For patients with cancer, the oral blood thinner apixaban is at least as effective as dalteparin, a low–molecular-weight heparin given by injection, in preventing a repeat venous thromboembolism (VTE), with no excess in major bleeding events. These findings from the phase III Caravaggio study were...
In a correspondence published in The Lancet Oncology, Rishi S. Kotecha, MB, ChB, of the Government of Western Australia Department of Health, identified challenges in protecting children with cancer from COVID-19 infection and stressed that some measures proposed to protect adults with cancer may...
To start off this week, we’ll discuss a report from physicians in Washington state about how they’re handling cancer care currently in their institutions amid the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ll then hear from Dr. Giuseppe Curigliano, who spoke with The ASCO Post from his office in Milan about how Italy...
In the novel Blindness, Portuguese author José Saramago describes an epidemic that quickly and inexorably causes nearly all inhabitants of an unnamed city to lose their sight. The Nobel Laureate writes in long uninterrupted sentences, making the reader experience the fears and anxieties of the...
Giuseppe Curigliano, MD, PhD, of the University of Milan, talks about how, in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, he and his fellow oncologists have altered the way they treat patients with cancer. Filmed March 24, 2020.
In some patients with advanced ovarian cancer, the combination of programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) and poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors can produce responses, but up until now, investigators have been unable to predict which patients would not benefit from the treatment and...
It is devasting for a doctor to tell a patient there is nothing that can be done to help him. For Nizar Tannir, MD, FACP, the words of a young father still ring in his ears: “I was trying to tell him that, unfortunately, despite all our efforts, I didn’t have any more treatments to offer him. And...
An American medical student travels to rural Uganda; there, he finds most villagers walking miles to receive health care at the nearby district hospital. Upon arrival, they spend hours waiting in line. Some patients make this trip monthly. Before entering internal medicine residency, Daniel O’Neil, ...
The parker institute for cancer immunotherapy (PICI) recently announced awards for six early-career researchers through the Parker Scholars, Parker Bridge Fellows, and Parker Senior Fellows programs. They are receiving a total of up to $2.75 million in funding to advance their research in profound...
The history of drug addictions and epidemics in the United States dates back to the Civil War, when morphine was introduced as a pain medication for wounded soldiers. Regular off-label use of morphine quickly spread from war hospitals to the general public. It is estimated that more than 400,000...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of 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, historical...
At the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) 46th Annual Meeting & Cancer Center Business Summit, held March 4–6 in Washington, DC, Randall A. Oyer, MD, was named ACCC President for 2020–2021. Dr. Oyer announced that the theme of his presidency will be “Community Oncology Can Close the ...
The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) recently announced it is naming the Translational Research Lectureship Award after longtime member and former IASLC Chief Executive Officer Fred R. Hirsch, MD, PhD. The award, which was previously named after Adi Gazdar, MD, who...
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has named Charles Sawyers, MD, as the recipient of the 2020 Alfred G. Knudson Award in Cancer Genetics. Dr. Sawyers is Chair of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program and the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Chair at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, as ...
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) recently appointed Sergio Giralt, MD, and Miguel-Angel Perales, MD, as Deputy Division Head of the Division of Hematologic Malignancies and Chief of the Adult Bone Marrow Transplant Service, respectively. Dr. Giralt: New Roles and Old Former Chief of...
As has often been written, “Cancer is the greatest equalizer.” It tends to strike its victims regardless of their financial status. In low- and middle-income countries, however, the impact of poverty on the treatment of cancer is strikingly conspicuous. It is the major catalyst for delay in seeking ...
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is dramatically affecting health-care systems. This is the first in a series of interviews The ASCO Post will conduct with oncologists, to learn what they and their cancer centers are doing to deal with the crisis. In this article, we talk with John Cole, MD, a...
This past January, the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium was held in San Francisco. More than 3,600 individuals attended and more than 900 abstracts and posters were presented. Among the highlights presented at the meeting and reported in the pages of The ASCO Post, several studies in...
Dr. Armitage discusses the role of CAR T-cell therapy in the management of multiple myeloma and lymphoma in a conversation with his colleagues Dr. Holstein and Dr. Lunning.
Dr. Armitage presents a case and asks Dr. Lunning to describe how he would treat this patient. The patient is a 52-year-old man who found a neck mass himself. He went to his doctor and was prescribed antibiotics. When the antibiotics failed to impact the mass, a biopsy was performed and a diagnosis ...
Dr. Armitage presents a case and asks Dr. Lunning to describe how he would treat this patient. The patient is a 25-year-old man with a diagnosis of stage III nodular sclerosing Hodgkin lymphoma. His disease went into complete remission when the patient was treated with ABVD and he was well. One...
In this episode, Dr. Armitage presents a case and asks Dr. Holstein to comment on her approach to treatment of this individual. The patient is a 65-year-old man who was referred because of a monoclonal protein found in his blood. The patient was asymptomatic. He had a normal exam. He had an IgG...
The staff of The ASCO Post recognizes the steady flow of news on the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19. Here, we've compiled a list of links to articles and resources on the COVID-19 pandemic. If you have a report you'd like to share, please e-mail it to us at editor@ascopost.com. Direct From ASCO:...
The ASCO Post has reported on the pivotal trials presented at the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium in several issues. Featured here are the findings of several additional abstracts worthy of mention. Intermittent Oxaliplatin in Stage II or III Colon Cancer As adjuvant treatment for stage II...
I am a retired 82-year-old Hematologist/Oncologist who reads The ASCO Post regularly. I am writing to share some brief thoughts with the authors of two articles in the February 10, 2020 issue. First, I would address the article, A Hopeful Look Ahead in Oncology, written by Dan L. Longo, MD, MACP....
In this edition of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Sandra M. Swain, MD, FACP, FASCO, Professor of Medicine and Associate Dean for Research Development at Georgetown University Medical Center, and Vice President of MedStar Genetic Medicine at Medstar...
Venipuncture is the most commonly performed invasive procedure in hospitals daily. The risk of this procedure is nerve damage or an arterial nick. Of course, there are other possible issues, such as hematoma and injection-site infection. Then there’s dealing with caterwauling children and swooning...
A scientific team has been awarded a $9.1 million grant by the National Cancer Institute to study liver metastasis. The co-lead investigators, Neil Bhowmick, PhD, Director of the Cancer Biology Program, and Shelly Lu, MD, Women’s Guild Chair in Gastroenterology and Director of the Division of...
Hongchao Pan, PhD, of the University of Oxford, discusses an analysis of 86,000 women in the Early Breast Cancer Trialists’ Collaborative Group database, which showed that the risk of distant recurrence 20 years after a diagnosis of node-negative, estrogen receptor–negative early-stage breast...
TRANSLATIONAL RESEARCH IN ONCOLOGY (TRIO), a global academic clinical research organization, recently announced the appointment of two new members to the Company’s Board of Directors. Joining the board are Peter Fasching, MD, and Hari Kumar, PhD. Together, they bring decades of leadership in key...
In February 2020, Richard L. Schilsky, MD, FACP, FSCT, FASCO, Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President of ASCO, was designated a National Associate of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine for his decades-long contributions to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM). ...
Vitamin D supplementation prior to starting immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy may significantly reduce the odds of developing colitis, according to a study conducted at Harvard Medical School. Although this was a retrospective chart review, the association was relatively strong in the...
Scott Gottlieb, MD, former Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), had some advice for attendees of the 37th Annual Miami Breast Cancer Conference in his keynote address at the meeting. While his formal presentation pertained to innovations in oncology drug development and...
Richard E. Champlin, MD, Chairman of the nation’s largest Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapy program at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, was born in Milwaukee and spent his formative years in Chicago. After high school, Dr. Champlin followed an early ambition in...
Jared Weiss, MD, of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, discusses outcomes for patients with stage III or IV disease who are ineligible for the standard treatment of cisplatin plus radiotherapy. His data suggest that treatment with pembrolizumab/radiotherapy instead is tolerable, with...
As the number of solid organ transplants in the United States rises, cancer in this patient population is a growing concern. In fact, solid organ transplant recipients have an up to 50 times greater risk than the general population of developing skin cancers, and for kidney transplant recipients,...
The Nebraska Oncology Society (NOS) is now the fourth ASCO state affiliate committed to supporting Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation, by funding a Young Investigator Award (YIA). “There’s a great need for oncologists in clinical practice, in general,” said NOS President Ralph Hauke, MD, FACP....
Eileen Smith, MD, Medical Director of City of Hope’s Alpha Stem Cell Clinic, Associate Director of the Clinical Research Program, Clinical Professor in the Department of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, has been appointed the new Chair of the Department of Hematology &...
With the motto of “leaving no one behind,” 420 delegates from 40 countries and 61 faculty members from 19 countries attended the Annual Meeting of the International Society of Geriatric Oncology (SIOG) in Geneva on November 14–16, 2019. SIOG serves as a platform to discuss a myriad of aspects...
George A. Fisher, Jr, MD, PhD, the Colleen Haas Chair in Medicine-Oncology at Stanford University School of Medicine, commented on the cell-free DNA methylation blood-based test from the Circulating Cell-Free Genome Atlas (CCGA) study. The findings presented by Dr. Wolpin, he said, “lead us to the ...
Studies have shown that all patients diagnosed with multiple myeloma had a preceding asymptomatic expansion of clonal plasma cells, clinically recognized as monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance or smoldering multiple myeloma. According to C. Ola Landgren, MD, PhD, Professor of...
Stanley Cohen, PhD, co-recipient of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, died on February 5, 2020. The Nobel Laureate was recognized for his discovery of epidermal growth factor and its receptor. He shared the prize with Rita Levi-Montalcini, MD, a former colleague, who was recognized...
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has named Satish Gopal, MD, MPH as Director of the Center for Global Health. Dr. Gopal is a physician-scientist who led the cancer program for the University of North Carolina (UNC) Project-Malawi, a research and care collaboration between the University of...
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Hillman Cancer Center immunologist Jason Luke, MD, FACP, has been presented with the Sy Holzer Endowed Immunotherapy Research Fund Award to advance innovative research in cancer immunotherapy. Dr. Luke, a medical oncologist and clinical investigator,...
The Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center–Jefferson Health (Sidney Kimmel) welcomes Usama Gergis, MD, MBA, as Director of the Bone Marrow Transplant and Immune Cellular Therapy Program and Professor in the Department of Medical Oncology, Division of Hematological Malignancies. Dr. Gergis joins Sidney Kimmel ...
Growing up on the Seneca Nation in Western New York, Rodney Haring, PhD, MSW, learned the concept of “The Good Mind,” largely from the matrilineal voices in his community. He calls this philosophy, which is one of the shaping principles of the Haudenosaunee people, “a strength from awareness of...
Hematologist/oncologist Rami K. Daya, MD, will lead a team of cancer experts at New York University (NYU)/Langone Perlmutter Cancer Center’s new multidisciplinary, ambulatory location in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. As Director of Medical Oncology at NYU Langone Hospital–Brooklyn, he will oversee all...
Despite research showing that among patients with cancer, early advance care planning conversations lead to care that is in alliance with patients’ goals and wishes, especially at the end of life,1 most patients die without having discussions about their treatment goals and end-of-life preferences ...
Functional status impairment, limited mobility, comorbidities, polypharmacy, and other aging-related manifestations are common in older individuals. These conditions complicate the oncologic management of older adults, who are underrepresented in clinical trials, even though they form the majority ...
James N. Kochenderfer, MD, Investigator in the Surgery Branch of the National Cancer Institute has been named a Top Ten Clinical Research Achievement Awardee by the Clinical Research Forum. Dr. Kochenderfer received the award for his research into the development of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) ...