For over a decade, Patrick W. Mantyh, PhD, JD, has been investigating the molecular and cellular mechanisms that are involved in cancer-related pain, especially bone pain caused by advanced breast, prostate, and lung cancers. His early laboratory work using mouse models of bone cancer led to an...
On March 31, 2015, Harold Varmus, MD, left his position as Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to join the faculty of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York as its Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine. Dr. Varmus was also named Senior Associate Core Member of the New York...
Although the idea of using viruses to target cancer cells dates back more than 100 years, technologic advances in the genetic engineering of viruses are now making it possible to safely test oncolytic virotherapy as a valid strategy against cancer cells. One type of genetically engineered virus...
In April 2015, the American College of Physicians (ACP) released its clinical advice guideline, Cervical Cancer Screening in Average-Risk Women: Best Practice Advice From the Clinical Guidelines Committee of the American College of Physicians.1 The guideline aims to reduce the overuse of cervical...
My first experience with cancer was when I was just 9 years old, and a lump the size of an egg popped out on the right side of my neck. A biopsy of the tumor found that it was Hodgkin lymphoma, and I was given huge doses of external-beam radiotherapy applied to my neck, chest, and underarm lymph...
Charlene M. Dewey, MD, MEd, FACP, Assistant Dean of Educator Development; Associate Professor of Medical Education and Administration; and Associate Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, offers these suggestions for effectively communicating feedback to...
Providing students and residents with feedback on their medical performance is a key element in their learning and development and ensures that high standards are met, according to Charlene M. Dewey, MD, MEd, FACP, Assistant Dean of Educator Development; Associate Professor of Medical Education and ...
On April 1, 2015, Douglas R. Lowy, MD, became Acting Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), succeeding Harold Varmus, MD, who left NCI to join the faculty of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. (See “The Next Step in a Storied Career,” in the May 25, 2015 issue of The ASCO Post.)...
The ability to interrogate cancer cells at the genomic, proteomic, immunologic, and metabolomic levels will transform oncology care from one that relies mainly on trial-and-error treatment strategies based on the anatomy of the tumor to one that is more precisely based on the tumor’s molecular...
In 2014, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York opened the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Center for Molecular Oncology with the sole purpose of expediting the translation of novel molecular discoveries into clinical innovations to turn the goal of precision oncology care into...
Defining and ensuring the delivery of high-value oncology care has been one of ASCO’s major goals for more than a decade. In 2007, ASCO formed the Task Force on the Cost of Cancer Care, now called the Value in Cancer Care Task Force, to identify the drivers of the increasing costs of oncology care...
I had been watching a lump in my left breast for signs of cancer for 10 years, from around the time I was 21. Screening tests had failed to find any tissue abnormality, and my doctor said I was too young to have cancer, so I wasn’t overly concerned. But when I noticed the lump getting bigger in...
I've been fortunate to be strong and healthy for most of my life. In fact, there is no history of any serious illness in my family, which is why I was so unprepared to hear the words “You have breast cancer” 5 years ago. Not only was the diagnosis foreign to me, I had no idea what chemotherapy and...
On May 14, 2015, over 160 colleagues, family members, friends, and patients of James F. Holland, MD, FASCO, gathered in the Goldwurm Auditorium in the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York to honor Dr. Holland for the contributions he has made during his remarkable career in ...
Three years ago, a study of adolescents and young adults aged 16 to 28 with metastatic or recurrent cancer or HIV/AIDS compared the usefulness of two previously developed advance care planning guides—one prepared specifically for adolescents and young adults and one specifically for adults. The...
When Emil J Freireich, MD, retires from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center on September 1, he will have spent 50 years at the institution and a total of 60 years in the pursuit of curing childhood leukemia as well as other cancers and in the educational development of young...
Genomic applications are now an accepted part of oncologic science and practice. Differences in gene expression have been used to understand and predict tumor behaviors and response to treatment. And now it seems likely that genomics may also play a pivotal role in guiding treatment preferences by...
Earlier this spring, the T.J. Martell Foundation, which supports research in leukemia, other cancers, and AIDS, announced the honorees of its 2015 Women of Influence Awards, which celebrate the achievements of outstanding women in a variety of fields. Among this year’s seven recipients was Jimmie...
In June, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (Memorial) in New York announced it had appointed Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP, Chief of Breast Medicine Service, to a newly created position of Vice President for Government Relations and Chief Advocacy Officer. In addition to his new role, Dr. Hudis ...
In May 2015, Johnson & Johnson announced its partnership with New York University (NYU) School of Medicine in New York to create a first-of-its kind independent bioethics panel to review requests made to the company for compassionate use of an investigational drug and determine how the company...
For nearly a decade, Peter B. Bach, MD, MAPP, Director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, has been a leading voice in sounding the alarm over the escalating cost of cancer drugs and in seeking a solution to the problem. In 2012, Dr....
Since 2014, “Right to Try” legislation has been sweeping the nation. Created to enable terminally ill patients to gain access to experimental drugs, biologics, and devices by sidestepping the approval process of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), at press time, 22 states have enacted...
In March 2015, Sage Bionetworks and Apple released “Share the Journey: Mind, Body, and Wellness After Breast Cancer,” a patient-centered iPhone app that tracks five common consequences of breast cancer treatment, including fatigue, cognitive function, sleep disturbances, mood changes, and a...
After coping with breast cancer for more than a decade, it is difficult for me to put into words exactly how grateful I am to all the doctors, nurses, and researchers whose efforts have kept me alive for all these years. And not just alive, but thriving. A routine mammogram had discovered two...
Despite enormous advances in modern medicine and the explosion of biomedical information over the past century, the way medical education is taught in the United States is stuck in a format that does not optimize learning, according to Charles Prober, MD, Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education ...
Just 4 months after President Barack Obama’s announcement in December 2014 that there would be an easing of the trade embargo between the United States and Cuba, a deal was struck between Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York, and the Center for Molecular Immunology (CIM) in Havana,...
What first intrigued Fadlo R. Khuri, MD, FACP, about the prospect of becoming the 16th President of the American University of Beirut (AUB) in Lebanon was the chance to give back to an institution and a country that had given him so much. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1963, Dr. Khuri was raised ...
Until I was diagnosed with stage III renal cell carcinoma in early 2008, I had no firsthand experience with cancer. To my knowledge, there is no history of cancer in my immediate family, and despite a smoking habit I picked up when I was young, I had been in relatively good health in the 56 years...
In a bold move to shed light on the ramifications of the ever-increasing cost of cancer drugs for patients with cancer and for the health-care system, 118 prominent oncologists came together to write a commentary in Mayo Clinic Proceedings detailing their concerns.1 To learn more about these...
The statistics are staggering. Despite the development of novel analgesics and the increasing awareness of the importance of adequately controlling pain from cancer or its treatment, up to 50% of patients undergoing treatment and between 70% and 90% of patients with advanced disease experience some ...
Teen Cancer America has partnered with the following major cancer centers across the United States to build teen-friendly environments in both the inpatient and outpatient settings. Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, Florida Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles, California Lucile Packard...
According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), about 70,000 adolescents and young adults—defined by the NCI as those in the 15- to 39-year-old range—are diagnosed with cancer each year in the United States, about six times the number of cases diagnosed in children aged 0 to 14.1 And, although...
I've lived my adult life by three guiding principles I learned as an adventure racer: to set goals, to determine how to achieve them, and to persevere in the face of adversity. Those standards helped me complete more than 70 marathons and 7 Ironman competitions, and they helped me conquer breast...
When David G. Nathan, MD, was admitted to Harvard University in 1947, he had every intention of becoming an English professor. It was only his lack of writing talent that dissuaded him from a life in the classroom and propelled him into a medical career that has spanned more than 5 decades and has...
The emphasis at this year’s Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium, held earlier this month in Boston, was on patient-centered care throughout the cancer continuum. The meeting attracted more than 650 attendees and included six general sessions featuring best practices in communication,...
Although genetic testing has not turned up any inherited mutations that might explain the number of cancers that have plagued my immediate family, over the past 15 years, I have lost my father, aunt, and sister to the disease. In 2001, my husband, Wayne, died of acute promyelocytic leukemia, and...
The incidence of melanoma among children, adolescents, and young adults has reached epidemic proportions, increasing more than 250% over the past 4 decades, with young females at highest risk for the deadly cancer, according to a study1 by researchers at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo,...
A nationwide online survey of 776 pediatricians and family physicians assessing the quality of their human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine recommendations to parents has found that approximately 27% of respondents said they do not strongly endorse HPV vaccination; further, 26% and 39% of respondents...
Although William Dameshek, MD, is renowned for his work in hematology, especially in advancing the understanding of myeloproliferative disorders and their interrelatedness, his early interest in medicine was instead focused on such diverse diseases as hyperthyroidism and typhus fever. Born on May...
I have always prided myself on being healthy and fit, so when I started experiencing a chronic cough, difficulty breathing, and pain in my ribs and back, I thought they were the inevitable symptoms of a severe cold. At 42 and the mother of three children, it was inconceivable to me that I could...
In June, the Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons published a revision of its Facility Oncology Registry Data Standards (FORDS) manual, which contains all the data items, codes, and rules to abstract data into cancer registries at the more than 1,500 Commission on...
Two years ago, Richard L. Schilsky, MD, FACP, FASCO, Chief Medical Officer of ASCO, proposed a unique clinical trial concept during an educational session on the challenges of delivering precision medicine services in a community setting at ASCO’s Annual Meeting. The idea was to design a clinical...
Launched in 2002 as a pilot program to promote excellence in oncology care, the origins of ASCO’s Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI®) date as far back as 1997, when the Institute of Medicine (IOM) created a National Cancer Policy Board to assess the state of cancer care in the United...
The number of targeted therapies approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the treatment of a variety of cancers, especially hematologic malignancies, continues to rise. In 2014 alone, 4 of the 10 new agents directed at discrete molecular targets approved by the FDA were for blood...
My diagnosis of pleural mesothelioma early in 2015 couldn’t have been more surprising. In one day, I went from being a healthy, vibrant woman with a busy career and the excitement of launching a promising new business venture to a woman facing the greatest challenge of her life. The fact that my...
In 1990, when Bruce (B.J.) Miller, MD, was an undergraduate at Princeton University, the practice of medicine was far from his mind. Then a student in Chinese and Asian studies and later an art history major, Dr. Miller would come to pursue a career specializing in palliative medicine after an...
A new study examining the health-care needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender/transsexual patients has found myriad disparities in access to cancer care.1 The researchers reviewed nearly 170 papers published over the past 15 years on the health-care needs among this population. Although...
The following five abstracts were chosen as the best studies presented at the 12th International Conference of the Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO) because of their quality and the impact they will have on the field of integrative medicine, according to Suzanna Zick, ND, MPH, Immediate Past...
Among the highlights at the 12th International Conference of the Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO) was a 1-day joint meeting on acupuncture, oncology, and fascia cosponsored by SIO, the Society for Acupuncture Research, the Fascia Research Society, and the Osher Center for Integrative...
In 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved 9 new drugs and biologics in the treatment of cancer and added 10 notable new indications or formulations to existing drug labels, marking a year of significant progress in improving the quality of cancer care in the United States. So...