Androgen receptor (AR) splice variant 7 (V7) appears to be a new biomarker for response and disease progression in patients treated with enzalutamide (Xtandi) or abiraterone (Zytiga). The presence of AR-V7 in circulating tumor cells predicted resistance to both drugs in men with metastatic...
Martin Reck, MD, PhD, Head of Thoracic Oncology at the Hospital Grosshansdorf in Germany, discussed the anti–PD-1 abstracts at the ASCO Annual Meeting. “We have seen tremendous results for immunotherapies for the reactivation of the immune system in patients with advanced melanoma. The question...
Monoclonal antibodies targeting the programmed death receptor-1 (PD-1) pathway are expected to answer an unmet need in non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). With first-line platinum-doublets, 1-year overall survival is 30% to 50%, and while treatments targeting sensitizing mutations are more...
Ipilimumab (Yervoy) has transformed the treatment of metastatic melanoma, producing long-term responses in about 20% of patients. A phase III study has now evaluated its impact in the adjuvant setting, and the results are a bit less striking. Primary Endpoint The European Organisation for Research...
Cancer patients’ out-of-pocket costs are rising dramatically, and insurance premiums, cost sharing, and ancillary expenses can be devastating. Many people go bankrupt as a result of the high costs of health care. Drugs are among the most serious economic culprits. They grow more expensive every...
The ASCO Annual Meeting in June confirmed—and expanded—the excitement of the oncology community about molecular medicine and its future. The complex molecular pathways were pictured in living color on many slides in many large auditoriums. Newspapers across the country were equally enthusiastic as...
The latest bit of good news for the programmed death receptor-1 (PD-1)–targeting antibodies in advanced melanoma comes for pembrolizumab (MK-3475). While the results came from only a phase I study, they were among those chosen for presentation at an ASCO press briefing during the Annual Meeting....
A multicenter, open-label phase II trial found that the selective proteasome inhibitor carfilzomib (Kyprolis), in combination with cyclophosphamide and dexamethasone produced high complete response rates and was associated with low toxicity in patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma....
Survivors of nonmetastatic colorectal cancer, when surveyed about their needs and preferences for survivorship information, responded that they would prefer receiving more information about late effects of treatment, challenges to expect, general health maintenance, and risks of recurrence. Most of ...
Women who have small (≤ 1 cm), node-negative breast tumors “have an excellent prognosis without chemotherapy,” concluded the authors of a prospective cohort study involving 4,113 women with T1a,b, N0, M0 breast cancer. “Size and tumor subtype may identify patients in whom the rate of recurrence...
His life was gentle, and the elements So mixed in him that Nature might stand up And say to all the world, “This was a man!” —William Shakespeare I have too many positive memories of John to regale you with here,” said Roger Kirby, MD, in a tribute to his close friend and colleague, John Michael...
Anticancer immunity may be enhanced by harnessing the ability of dendritic cells to initiate T-cell immunity through efficient uptake and presentation of endocytosed material. In preclinical models, delivery of tumor-associated antigens to dendritic cells using receptor-specific monoclonal...
Chronic inflammation is implicated in the development of colorectal cancer, and the plasma inflammatory biomarker macrophage inhibitory cytokine-1 (MIC-1, GDF15) may have a direct role in tumorigenesis. As reported in Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Mehta and colleagues found that...
Many potential drug-nutrient interactions can affect cancer treatment. It is important to consider these interactions given the significant use of supplements and other self-treatment options during cancer care. Antioxidants account for a large portion of the $32 billion in supplement industry...
JULY 5th World Congress of International Federation of Head and Neck Oncologic Societies Annual Meeting of American Head and Neck SocietyJuly 26-30 • New York, New YorkFor more information:www.ahns.info/meetings/index.php AACR/ASCO Methods in Clinical Cancer Research WorkshopJuly 26-August 1 •...
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...
Editor’s note: In the July 10 issue of The ASCO Post, this article by Marie Krejci as told to Jo Cavallo was published; however, the published version was incomplete in that it did not reflect important updates made by Ms. Krejci. We apologize to Ms. Krejci for this error and to our readers for any ...
Unfortunately, when I see The ASCO Post, my first impression is that you enable a group of researchers (part-time clinicians) to pontificate about their own agendas. The agenda that seems to be missing is the presentation of information that either supports or refutes the freight train of “quality...
Prostate cancer will be diagnosed in 233,000 American men in 2014. It is one of the leading causes of death by a cancer (killing ~29,500 men annually).1 Hundreds of thousands of men undergo prostate biopsies each year, most for either benign disease or for a cancer that will never lead to their...
Researchers at the University of California Davis have determined that surgical biopsies can be safely performed on select patients with late-stage non-small cell lung cancer, which should enhance their access to drugs that target specific genetic mutations such as epidermal growth factor receptor...
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...