Peter P. Yu, MD, has been elected President of ASCO for a 1-year term beginning in June 2014. He will take office as President-Elect during the ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago in June 2013. Additionally, three new members were elected to the ASCO Board of Directors, and three new members were...
Press conferencemoderator Agnes Y. Lee, MD, Medical Director of the Thrombosis Program and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health in Canada, said that apixaban is the third in a new line of anticoagulants for long-term prevention of...
Antonio Palumbo, MD, Chief of the Myeloma Unit at the University of Torino in Italy, told The ASCO Post that the results with MLN9708 “look quite interesting,” and the drug could change the treatment of the disease. “This combination, with lenalidomide, accelerates response, and the ability to...
In December, the FDA granted accelerated approval to ponatinib (Iclusig) for the treatment of adult patients with chronic-, accelerated-, or blast-phase chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) that is resistant or intolerant to prior tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy or Philadelphia chromosome–positive...
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) recently appointed nationally regarded breast cancer expert Robert W. Carlson, MD, as its new CEO. Previously, Dr. Carlson was Professor of Medicine in the Division of Oncology and Medical Informatics, Stanford University Medical Center; he first...
A last-minute patch to the sustainable growth rate formula included in the “fiscal cliff” deal averted massive cuts to oncologists who care for and treat Medicare patients. “This end-of-year crisis management once again demonstrates the critical need for fundamental reform of the Medicare...
I read the article about “The Ethics of Rationing Cancer Care” with interest (The ASCO Post, Dec 15, 2012). The issue of rationing (or rational) care has likely been debated since Hippocrates. Yet the topic has become a focus of acute interest with the current fiscal crises facing countries around...
Results from the Adjuvant Tamoxifen: Longer Against Shorter (ATLAS) study “will have a follow-on effect of being able to guide physicians about the advantages of longer than 5 years of therapy for the premenopausal woman,” said V. Craig Jordan, OBE, PhD, DSc, Scientific Director at the Lombardi...
"Practice-changing" is the term several physicians and researchers used when asked by the media to describe the results of a study showing that extending tamoxifen therapy from 5 to 10 years for women with estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer further reduced recurrence and mortality....
The Leon and Norma Hess Center for Science and Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York officially opened in December, housing significant areas of six of Mount Sinai’s most influential institutes focusing on brain, cancer, heart, children’s health, genomics, and imaging. With a half-million square feet ...
Internationally renowned uterine cancer researcher and geneticist Paul Goodfellow, MD, PhD, will lead a new team of three researchers devoted to gynecologic oncology research at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research...
James F. Holland, MD, began his journey into oncology when it was still a nascent discipline, working alongside groundbreaking pioneers in the field such as Drs. Emil “Tom” Frei and C. Gordon Zubrod. Dr. Holland recently shared a glimpse of his role in oncology’s formative years with The ASCO Post. ...
February Highlights of ASH® Miami, FL and San Francisco, CAFebruary 1-2 • Miami, Florida, and San Francisco, CaliforniaFor more information: www.hematology.org/meetings Optimizing Outcomes in Colorectal CancerFebruary 7 • Boston, MassachusettsFor more information: www.omedlive.com Interventional...
Under the stress of a cancer diagnosis and overwhelmed with the influx of information, patients often report that they feel unprepared to engage fully in the discussion with their health-care provider around a critical treatment decision. Consequently, the Cancer Support Community—an international...
Samuel M. Silver, MD, PhD, has been elected as a Master of the American College of Physicians (ACP). Mastership is conferred upon a select number of candidates following election by ACP’s Awards Committee and Board of Regents. Dr. Silver is Assistant Dean for Research and Professor of Internal...
Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, a nonprofit group dedicated to finding cures for all children with cancer, has named four researchers 2012 recipients of the “A” Award. Christopher Vakoc, MD, PhD, of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; Roland Walter, MD, PhD, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research...
Telik, Inc, announced that its product candidate, ezatiostat hydrochloride (Telintra), has been granted orphan drug designation by the FDA for the treatment of myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). Ezatiostat is an investigational agent in development for the treatment of MDS and idiopathic chronic...
Dune Medical Devices, Inc, announced that the FDA has granted Premarket Approval to the MarginProbe System, the company’s breakthrough intraoperative tissue assessment tool for early-stage breast cancer surgery. The technology significantly improves surgeons’ ability to intraoperatively identify...
Martin Dreyling, MD, Professor of Medicine at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and Coordinator of the European Mantle Cell Lymphoma Network, commented on the data emerging for ibrutinib in lymphoma. “Ibrutinib is the molecule of the year at ASH,” he told The ASCO Post. “With other molecular ...
“If we could just give a shout-out to policymakers to understand that in the long term,” when patients who have diabetes and cancer receive adequate diabetes education, “we are cutting our length of stay, we are decreasing hospital costs, we are decreasing readmission rates,” June McKoy, MD, MPH,...
In the News focuses on media reports that your patients may have questions about at their next visit. This continuing column will provide summaries of articles in the popular press that may prompt such questions, as well as comments from colleagues in the field. Cancer and diabetes can be comorbid...
February Scripps Cancer Center’s 33rd Annual Clinical Hematology and Oncology ConferenceFebruary 16-19 • San Diego, CaliforniaFor more information:www.scripps.org/events/clinical-hematology-and-oncology-february-16-2013 2013 Translational Research Cancer Centers Consortium: The Power of Negative...
The University of Michigan (U-M) Comprehensive Cancer Center in Ann Arbor has named Kathleen Cooney, MD, as Deputy Director for Clinical Services. Dr. Cooney is Frances and Victor Ginsberg Professor of Hematology/Oncology and Chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology at the U-M Medical School...
Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, and colleagues at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, have developed a novel computer algorithm to quantify breast density based on analysis of a screening mammogram. Increased levels of mammographic breast density have been shown in...
The illness memoir’s appeal proves enduring in a very crowded genre, perhaps because illness is a tie that binds us all. As Susan Sontag wrote in her classic work, Illness as a Metaphor, “Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in...
Research led by scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee, has identified a possible lead in treatment of two childhood leukemia subtypes known for their dramatic loss of chromosomes and poor treatment outcomes. The findings also provide the first evidence of the...
The Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (HICCC) at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center has welcomed five new clinician-scientists specializing in leukemia. These practitioners joined the HICCC faculty in early January 2013. The new staff members are Mark G....
After completing his residency at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Harold P. Freeman, MD, arrived at Harlem Hospital Center in 1967, where the overwhelming majority of his patients presented with late-stage disease. That early experience with underserved patients would shape his career as...
Melanomas that develop in the eye often are fatal. Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine and the Siteman Cancer Center, St. Louis, Missouri, report they have identified a mutated gene in melanoma tumors of the eye that appears to predict a good outcome. The research was...
Last fall, Edward P. Ambinder, MD, Clinical Professor of Medicine, Hematology, and Medical Oncology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, and a member of ASCO’s Health Information Technology Work Group, spoke about “The Information Age: Cyberspace and Cancer,” at the...
The 2012 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium featured more than 2,500 abstracts and lectures, including timely research in the field and discussions for scientists and clinicians alike. In addition to nearly two dozen in-depth reports from the meeting, The ASCO Post brings readers the following...
The work of an American Society of Hematology (ASH) international clinical network collaborative focused on modernizing treatment protocols for patients in the developing world with acute promyeloctyic leukemia (APL) has drastically improved cure rates in patients in Central and South America. In...
On January 23, 2013, the FDA approved bevacizumab (Avastin) for use in combination with fluoropyrimidine-irinotecan or fluoropyrimidine-oxaliplatin based chemotherapy for the treatment of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer whose disease has progressed on a first-line bevacizumab-containing...
C. Kent Osborne, MD, Professor of Medicine and Molecular and Cellular Biology at Baylor College of Medicine and Director of the Lester and Sue Smith Breast Center at Baylor told The ASCO Post that this is “brand new” data that “looks very interesting.” He noted that groups for whom letrozole is the ...
Commenting on the study presented by Dr. Wolff at the 2012 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, ASCO President Sandra M. Swain, MD, FACP, Medical Director, Washington Cancer Institute, MedStar Washington Hospital Center, Washington, DC, said she found it “disturbing” that about half the population...
Two of the articles published in the January 15, 2013, issue of The ASCO Post included comments from a Dr. Peter Ellis. One report, from the 2012 Quality Care Symposium referred to Peter G. Ellis, MD, of UPMC, Pittsburgh, while a second report pertained to a presentation at the 35th ESMO Congress...
Philip Agop Philip, MD, Head of the Multidisciplinary Team for Gastrointestinal and Neuroendocrine Oncology and Neuroendocrine at Karmanos Cancer Institute at Wayne State University, Detroit, was the formal discussant of the paper at the Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium. He said the positive...
In patients with treatment-naive metastatic pancreatic cancer, the addition of nanoparticle albumin-bound (nab)-paclitaxel (Abraxane) to gemcitabine improved overall survival vs gemcitabine alone, in an international study presented at the 2013 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.1 New Standard “We...
The FDA approved a new use of imatinib (Gleevec) to treat children newly diagnosed with Philadelphia chromosome–positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). ALL is the most common type of pediatric cancer, affecting approximately 2,900 children annually, and progresses quickly if untreated....
March Hematology and Medical Oncology Board Review: Contemporary Practice from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer CenterMarch 1-5, 2013 • New York, New YorkFor more information: www.mskcc.org/hemoncreviewcourse International Congress on Targeted Anticancer TherapiesMarch 4-6 • Paris, FranceFor more...
Treatment of colorectal cancer is complicated by the potential difference in molecular profiles between the primary tumor and metastases. Miranda and colleagues from the Humanitas Clinical and Research Center in Milan, Italy, recently assessed the presence of molecular heterogeneity during...
Mutational activation of BRAF is the most prevalent genetic alteration in melanoma, with ≥ 50% of tumors expressing the BRAF(V600E) oncoprotein. Vemurafenib (Zelboraf) produces tumor regression and improved survival in patients with late-stage BRAF-mutated melanoma. However, most patients relapse...
World leaders from governments, cancer organizations, and the private sector joined together recently for the first Global Women’s Cancer Summit to address the challenge of reducing the global burden of women’s cancers. The summit was hosted by Susan G. Komen for the Cure and underwritten by GE...
David J. Kuter, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Director of the Center for Hematology at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, commented on the findings for The ASCO Post. “TOPPS is a good attempt to address whether transfusions are helpful as prophylaxis in patients...
Despite the extremely difficult clinical challenges posed by brain tumors, mortality rates in this disease have decreased somewhat over the past several decades due, in part, to advances in surgical techniques and therapies. The ASCO Post recently discussed contemporary issues in neuro-oncology...
Two gastrointestinal cancer experts commented on the findings in interviews with The ASCO Post. Axel Grothey, MD, Professor of Oncology at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, noted, “The PEAK and SPIRITT trial were decently designed, decently powered randomized phase II trials, and the results...
The FDA approved pomalidomide (Pomalyst) an oral immunomodulatory agent, to treat patients with multiple myeloma whose disease progressed after being treated with other cancer drugs. Pomalidomide is intended for patients who have received at least two prior therapies, including lenalidomide...
March 1 marked the beginning of sequestration, the unprecedented automatic budget cuts that immediately take effect across the federal government—after months of futile negotiations by the President and Congress. Sequestration will have a shattering impact on the entire cancer enterprise in the...
“Smokers lose at least one decade of life expectancy, as compared with those who have never smoked,” and the increased risk of death from cigarettes smoking “are now nearly identical for men and women,” according to two separate studies published online by TheNew England Journal of Medicine. One...
Positron-emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) with iodine-124 (124I) –girentuximab “can accurately and noninvasively identify” clear cell renal cell carcinoma, according to a phase III multicenter study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. In addition, “PET/CT with...