Analysis of data from 58,172 patients identified from Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) registries as having stage I or II endometrial adenocarcinoma found that pelvic radiotherapy and lymphadenectomy were associated with statistically significantly reduced noncancer mortality,...
Only nodal status and tumor size provided statistically significant prognostic information for predicting recurrences 5 to 10 years after diagnosis for postmenopausal women with early estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer enrolled in the monotherapy arms of the ATAC (Arimidex, Tamoxifen, Alone...
A new report recently released and supported by the American Society of Hematology (ASH) details the crippling effects of sequestration on programs that rely on discretionary federal funding, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In “Faces of Austerity: How Budget Cuts Have Made Us...
Risk-reducing salpingo-oophorectomy “is an important strategy for reducing both breast and gynecologic cancer risk for women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations and is proven to improve life expectancy,” Noah D. Kauff, MD, told The ASCO Post. Questions persist, however, about whether women undergoing...
For women with BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations who choose to have salpingo-oophorectomy to reduce their risks of ovarian and breast cancer, also choosing to have a hysterectomy is “reasonable but not required,” noted Noah D. Kauff, MD, Director of the Ovarian Cancer Screening and Prevention Program and...
Annual screening for breast cancer with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been found to be cost-effective in women aged 30 to 60 years who are BRCA1 or BRCA2 carriers or who have a 50% chance of being a carrier, and such screening is recommended in these women by many authorities. It is unclear...
In a study reported in Clinical Cancer Research, Moschetta and colleagues characterized the involvement of the cMet oncogene in drug resistance and the activity of a novel selective inhibitor of cMET/phospho-cMET (SU11274) in multiple myeloma cells sensitive (RPMI-8226 and MM.1S) and resistant (R5...
Five recent articles in JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery1-5 span a spectrum of issues related to head and neck cancers. These include risk factors, concentration of care to teaching hospitals, avoiding venous thromboembolism, and encouraging patients to eat and do swallowing exercises to ...
December Sixth AACR International Conference on The Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically UnderservedDecember 6-9 • Atlanta, GeorgiaFor more information: www.aacr.org 55th ASH Annual MeetingDecember 7-10 • New Orleans, LouisianaFor more information:...
In an editorial accompanying the article by Boughey et al, Monica Morrow, MD, and Chau T. Dang, MD, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, question whether sentinel lymph node biopsy can be considered a part of standard management in patients with initial clinically node-positive...
According to data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program (SEER) and the U.S. Census Bureau registries,1 there are currently about 13.7 million cancer survivors in the United States, and that number is projected to grow to 18 million by 2022. In addition, 64% of this population ...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and the Ocular Melanoma Foundation (OMF) are pleased to announce a new partnership to provide a grant opportunity for researchers focused on ocular melanoma, which is diagnosed in approximately 2,000 adults in the United States each year....
The adjuvant use of bisphosphonates in breast cancer continues to yield seemingly contradictory data despite a sound biologic basis and smaller pilot studies suggesting that dampening bone turnover with bisphosphonates can lessen the bone reservoir of micrometastases.1,2 Early adjuvant trials with...
The effect of bisphosphonate treatment in early breast cancer is controversial, with some data indicating survival benefit in the adjuvant setting. In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (German Adjuvant Intergroup Node-Positive Study, GAIN), Gunter von Minckwitz, MD, PhD, Chairman ...
In their retrospective analysis of German High-Grade Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma Study Group trials reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, Held and colleagues assessed the effects of rituximab (Rituxan) and radiotherapy in patients with aggressive B-cell...
Oncologists are getting a handle on BRCA1/2 in breast cancer, becoming more adept at treating and counseling patients with these mutations. But the BRCA mutation is only one example of a host of genetic variations that can increase breast cancer risk, according to James M. Ford, MD, Associate...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. Indication On November 1, 2013, obinutuzumab (Gazyva) was approved...
On August 1 of this year, requirements of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, or Open Payments, went into effect. The legislation, passed as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, was designed to create greater transparency around financial relationships between physicians,...
Conquering cancer requires the commitment, talent, and resources of all members of our community. It requires the innovation of researchers and the insight of clinicians, the courage of our worldwide community of patients and survivors, and it requires the generosity of everyone who believes in a...
Lynne Blasi, Director, Patient Education and Advocacy, ASCO Why do you choose to support the Conquer Cancer Foundation? I support the Conquer Cancer Foundation because of the tremendous impact it has across so many vital areas. From funding grants for young researchers with innovative ideas,...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized the marketing of the UroLift system, a permanent implant to relieve low or blocked urine flow in men age 50 and older with benign prostatic hyperplasia. As men age, the prostate can become enlarged, also known as benign prostatic hyperplasia....
Progress in the treatment of gastric cancer has lagged behind advances in other solid tumor malignancies. A modest but clear survival benefit with the use of adjuvant therapy combined with surgery has been achieved, including the use of postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy as shown in large-scale...
For a number of years following the approval of gemcitabine for advanced pancreatic cancer, one phase III clinical trial after the next failed to demonstrate a survival benefit of combination chemotherapy compared to gemcitabine alone. Even the one positive study from the mid-2000s—the PA.3 trial...
From 12% to 15% of the approximately 45,000 patients diagnosed with pancreas adenocarcinoma undergo a potentially curative resection each year in North America, translating into roughly 5,000 to 7,000 patients who are candidates for adjuvant therapy. About 80% of these patients will relapse and...
Since the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM’s) 2005 report, From Cancer Patient to Cancer Survivor: Lost in Translation,1 survivorship plans have received growing attention. In short, a survivorship care plan is the record of a patient’s cancer history and recommendations for follow-up care. At ASCO’s...
In one study presented at ASCO’s second annual Quality Care Symposium in San Diego, patients receiving chemotherapy with palliative care intent were at high risk of side-effect–related hospitalization, which defeats the clinical purpose and adds preventable costs to health care.1 “There is an...
Eric Van Cutsem, MD, PhD, Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Leuven in Belgium, the formal discussant of the late-breaking abstract, noted there is strong rationale for studying TP53 status in relation to rectal cancer outcomes, but he felt the findings of EXPERT-C could not yet be ...
In a retrospective analysis of the randomized phase II EXPERT-C trial, TP53 emerged as a strong, independent predictive biomarker for the benefit of cetuximab (Eribitux) in MRI-defined high-risk, locally advanced rectal cancer, according to Francesco Sclafani, MD, of The Royal Marsden NHS...
For patients with operable rectal cancer, there is no clear role for adjuvant chemotherapy, according to an analysis of the PROCTOR and SCRIPT trials from the Dutch Colorectal Cancer Group. The findings were presented by Anne J. Breugom, MD, of Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands,...
Excitement continues to build in the metastatic melanoma arena, as novel agents keep upping the ante for efficacy. The following news from the 2013 European Cancer Congress has added to the buzz. New MEK Inhibitor In the phase IB BRIM7 study, cobimetinib, a novel MEK inhibitor, when combined with...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved ibrutinib (Imbruvica) to treat patients with mantle cell lymphoma, a rare and aggressive form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma representing about 6% of all non-Hodgkin lymphoma cases in the United States. By the time mantle cell lymphoma is diagnosed, it...
Formal discussant of the AP26113 trial at the European Cancer Congress, Frances A. Shepherd, MD, FRCPC, Professor at the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine and Scott Taylor Chair in Lung Cancer Research at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto, Canada, explained that ALK...
Relapsed and refractory transplant-eligible Hodgkin lymphoma patients who achieve complete responses after treatment with brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) can often avoid more toxic salvage chemotherapy, according to investigators from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York....
In North America, the standard front-line treatment for advanced Hodgkin lymphoma is ABVD (doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine, dacarbazine), but this regimen is not effective in all patient subsets. To improve upon the regimen’s efficacy, researchers are evaluating new combinations, said Stephen...
For the front-line treatment of advanced Hodgkin lymphoma, ABVD is a standard treatment, but not all patients have good outcomes with this regimen. The addition of brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris), or its substitution for bleomycin, produces high complete response rates but with a moderate increase...
Over the centuries it has become clear that, as physicians, what we say and how we say it can have a major impact on those who seek our help. Our pronouncement that a patient is in remission or harbors a serious illness carries with it a large number of spoken and unspoken implications. So when we...
GeparTrio was an innovative phase III trial conducted by the German Breast Group, enrolling over 2,000 women with early breast cancer who were candidates for neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Patients with evidence of early response, defined as reduction in clinical tumor size by 50% or more, following two ...
We appreciate Dr. Herrmann’s concerns in regard to conflict of interest. The ASCO Post makes every effort to present news and data in an objective and fair manner. Often we invite an independent expert in a particular area to share his or her perspective to lend more insight to a report. We...
I am a veteran member of ASCO (> 33 years) and a regular reader of The ASCO Post Evening News, which usually provides very interesting information. A recent issue contained an article about a review presented by Tony Reid, MD, PhD, at a Best of ASCO meeting on “Important Findings in Metastatic...
Updated clinical guidelines published this year by ASCO “give oncology care providers an opportunity to partner with their reproductive specialist colleagues to ensure that the clinical and psychosocial needs of patients with cancer are addressed as close to the time of diagnosis as possible,”...
Using life expectancy, rather than chronologic age, to inform decisions about whether to continue cancer screening for older persons can maximize the potential benefits of screening, while minimizing the harms, according to results of a population-based cohort study of 407,749 people over 66...
A phase II trial to evaluate the combination of bendamustine (Treanda) with bortezomib (Velcade) and dexamethasone in patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma “showed a remarkable response rate of 60.9%,” and when minor responses were included, 75.9%,” researchers reported in Blood. “The...
High costs of cancer treatments can be an “undisclosed toxicity” that can harm a patient’s overall health and well-being, according to an article in The New England Journal of Medicine.1 High medical bills can not only cause stress and anxiety but may also compel patients to cut back on spending...
Dr. Mason states that I implied that Dr. Telli supports the routine application of chemosensitivity assays. I have no knowledge regarding Dr. Telli’s views on this subject, nor did I in any way attempt to represent her views, much less imply that she was supportive of anything relating to...
January 2014 AACR-IASLC Joint Conference on the Molecular Origins of Lung CancerJanuary 6-9 • San Diego, CaliforniaFor more information: www.aacr.org 2014 Gastrointestinal Cancers SymposiumJanuary 16-18 • San Francisco, CaliforniaFor more information: www.gicasym.org 10th Annual Clinical...
In the late 1980s, Brian J. Druker, MD, was investigating the BCR-ABL tyrosine kinase as a target for therapeutic intervention for chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in a laboratory at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. By 1993, Dr. Druker had moved to Oregon Health & Science University in...
The use of dietary supplements by patients with cancer has increased significantly over the past 2 decades despite insufficient evidence of safety and effectiveness. Finding reliable sources of information about dietary supplements can be daunting. Patients typically rely on family, friends, and...
The 10th International Conference of the Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO) was held recently in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and attracted over 300 oncologists and internal medicine physicians, researchers, nurses, integrative medicine practitioners, cancer survivors, and patient...
aEditor’s Note: References to these tools are provided for educational purposes only. Terms of use for these tools may vary and some may be subject to copyright restrictions. Patient-Reported Outcomes version of the CTCAE (PRO-CTCAE) Patient Completed mcAEs Specific Symptom Experience...
Targeted anticancer therapies like epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) inhibitors, multitargeted tyrosine kinase inhibitors (mTKIs), and mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitors frequently result in dermatologic adverse events and mucosal adverse events, or, taken together, mucocutaneous ...