The American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC) has announced that Michael J. Bennett, PhD, has been elected to serve on the AACC Board as President-Elect beginning in January 2016, followed by successive terms as the Association’s 68th President in 2017 and Past President in 2018. The AACC...
Oncology nurse practitioner Mary Pazdur, RN, MSN, spent her professional life bettering the clinical care and outcomes of cancer patients, culminating in her career at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), in the Laboratory of Tumor Immunology and Biology, working with patients on cancer vaccine...
A novel interventional approach to treating liver metastases associated with colorectal cancer improved control of liver metastases, according to the SIRFLOX study presented at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 The addition of selective internal radiation therapy to first-line chemotherapy extended...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the “Art of Oncology” as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO). These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
BookmarkTitle: Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor’s Reflections on Race and MedicineAuthor: Damon Tweedy, MDPublisher: Picador, Macmillan PublishingPublication date: September 8, 2015Price: $26.00; hardcover, 304 pages Strained race relations over issues whose foundation is based on inequality...
DECEMBER American Society for Cell Biology Annual MeetingDecember 12-16 • San Diego, California For more information: http://ascb.org/2015meeting/ ESMO Asia 2015 CongressDecember 18-21 • Singapore For more information: www.esmo.org/Conferences/ESMO-Asia-2015-Congress JANUARY 2016 4th AACR-IASLC...
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 November 20, 2015, ixazomib (Ninlaro) was approved by the U.S....
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 November 16, 2015, daratumumab injection (Darzalex) was...
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 November 13, 2015, osimertinib (Tagrisso) was granted...
In a continuation of a 2014 conference that explored regulatory considerations and strategies for next-generation sequencing, the Friends of Cancer Research, with support from Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc, Pasadena, California, met to discuss the issues and problems of coordinating drug and ...
There is as yet no clinical or research focus on foot complications that result from cancer therapies. Foot conditions, however, are common and have a considerable negative impact on patients’ ambulation, quality of life, and consistent dosing of antineoplastic agents.1-4 There are currently no...
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 clinical dilemma that is receiving a great deal of attention in the oncology community is the undue financial burden some patients face during their treatment and into survivorship. While much emphasis is put on methods to reduce and help patients navigate the complex payment system, little is...
Low- and middle-income countries bear a larger share of the global cancer burden than does the developed world,” said Greta Massetti, PhD, Associate Director for Science, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Division of Cancer Prevention and Control and Co-Chair of the National Cancer...
Management of the regional nodes in breast cancer has evolved from the era of the extended radical mastectomy to exclusion of axillary dissection in appropriately selected patients. Throughout this evolution, studies of nodal irradiation have been shown to improve locoregional control, usually...
Two phase III trials recently reported in The New England Journal of Medicine indicated that the addition of regional nodal irradiation was associated with no or marginal overall survival benefit but significantly improved disease-free survival in patients with early-stage breast cancer.1,2 NCIC...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Catherine Van Poznak, MD, and colleagues, ASCO has issued a clinical practice guideline on the use of biomarkers to guide decisions on systemic therapy in women with metastatic breast cancer.1 The statement is based on an ASCO expert panel review...
In a phase III trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Julie Brahmer, MD, of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, and colleagues found that treatment with the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) immune checkpoint inhibitor antibody nivolumab...
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...
It has long been said that white women of European ancestry are more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer, but African American women are more likely to die of it. This statement has introduced multiple articles on the topic of the racial survival disparity in breast cancer, including our own...
A recent report by DeSantis and colleagues from the American Cancer Society, summarized in this issue of The ASCO Post, presented breast cancer incidence and mortality data from an extensive analysis of the U.S. system of state-based tumor registries.1 The data showed that the incidence of breast...
The FDA approved necitumumab (Portrazza) in combination with gemcitabine and cisplatin for first-line treatment of patients with metastatic squamous non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Necitumumab is not indicated for treatment of nonsquamous NSCLC. Necitumumab is a recombinant human IgG1...
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 November 10, 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration...
Led by George Demetri, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, expert medical oncology investigators from leading academic sarcoma centers and Janssen Pharmaceuticals employees performed a phase III trial in order to provide evidence for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of...
In a phase III trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, George D. Demetri, MD, of Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, and colleagues found that treatment with trabectedin (Yondelis) significantly improved progression-free survival vs dacarbazine in patients...
The treatment of hairy cell leukemia is one of the great success stories in hematologic malignancies, with patients now having a survival that is only slightly inferior to an age-matched normal population. Purine analogs, such as cladribine, are the mainstay of first-line therapy, with...
Nivolumab (Opdivo) is a monoclonal antibody that binds to the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) receptor and blocks its interaction with its ligands PD-L1 and PD-L2, releasing PD-1 pathway–mediated inhibition of the immune response. Late last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)...
In two phase II studies reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Enrico Tiacci, MD, of the University of Perugia, Italy, and colleagues found that the BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib (Zelboraf) produced responses in nearly all patients with BRAF V600E–positive hairy cell leukemia that relapsed...
Geriatrics for the Oncologist is guest edited by Stuart Lichtman, MD, FACP, FASCO, and developed in collaboration with the International Society of Geriatric Oncology (SIOG). Visit SIOG.org for more on geriatric oncology. Increasing age is directly associated with an increasing risk of cancer,...
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...
Over the past year or so, a host of new agents were approved for the treatment of patients with various types of cancer (see related article on page 1). Patrick Medina, PharmD, of the University of Oklahoma College of Pharmacy, Oklahoma City, and Monique Giordana, PharmD, BCOP, of Regions...
Tough initial treatment decisions have “long-lasting ramifications and affect the entire treatment paradigm” for women with ovarian cancer, according to Bradley J. Monk, MD, FACS, FACOG, of the University of Arizona Cancer Center, Phoenix. In a true collaborative presentation at the Annual JADPRO...
Using multiplatform profiling, researchers have identified potentially targetable biomarker aberrations in a large cohort of geriatric breast tumors.1 According to the study, presented at the 2015 Breast Cancer Symposium, these data may help researchers to design clinical trials focusing on...
Nonpharmacologic approaches to managing pain have a fairly robust base of science and research supporting their use but are not as widely accepted and understood as drug therapy in the realm of cancer care. In a breakout session at the 2015 Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium in Boston, experts...
The investigational agent anamorelin significantly increased lean body mass, body weight, total body mass, and fat mass in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and cachexia, according to Jennifer S. Temel, MD, who presented the results of two phase III studies at the 2015...
The addition of olanzapine to standard antiemetics significantly reduced chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting in patients receiving highly emetogenic chemotherapy, according to Rudolph M. Navari, MD, PhD, and colleagues. “As far as I know, this is the first trial that looked at no nausea as the ...
We have a responsibility to develop better treatment for inflammatory breast cancer,” Massimo Cristofanilli, MD, FACP, told participants at the 17th Annual Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium in Chicago. As recently appointed Associate Director of Translational Research and Precision Medicine at the ...
As summarized in this issue of The ASCO Post (see "ASCO Clinical Practice Guideline: Use of Biomarkers to Guide Systemic Therapy for Women With Metastatic Breast Cancer"), Van Poznak and colleagues recently presented an ASCO clinical practice guideline on the use of biomarkers for decisions...
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...
The following new hematology/oncology agents and expanded indications were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Drug Evaluation and Research in 2015: Alectinib (Alecensa), an ALK inhibitor, for the treatment of patients with anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive...
BookmarkTitle: Malignant Metaphor: Confronting Cancer MythsAuthor: Alanna MitchellPublisher: ECW PressPublication date: September 15, 2015Price: $24.95; hardcover, 184 pages Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom...
Women co-infected with low-risk and high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) had a reduced risk for invasive squamous cervical carcinoma and a longer time to progression than did women infected with high-risk human papillomavirus alone, according to a Swedish study published in the Journal of the...
A phase III Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) trial (E1A060) comparing melphalan, prednisone, and thalidomide (Thalomid) with melphalan, prednisone, and lenalidomide (Revlimid) in elderly patients with untreated multiple myeloma found that at the end of the induction period, patients...
A study finding that the incidence of prostate cancer has declined in recent years may at first seem like good news to physicians and patients, but, as widely reported by the media, the decline is not seen as an indication that prostate cancer has become less prevalent, but that screening for it...
Two recent studies1,2 found that the rates of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening have declined since the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommended against PSA screening in 2012. One of those studies additionally found that the incidence of early-stage prostate cancer also...
The following essay by Kenneth R. Adler, MD, FACP, is adapted from The Big Casino: America’s Best Cancer Doctors Share Their Most Powerful Stories, which was coedited by Stan Winokur, MD, and Vincent Coppola and published in May 2014. The book is available on Amazon.com and thebigcasino.org....
JANUARY 2016 4th AACR-IASLC International Joint Conference: Lung Cancer Translational ScienceJanuary 4-7 • San Diego, CaliforniaFor more information: http://www.aacr.org/Meetings/Pages/MeetingDetail.aspx?EventItemID=74#.VbbijqTbJjo Genitourinary Cancers SymposiumJanuary 7-9 • San Francisco,...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) has announced the recipients of its 2016 Scholar Awards. One of ASH’s most prestigious award programs, the ASH Scholar Award program financially supports fellows and junior faculty dedicated to careers in hematology research as they transition from training...
Bookmark Title: The Laws of Medicine: Field Notes From an Uncertain Science Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee Publisher: TED Books/Simon & Schuster Publication date: October 13, 2015 Price: $16.99; hardcover, 96 pages The Emperor of All Maladies, written by the Indian-born American oncologist...
Although formal mentoring programs in medical education were not launched in the United States until the late 1990s,1 today they are regarded as playing an essential role in the career development of medical trainees and have been associated with improvements in research, teaching, and patient...