A new ASCO paper in the Journal of Geriatric Oncology1 fondly reflects on the impact of Arti Hurria, MD, FASCO, in improving the treatment of older adults with cancer. The article is part of a special issue honoring her work in this area. Dr. Hurria was killed in a traffic accident on November 7,...
Serious illness can be difficult for both providers and patients to discuss and navigate. With the ASCO Answers Advanced Cancer Care Planning booklet, patients can learn more about their diagnosis and available treatment options at their own pace and have a list of useful resources at their...
The Conquer Cancer Council (CCC) unites stakeholders from for- and nonprofit organizations to discuss challenges, explore potential solutions, and exchange ideas to improve the quality of care for patients with cancer. Created by Conquer Cancer®, the ASCO Foundation, the CCC is a platform for...
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a new national coverage determination (NCD) announcing that Medicare will now cover U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T-cell) therapy for certain patients with cancer. As outlined in ...
Physicians and nurses in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have fewer training opportunities, limited medical and educational resources, and insufficient palliative care options for their patients,1 all while these regions are leading the world in new cases of cancer diagnosis.2 An emerging...
As our aging population increases, so does the demand for oncology services; however, as ASCO and other organizations have pointed out, a workforce shortage of oncology care specialists looms in the not-so-distant future. Given the growing need for care models that meet this demand, a better...
The ASCO Post has offered comprehensive coverage of the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting. To complement this news coverage, here are featured clinical trials of several treatments in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). They focus on the monoclonal antibody obinutuzumab in combination therapy in the CLL14...
The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) recently awarded 71 new grants, totaling close to $136 million, to advance cancer research. This total includes 58 academic research grant awards, 10 prevention awards, and 3 product development research awards. CPRIT has now brought 181 ...
The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001*, on the World Trade Center in New York City resulted in the deaths of more than 2,700 people.1 Nearly 2 decades later, that number may soon be exceeded by the more than 2,000 deaths—and climbing—of first responders to the attack, including firefighters,...
The finding that women have a higher incidence of lung cancer than men of the same age and with the same smoking history was unexpected when it first emerged from studies in the 1990s. Just as unexpected was a subsequent finding. Even with their higher risk, women have a lower mortality and higher...
To improve cancer outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa, a collaborative project from the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®), the African Cancer Coalition (ACC), the American Cancer Society, and others recently entered a new phase in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Oncologists from 11 African...
This past June, the University of Pennsylvania established the Mark Foundation Center for Immunotherapy, Immune Signaling, and Radiation to study the role interferon and pattern recognition receptor signaling transduction pathways play in modulating the immune system’s ability to recognize and...
Both Charles Rudin, MD, PhD, and Andrew Nicholson, MD, were recognized by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) at the IASLC 2019 World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC). The 19th WCLC, the world’s largest international gathering of clinicians, researchers and scientists ...
Denise R. Aberle, MD, of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), was recognized by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) with the Joseph W. Cullen Prevention/Early Detection Award at the IASLC 2019 World Conference on...
"Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhumane….” —Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr Progress has been made in expanding access to health care for low-income populations, but the quality of care still lags behind and can result in less successful outcomes...
Concurrent temozolomide treatment during radiotherapy did not increase overall survival in patients with anaplastic gliomas without 1p/19q co-deletion, according to data from the second interim and first molecular analysis of the EORTC randomized phase III intergroup CATNON trial.1 However, benefit ...
1. (Left to right) Sandra Swain, MD, FASCO, Lynn M. Schuchter, MD, FASCO, and Linda Bosserman, MD, FACP, FASCO, among the speakers and guests at the Women Leaders in Oncology Event, held in conjunction with the ASCO Annual Meeting, June 3, 2019. Photo by © ASCO/Matt Herp 2019. 2. Attendees at the...
Earlier this year, avelumab was approved for use in combination with axitinib for the first-line treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma.1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was based on findings in the open-label phase III -JAVELIN Renal 101 trial (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier...
In the early fall of 2015, my daughter and I were on our way to our favorite nail salon to get picture-perfect ready for a gala later that evening at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York, when I got a call from my gynecologist saying I had “flunked my Pap test.” The Pap smear showed...
Earlier this year, ramucirumab was approved as a single agent for hepatocellular carcinoma in patients who have an alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) level ≥ 400 ng/mL and have been previously treated with sorafenib.1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was based on findings in the double-blind phase III...
On September 12, 2019, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced the updated number of confirmed and probable cases of lung disease associated with e-cigarette product use, or vaping. The new case count is the first national aggregate based on the new CDC case definition...
Through its community grants program, the Prevent Cancer Foundation is supporting 10 projects that are focused on increasing cancer prevention and early detection in communities across the United States, from Honolulu to Baltimore. The projects were selected through a competitive grants process,...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the 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,...
Medicare patients from lower socioeconomic groups and several ethnic minority groups were more likely to be diagnosed with cancer following an emergency department visit, according to results of a study presented at the 12th American Association for Cancer Research Conference on The Science of...
An international study has revealed the origin of mucinous ovarian cancer, confirming that unlike other types of ovarian cancer, this cancer arises from benign and borderline precursors at the ovaries and are not extraovarian metastases. These findings were published by Cheasley et al in Nature...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Smita Bhatia, MD, MPH, and colleagues found that childhood cancer survivors with pathogenic neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) variants had a greater risk of subsequent neoplasms than survivors without NFI variants and that radiotherapy was...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Naumann et al, the phase I/II CheckMate 358 trial found that nivolumab showed activity in a cohort of patients with recurrent or metastatic cervical, vaginal, or vulvar squamous cell carcinoma. Study Details A total of 24 patients were enrolled...
In a Chinese phase III trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Zhang et al found that the addition of gemcitabine/cisplatin induction chemotherapy to standard platinum-based chemoradiotherapy improved recurrence-free survival vs chemoradiotherapy alone in locoregionally advanced...
According to the National LGBT Cancer Network, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, and intersex (LGBTQI+) individuals are at greater risk for several cancers, including cervical, oral, and breast cancers. A survey to assess LGBTQI+ Latinx communities’ experience with cancer...
According to the American Cancer Society, excluding skin cancers, colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer in both men and women in the United States and the second most common cause of cancer deaths. This year, it is expected that more than 51,000 people will die of the malignancy....
In a Lunenburg Lymphoma Biomarker Consortium study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Rosenwald et al found that MYC rearrangement was associated with poorer outcomes in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) when accompanied by rearrangement of BCL2 and/or BCL6 and an immunoglobulin...
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the noninvasive colorectal cancer screening test Cologuard for eligible average-risk individuals aged 45 years and older, expanding on its previous indication for those aged 50 years and older. Cologuard is a stool DNA-based colorectal...
Andrew Kneebone, MD, of Royal North Shore Hospital, discusses phase III study findings showing that at 5 years, biochemical control was similar between adjuvant and early salvage radiotherapies, the latter sparing half of the men potential side effects of radiotherapy without any significant...
Robert Olson, MD, of the BC Cancer Centre for the North, discusses a secondary analysis of the SABR-COMET trial, which showed there was a small magnitude decline in quality of life in both arms of the study but no associated detriment with stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (Abstract 148).
Erica H. Bell, PhD, of The Ohio State University, discusses phase III findings from a prognostic and predictive molecular subgroup analysis of radiotherapy vs radiotherapy plus procarbazine/lomustine/vincristine in high-risk low-grade gliomas (Abstract 161).
Michael J. LaRiviere, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania, discusses the safety and efficacy of an alternate radiation-based approach to using cytotoxic chemotherapy alone in preparation for CAR T-cell treatment (Abstract 135).
Sue Sun Yom, MD, PhD, of the University of California, San Francisco, discusses phase II results showing that swallowing-related quality of life after deintensified chemoradiation therapy may improve in patients with p16-positive, nonsmoking-associated, locoregionally advanced disease (Abstract...
Alejandra Méndez Romero, MD, PhD, of Erasmus University Medical Center, discusses findings that show high local control rates with stereotactic body radiation for patients in this large published series, most of whom had colorectal cancer (Abstract 230).
David Routman, MD, of the Mayo Clinic, discusses his study findings showing that detectable human papillomavirus circulating tumor DNA in the postoperative setting may be linked to disease progression, which may help improve patient selection for treatment intensity (Abstract LBA5).
Daniel M. Trifiletti, MD, of the Mayo Clinic, discusses study findings showing that, between two different radiation doses (30 Gy/10 fractions vs 37.5 Gy/15 fractions), there was no difference in the time to cognitive failure, tumor control, or overall survival for patients with brain metastases...
Youssef Zeidan, MD, PhD, of the American University of Beirut Medical Center, discusses study findings showing that, in patients with one to three positive lymph nodes, postmastectomy radiation treatment decreased the risk of locoregional recurrence, particularly in estrogen receptor–positive...
This week, we’ll be going over news from the 2019 American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting, including an analysis of the effect of long-term hormonal therapy on men with low prostate-specific antigen levels treated with early salvage radiotherapy after radical prostatectomy...
Ryan Phillips, MD, PhD, of Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, discusses phase II findings suggesting that treatment with stereotactic ablative radiation significantly decreased the risk of disease progression at 6 months and increased progression-free survival (Abstract LBA3).
Justin Barnes, MS, of the St. Louis University School of Medicine, discusses his findings on the risk of suicide, which is higher in patients with cancer than in other adults but can be reduced by health policy interventions, including components of the Affordable Care Act (Abstract LBA9).
Steven H. Lin, MD, PhD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses phase II findings that showed proton beam therapy improved total toxicity burden score with no difference in progression-free survival when compared with intensity-modulated radiation treatment (Abstract LBA2).
The monoclonal antibody daratumumab has been widely embraced for the treatment of multiple myeloma, but for newly diagnosed patients, its benefit has been proved only in some patients, according to Craig Hofmeister, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Medicine at the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory...
Findings from a phase Ib study of the combination of the mutant IDH1 inhibitor ivosidenib plus azacitidine for patients with IDH1-mutated, newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia (AML) ineligible for intensive treatment showed that the combination was well tolerated and produced more responses than...
Two recent studies showed varying degrees of the effectiveness of mammography in different populations. In a report published in Radiology, Gao et al showed that in men at high risk for breast cancer, screening mammography may be able to increase the rate of detection of early-stage disease....
During the past decade, scientists began to test whether the addition of transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) to treatment with sorafenib could increase survival in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma. Scientists from Taiwan and Japan performed the first large, national-level,...
In a study reported in the Journal of Oncology Practice, Modi et al found that the difference in the rates of use of conservative management of prostate cancer widened between lower-use and higher-use urology practices between 2014 and 2018. Study Details Use of a sample of Medicare claims...