cytogenetic analysis remains an important component of patient monitoring until a complete cytogenetic response is achieved. In addition, the ability of conventional cytogenetics to identify additional chromosomal abnormalities not detected by fluorescence in situ hybridization is noteworthy. Jorge ...
*Corresponding author, MediCom Worldwide, Inc, 101 Washington Street, Morrisville, PA 19067, e-mail: gtombler@medicaled.com Activity Release Date: November 15, 2012Period of Validity: November 15, 2013 Program Overview This activity presents highlights from a satellite symposium held in...
Patients with hepatitis B virus (HBV)-related hepatocellular carcinoma who received nucleoside analogs after curative liver resection had an associated lower risk of hepatocellular carcinoma in a nationwide cohort study using data from the Taiwan National Health Research Data Base. The study was...
A randomized controlled trial among patients with newly diagnosed localized Ewing sarcoma found that “chemotherapy administered every 2 weeks is more effective than chemotherapy administered every 3 weeks, with no increase in toxicity,” investigators from the Children’s Oncology Group reported in...
Margaret I. Cuomo, MD, is a board-certified radiologist who served for many years as an attending physician in diagnostic radiology at North Shore University Hospital, Manhasset, New York. Dr. Cuomo is the daughter of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo and sister to Governor Andrew Cuomo. She is...
“Soaring spending has presented the medical community with a new obligation. When choosing treatments for a patient, we have to consider the financial strains they may cause alongside the benefits they might deliver,” three physicians from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York...
“At Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, we recently made a decision that should have been a no-brainer: we are not going to give a phenomenally expensive new cancer drug to our patients.” That was the opening sentence of a New York Times op-ed piece written by three physicians from Memorial...
Leading cancer researcher Lewis C. Cantley, PhD, has been named Director of the newly established Cancer Center at Weill Cornell Medical College and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. According to Weill Cornell Medical College’s new Dean, Laurie H. Glimcher, MD, and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital’s CEO, ...
Six years ago, at age 62, I was feeling in great shape. The year before, I had taken over custody of my 2- and 3-year-old great-grandchildren and decided to change the course of my career from motivational speaker to motivational coach to be home more often with the kids. It was during one of our...
Although internationally recognized today as the founder of the subspeciality of psycho-oncology, the field of psychiatry held no interest for Jimmie C. Holland, MD, when she entered Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, in the mid-1940s. Born in 1928 at the dawn of the Great Depression,...
January 2013 3rd International Conference on Medical, Biological and Pharmaceutical SciencesJanuary 4-5 • Bali, Indonesia For more information: www.psrcentre.org Breast-Gynecological International Cancer CongressJanuary 17-18 • Cairo, Egypt For more information: www.bgicc.eg.net/ Highlights of ASH® ...
As an oncologist in private practice, I usually read with great interest the many articles in The ASCO Post on issues regarding the politics of oncology practice. These articles deal with the major topics of the day, ranging from the high cost of oncologic care to shortages of generic drugs, to...
I am frequently asked about the “true” history of prostate-specific antigen (PSA). As PSA has become more important, a controversy about its discovery has increased. I lived through much of this history and have known many of the “players.” Here are the relevant facts, as I believe them to be ...
Ruxolitinib (Jakafi), a novel, oral JAK1 and JAK2 inhibitor, was approved by the FDA on November 16, 2011 for patients with intermediate- or high-risk myelofibrosis. The approval was based on its efficacy in reducing spleen size and improving disease-related burdensome symptoms. In the brief In the ...
It has been more than 4 decades since our nation loaded its medical cannons and declared war on cancer, self-assured that money and American scientific resolve would lead to victory. But cancer has proved to be a humbling enemy. The war is now fought in targeted skirmishes; the weaponry is a...
The positive healing effects of music can be traced as far back as ancient Greece and the belief that Apollo was God of medicine and music. In his book De Anima, Aristotle wrote that flute music could purify the soul. By the end of the 19th century, researchers were showing a correlation between...