Intertriginous areas refer to skin folds (such as axillae, inguinal creases, and inframammary creases), which are characterized by increased friction, temperature, and occlusion. Intertriginous drug reactions are an underrecognized side effect associated with pegylated liposomal doxorubicin...
Oncologists now have a means of bringing personalized medicine to advanced squamous cell carcinoma, and it involves a biomarker-driven clinical trial that maximizes the chance of successful treatment and new drug approvals. Lung-MAP (Lung Cancer Master Protocol) is a unique concept in which the...
The information in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting clinical studies of children with cancer. The studies include pilot and phase I and II studies evaluating new therapies, functional imaging tests, tests to measure the neuropsychological and behavioral function in...
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected people diagnosed with cancer are two to four times more likely to go untreated for their cancer compared to uninfected cancer patients, according to a large retrospective study from researchers in Penn Medicine’s Abramson Cancer Center and the National...
Despite evidence from a number of prospective, randomized controlled trials showing that screening mammography reduces breast cancer mortality, screening mammography has been the subject of continual debate, controversy, and conflicting guidelines. Recently, the Swiss Medical Board, tasked with...
Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) and its receptor MET have been found to promote the proliferation, migration, and survival of tumor cells and to play a role in gastric cancer. In a phase II study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Timothy Iveson, MD, of the University Hospital Southampton NHS...
Treatment of differentiated thyroid cancer has been slow to advance. Three decades lapsed between the description of the first differentiated thyroid cancer patient being cured by radioactive iodine in the 1940s1 and the report of the study that led to the approval of doxorubicin in the 1970s.2 The ...
It has been almost 10 years since the Institute of Medicine released its influential report, “From Cancer Patient to Cancer Survivor: Lost in Transition,” in which it stressed that all patients completing cancer treatment should receive a survivorship care plan. Since then, the need to help...
In a series of articles on the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s CancerProgress.Net website, past ASCO presidents are sharing their recollections of the major issues during their terms. Emil J Freireich, MD, FASCO, (1980–1981), remembered that during his presidency, ASCO began the process of...
“Illumination” is a provocative word, evoking as it does the banishment of the darkness of ignorance by the light of new knowledge. Today, we are benefiting from a steady stream of new knowledge about the molecular basis of cancer and the interaction between host and tumor immunology. The concept...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a drug safety communication to health-care professionals warning that docetaxel contains ethanol, which may cause patients to experience intoxication during and after treatment. FDA is revising the labels of all docetaxel drug products to warn...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted breakthrough therapy designation to blinatumomab for adults with Philadelphia chromosome–negative relapsed/refractory B-precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Blinatumomab is an investigational bispecific T-cell engager antibody...
More than 400 abstracts—a record—were submitted for the 27th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology in Chicago. Here is a small sampling of those studies, with comments from the abstract authors. Token Economy to Improve Compliance BMT Bucks form the basis of a...
All four studies presented at the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting Plenary Session were at least partially funded by federal dollars, bringing long overdue attention to the value of federally supported cancer research. Perhaps because of this high visibility, ASCO leaders took to the soapbox to sound the...
The investigational immunotherapy agent MPDL3280A (also known as anti-PDL1) produced an overall response rate of 43% in a phase I study of patients previously treated for metastatic urothelial bladder cancer whose tumors were characterized as programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1)-positive. Results of...
Obesity and physical inactivity are associated with an increased risk of developing and dying of breast cancer via several proposed mechanisms. Two studies presented at the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting explored the relationships among exercise, weight loss, and breast cancer risk. One study was...
The majority of women with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations experience sexual dysfunction, menopausal symptoms, cognitive and stress issues, and poor sleep following risk-reducing salpingo-oophorectomy, according to results of a study from the Abramson Cancer Center and the Perelman School of Medicine at...
The investigational tyrosine kinase inhibitor lenvatinib reduced disease progression by 79%, as compared to placebo, in patients with metastatic differentiated thyroid cancer that is refractory to radioactive iodine in the phase III SELECT trial. These findings were presented at the 2014 ASCO...
The emerging approach to treating metastatic melanoma is a full-throttle effort to stimulate an immune response. One of the components of this strategy could be intralesional injections, according to studies presented at the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting. T-VEC Oncolytic Immunotherapy Talimogene...
Formal discussant of the JCOG 0602 trial at the ASCO Annual Meeting, Dennis S. Chi, MD, Deputy Chief of the Gynecology Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, reviewed the strengths and weakness of the study. “This is the third study to evaluate primary debulking surgery vs...
Neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by interval debulking surgery may be a better strategy for the initial treatment of advanced ovarian cancer than the current standard of care, suggest results of a phase III trial. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by interval debulking surgery led to fewer...
Melphalan, prednisone, and thalidomide (Thalomid), or MPT, was a widely accepted regimen in newly diagnosed multiple myeloma when the E1A06 trial was launched, noted Philip McCarthy, MD, Director of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Program at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, New York....
At the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting, one phase III trial confirmed the promise of a novel agent in advanced multiple myeloma, while another cooperative group trial returned some rather surprising results in newly diagnosed myeloma patients. Panobinostat Doubles Response, Prolongs Remission The phase...
Judging from its visibility at the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting, the concept of “value” in cancer care has reached critical mass. “ASCO is leading this difficult discussion on value in cancer care. This had to happen,” said Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP, Immediate Past President of ASCO and Chief of the ...
The ASCO Post recently spoke with ASCO Immediate Past President Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP, about his term as ASCO President. Dr. Hudis discussed his thoughts on ASCO today and shared his perspective on a number of important issues in oncology, including value in cancer care, big data, and more....
Session moderator Howard A. Fine, MD, the Anne Murnick Cogan and David H. Cogan Professor of Oncology and Director of the Brain Tumor Center at New York University Cancer Institute, shared his enthusiasm over the findings of the RTOG 9802 study. “I don’t know of any other tumor type where the...
The requirements for sound evidence of a drug’s therapeutic benefit have translated laboratory experience to human testing. In the laboratory, experimental animals give their lives to lethal testing of drugs and scientific analysis. LD50, the terminology denoting an anticipated 50% death rate of...
Higher-dose carflizomib (Kyprolis) “provided a high overall response rate with a remarkable duration of response in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma” in a phase II study, Nikoletta Lendvai, MD, PhD, and colleagues from Memorial Sloan Kettering Center, New York, wrote in Blood....
“Despite the strong scientific rationale and preclinical data, everolimus [Afinitor] plus best supportive care failed to improve survival over placebo plus best supportive care” among patients with advanced hepatocellular cancer that progressed during or after receiving sorafenib (Nexavar), or who...
Patients with poor performance status have an increased incidence of adverse effects from therapy and worse overall outcomes than those with good performance status, but “a selected proportion may still benefit from standard therapy,” according to a review article published in the Journal of the...
Theorizing that an exaggerated perceived benefit from contralateral prophylactic mastectomy may have led to the substantial increase in its use in recent years, researchers from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis used a Markov simulated decision-analytic model to evaluate the magnitude of...
The information in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting clinical studies for patients with bladder cancer. The list includes randomized and nonrandomized phase 0 to III studies as well as observational clinical trials evaluating new therapies, surgical techniques, and...
The Addario Lung Cancer Medical Institute (ALCMI) recently launched a new study, the Genomics of Young Lung Cancer, to understand why lung cancer occurs in young adults, who quite often are athletic, never smokers and do not exhibit any of the known lung cancer genetic mutations. ALCMI, a...
Long-term results from the Health Professionals Follow-up Health Study have shown a 20% increased risk of advanced prostate cancer and a 19% increased risk of lethal prostate cancer among men who had vasectomies.1 According to the study’s lead author, Mohummad Minhaj Siddiqui, MD, it is...
In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Cao and colleagues identified mutations in insulin-like growth factor (IGF) pathway genes that were significantly associated with mortality in prostate cancer. Analysis of 530 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 26 IGF...
Genome instability and DNA damage in cancer can be induced by mutations in genes involved in pre-mRNA splicing and biogenesis and export of messenger ribonucleoprotein (mRNP). Instability can be mediated by R-loops formed by DNA-RNA hybrids and displaced single-stranded DNA. The TREX-2 complex is...
In a study reported in Science Translational Medicine, Perova and colleagues found that pre–B-cell receptor–independent spleen tyrosine kinase signaling was necessary for leukemic B-cell survival and proliferation in a mouse model. Investigation of samples from pediatric and adult B-cell acute...
Each year, thousands of Americans are diagnosed with some form of skin cancer. The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to prevent skin cancer is important especially during these hot summer months when many of us spend extra time in the sun. Over the last few years, the FDA has taken a number of...
ASCO Answers: Managing the Cost of Cancer Care explains the various costs associated with cancer treatment, including health-care coverage through the Affordable Care Act. It also provides a list of financial resources available to help offset expenses related to care and tips for organizing...
AUGUST Best of ASCO® ChicagoAugust 15-16 • Chicago, Illinois For more information: boa.asco.org 16th Annual Scientific Meeting: AGITG Trials in ActionAugust 20-22 • Brisbane, Australia For more information: www.agitg.asnevents.com.au 29th International Papillomavirus Conference and Clinical &...
The term “telemedicine,” which is sometimes used interchangeably with “telehealth” and “m-health” (for mobile health) and is now collectively called “connected health,” involves the use of information and communications technology to connect patients with their providers through a variety of...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently took important steps to ensure that certain tests used by health-care professionals to help diagnose and treat patients provide accurate, consistent, and reliable results. First, the FDA is issuing a final guidance on the development, review, and ...
I've witnessed incredible courage and zest for life among so many patients from so many walks of life—individuals committed to helping others in spite of their own adversity. Forty years ago, when survival for patients with multiple myeloma was a matter of months, I knew that every person I sat...
Title: The Big Casino: America’s Best Cancer Doctors Share Their Most Powerful StoriesEditors: Stan Winokur, MD, and Vincent CoppolaPublishing Platform: CreateSpacePublication date: May 2014Price: $9.99; Paperback, 160 pages In May, Stan Winokur, MD, and co-editor Vincent Coppola, published The...
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...
Incorporating patient-reported outcomes into the palliative care clinical setting can improve patients’ symptom management, quality of life, and overall communication with their oncologists, according to Ethan Basch, MD. Dr. Basch is Director of the Cancer Outcomes Research Program and Associate...
David sits at his desk, tapping angrily. He’s tired of his abusive, ignorant boss, the VP for regional sales. The man’s sales targets are absurdly high, he’s impossible to reach on the phone, his “motivational” speeches evoke the stress of Glengarry Glen Ross, and even his fake all-light-brown hair ...
Title: The Silver Lining: A Supportive & Insightful Guide to Breast CancerEditors: Hollye Jacobs, RN, MS, MSWPublishing Platform: CreateSpace Publication information: Simon & Schuster, published March 2014. Available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Indiebound, and other local bookstores....
While the first written record of cancer dates back to ancient Egypt, the history of modern oncology is fairly short, dating back only slightly more than half a century. Clinical trials in the early days of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the emerging cooperative groups were led by a...
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. On July 28, 2014, the approved use of ibrutinib (Imbruvica) in...