Although ‘paradigm shifts’ are frequently referenced in oncology, these are really few and far between. They occur when new data either partially invalidate previously accepted theory or are at complete odds with the existing paradigm. Moving away from the Halsted radical mastectomy, a standard of ...
Alberto F. Sobrero, MD, of the Ospedale San Martino, discusses final results of the IDEA study, which supported the use of 3 months of adjuvant CAPOX, vs 6 months, for most patients with stage III colon cancer. The shorter treatment duration reduced toxicity, inconvenience, and cost (Abstract 4004).
Rana R. McKay, MD, of the University of California, San Diego, discusses the results of a phase II trial of intense neoadjuvant hormone therapy followed by radical prostatectomy in men with high-risk prostate cancer. The data show that 21% of patients had a favorable pathologic response (Abstract...
Seema A. Khan, MD, MPH, of the Lynn Sage Comprehensive Breast Center, discusses phase III trial results showing that in newly diagnosed metastatic stage IV breast cancer, locoregional treatment of the primary tumor did not offer a greater survival benefit than systemic therapy (Abstract LBA2).
Internationally recognized immune-oncology melanoma expert Jedd D. Wolchok, MD, PhD, FASCO, was born and reared in Staten Island, not far from where he would shape his noted career at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) in New York, New York. “I went to Princeton University and, during my ...
In 2019, at the ASCO Annual Meeting, Ian Tannock, MD, PhD, DSc, FASCO, was honored with the Allen S. Lichter Visionary Award for his contributions to the fields of genitourinary and breast cancers as well as his efforts to optimize clinical trial design. The title of his lecture was “Clinical...
Steven A. Rosenberg, MD, PhD, FASCO, knew from the start of his medical career that if treatments for cancer were to become curative, research in new therapies would have to move away from the mainstay one-size-fits-all approach of systemic chemotherapy to an innovative, personalized strategy that ...
When oncology luminary Joyce A. O’Shaughnessy, MD, was in her early teens, her youngest sister, Teri, developed acute lymphocytic leukemia at age 5. Dr. O’Shaughnessy, the oldest of four girls, recalled that her sister’s struggle with the disease had a profound effect on her worldview. “Teri went...
Howard A. Burris III, MD, FACP, FASCO, talks about some of the reports of research developments he is looking forward to and how future conferences could incorporate virtual presentations.
Thierry André, MD, of Hôpital Saint-Antoine, discusses the phase III results from KEYNOTE-177, which showed that, compared with standard chemotherapy of FOLFOX or FOLFIRI, pembrolizumab doubled median progression-free survival, from 8.2 months to 16.5 months, in patients with microsatellite...
The combination of carfilzomib, lenalidomide, and dexamethasone (KRd) did not show superior efficacy in patients with newly diagnosed myeloma absent a high-risk disease prognosis, compared with the standard of care: bortezomib, lenalidomide, and dexamethasone (VRd). Data from a planned interim...
Women who present at diagnosis with advanced breast cancer have faced an unanswered question: will local therapy, consisting of surgery and radiation to the tumor in the breast, prolong survival compared to the traditional treatment of systemic treatment alone? Now, data from the randomized phase...
Combination therapy with the isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 (IDH1) inhibitor ivosenidib plus the BCL2 inhibitor venetoclax with or without the chemotherapeutic agent azacitidine showed activity in patients with IDH1-mutated acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in a phase Ib/II trial. The results of the...
Data from clinical efficacy and biomarker analyses conducted for the single-arm phase II PrE0505 study of the initial treatment of patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma were presented by Patrick Forde, MB, BCh, and colleagues during the Lung Cancer Oral Abstract Session at the ASCO20 Virtual ...
David R. Wise, MD, PhD, of New York University Perlmutter Cancer Center, summarizes three important studies in prostate cancer: circulating tumor cell count as a prognostic marker of PSA response and progression in metastatic castration-sensitive disease; new phenotypic subtypes; and how...
Michael S. Hofman, MBBS, of the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, discusses phase II results from the ANZUP 1603 trial, which showed that in men with docetaxel-treated metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, LuPSMA was more active than cabazitaxel, with relatively fewer grade 3 and 4 adverse...
Richard L. Schilsky, MD, Chief Medical Officer of ASCO, talks about some of the most important and practice-changing findings presented this year at the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program, including the use of targeted and immunotherapies in earlier lines of therapy, where they have made a...
Merry-Jennifer Markham, MD, ASCO’s Cancer Communications Chair, gives her views on key papers presented at the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program, addressing gynecologic malignancies and COVID-19.
In an international trial, treatment with MK-6482, a small-molecule inhibitor of hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-2a, was well tolerated and resulted in clinical responses for patients with von Hippel-Lindau disease–associated renal cell carcinoma (RCC). The results of the phase II trial were shared ...
Geriatric assessment–driven interventions—such as physical therapy, nutritional recommendations, and social support, among others—can reduce toxicity due to chemotherapy in adults with cancer aged 65 years and older, according to results from a randomized clinical trial presented as part of ASCO20...
Patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and a mutation that leads to mesenchymal-epithelial transition (MET) exon 14 skipping had a 46.5% objective response rate to the targeted therapy drug tepotinib, as shown in a study presented during the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program...
Positive results from two cohorts of the Targeted Agent and Profiling Utilization Registry (TAPUR) study provide real-world evidence to support recent clinical trial data that demonstrate a role for olaparib in the treatment of advanced prostate and pancreatic cancers with BRCA1/2-inactivating...
Jeffrey A. Meyerhardt, MD, MPH, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses results from the CALGB/SWOG 80702 trial of celecoxib plus standard adjuvant therapy with fluorouracil, leucovorin, and oxaliplatin (FOLFOX). Adding celecoxib to standard chemotherapy did not significantly improve...
Fatima Cardoso, MD, of Lisbon’s Champalimaud Cancer Center, discusses the long-term results of MINDACT, a large prospective trial showing the clinical utility of the 70-gene signature MammaPrint for adjuvant chemotherapy decision-making. The primary distant metastasis–free survival endpoint at 5...
Howard A. Burris III, MD, FACP, FASCO, President of ASCO, talks about what to expect from this year’s ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program and its many offerings.
David C. Fajgenbaum, MD, MBA, of the University of Pennsylvania, who trained as an oncologist, summarizes his opening lecture, a dramatic story of his battle against Castleman, a disease of the lymph nodes, his multiple near-death experiences, and the path that led him to develop a cooperative...
Scott Kopetz, MD, PhD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses phase III results of the BEACON CRC study, which confirmed that, compared with standard chemotherapy, encorafenib plus cetuximab with or without binimetinib improved overall survival and objective response rate...
In a study of patients with early-stage cervical cancer presented by Balaya et al during the Gynecologic Cancer Oral Abstract Session of the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program (Abstract 6006), researchers assessed disease-free and disease-specific survival to determine whether sentinel lymph node...
On May 29, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved ramucirumab (Cyramza, injection, 10 mg/mL solution) in combination with erlotinib for the first-line treatment of patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) exon 19...
On May 29, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved atezolizumab (Tecentriq) in combination with bevacizumab (Avastin) for the treatment of people with unresectable or metastatic hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) who have not received prior systemic therapy. The review of this application...
The final results of the randomized phase II ECOG-ACRIN E3311 trial were presented by Robert L. Ferris, MD, PhD, and colleagues during the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program (Abstract 6500) and in today's Head and Neck Cancer Oral Abstract Session. The trial, conducted in patients undergoing...
As reported at the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program by Charles M. Rudin, MD, PhD, and colleagues (Abstract 9001), the phase III KEYNOTE-604 trial has shown that first-line pembrolizumab plus etoposide/platinum significantly prolonged progression-free survival and prolonged overall survival at a...
In part 2 of our conversation with Dr. Syed Abutalib, Associate Director of the Hematology and Cellular Therapy Program and Director of the Clinical Apheresis Program at Cancer Treatment Centers of America, Zion, Illinois; Associate Professor at the Roseland Franklin University of Medicine and...
Nancy U. Lin, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses the HER2CLIMB study of patients with previously treated HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer that had metastasized to the brain. Adding tucatinib to trastuzumab and capecitabine doubled the intracranial response rate and reduced the...
Shaji Kumar, MD, of the Mayo Clinic, discusses findings from the ENDURANCE trial, which showed bortezomib, lenalidomide, and dexamethasone should remain the standard of care in patients with newly diagnosed standard- or intermediate-risk multiple myeloma, for whom early autologous stem cell...
In an analysis of the pivotal phase III HER2CLIMB trial to be reported at the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program, Nancy U. Lin, MD, and colleagues found that tucatinib, a small-molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor that is highly selective for HER2, plus trastuzumab/capecitabine significantly improved...
The first trial of immunotherapy for gestational trophoblastic tumors proved effective in almost 50% of patients resistant to single-agent chemotherapy, French investigators reported in an abstract presented during the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program.1 The results of the phase II TROPHIMMUN trial ...
A large cohort study by the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium evaluating the impact of COVID-19 on patients with cancer has found that all-cause 30-day mortality and severe illness were significantly higher in this population than previously reported in the general population. Mortality and severe...
Although 84% of children with cancer survive 5 years or more, children with refractory, relapsed, and progressive high-risk malignancies have a poor median survival of 9.5 months. The German INFORM registry is a large prospective, noninterventional, multicenter study collecting clinical and...
Data from the global TERAVOLT Consortium, which is investigating the impact of COVID-19 infection on patients with thoracic cancers, have found that these patients are at high risk for hospitalization and death. Prior use of chemotherapy was associated with an increased risk of mortality, as was...
Lecia V. Sequist, MD, who was not involved in the ADAURA study, said this would be a practice-changing study. Dr. Sequist is the Landry Family Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Center for Innovation in Early Cancer Detection at Massachusetts General Hospital....
Adjuvant osimertinib significantly improved disease-free survival compared with placebo in patients with stage IB to IIIA EGFR-mutated non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who underwent complete resection of primary tumor and received chemotherapy if indicated. These results from the first interim...
The successful treatment of malignant lymphoma has been one of the great achievements in medical oncology, but certainly more work is needed to define key biologic targets as well as molecular markers for a more accurate definition of prognosis following therapy. In day-to-day practice, unanswered...
Like many professional organizations in the public sphere, ASCO regularly confronts policy issues. Because we are a large organization, and because we represent many constituencies, we are frequently called upon to offer our advice to the federal government. Our members must sometimes wonder where...
Over the years I have become increasingly proud of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. I believe that ASCO is unique among specialty societies—at least in the various disciplines of oncology and hematology. Our Society is amazingly democratic (ie, with an independent nominating process and...
It has been 5 years since ASCO has been part of a new publication, the last being the Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP). As the ASCO Board and leadership evaluated the publication mix we recognized there was a gap that needed to be filled. The Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO), now 25 years old, ...
Christopher Sweeney, MBBS, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, talks with Thomas Powles, MD, PhD, of Queen Mary University of London, about the first study to demonstrate a survival advantage with avelumab for metastatic urothelial cancer. In the trial, avelumab improved median overall survival by...
Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, of Yale Cancer Center, discusses data from the ADAURA study, which showed that compared with placebo, osimertinib as adjuvant therapy after complete tumor resection reduced the risk of disease recurrence or death by 79% in patients with non–small cell lung cancer (Abstract...
Sharing his perspective on KEYNOTE-177 with The ASCO Post was Axel Grothey, MD, Director of GI Cancer Research at the West Cancer Center, OneOncology, Memphis. “This is a very important, highly anticipated study,” he said. “It’s the first randomized trial of any checkpoint inhibitor in...