Maha H. Hussain, MD, has joined the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University as the Associate Director for Clinical Sciences Research. Dr. Hussain will also serve as Co-Director of the Lurie Cancer Center’s Genitourinary Oncology Program, along with Edward Schaeffer,...
Julie E. Bauman, MD, MPH, a head and neck cancer specialist and physician-scientist, has been named Professor of Medicine and the new Chief of the Division of Hematology and Oncology at the University of Arizona (UA) College of Medicine–Tucson, as well as Associate Director of Translational...
Earlier this month, ASCO, in collaboration with the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) and the Society for Surgical Oncology (SSO), jointly issued an update to a clinical practice guideline for physicians treating women with breast cancer who have undergone a mastectomy. The update...
The Basser Center for BRCA at Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center has announced the recipient of the 2016 Basser Global Prize is cancer geneticist Steven Narod, MD, FRCPC, PhD (hon), FRSC, Director of the Familial Breast Cancer Research Unit and a senior scientist at the Women’s College Hospital in...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted for Priority Review the supplemental Biologics License Application (sBLA) for pembrolizumab (Keytruda), an anti–PD-1 (programmed cell death protein 1) therapy, for the first-line treatment of patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer...
Clinicians face a number of questions in evaluating and treating patients with stage IIIA non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). One expert in the field, Rafael Santana-Davila, MD, reviewed key issues in managing this disease in the Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP). The ASCO Post asked Dr....
As reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recently updated its guidelines for colorectal cancer screening1 from 2008 and has now included seven acceptable strategies, including direct-visualization modalities (ie, endoscopy and computed tomography...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a supplemental Biologics License Application for the use of ofatumumab (Arzerra) in combination with fludarabine and cyclophosphamide for the treatment of patients with relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). The application, which...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) will present the 2016 William Dameshek Prize to Charles Mullighan, MBBS (Hons), MD, of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, for his leadership in defining the landscape of genetic alterations of acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), which has provided...
Attendees at the 2016 Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference held July 18–22 in Koloa, Hawaii, got a peek at early data for a number of novel agents in the treatment of various lymphoma subtypes. The ASCO Post captured these findings. Denintuzumab Mafodotin in Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma Denintuzumab...
A small device implanted under the skin may improve breast cancer survival by catching cancer cells, slowing the development of metastatic tumors in other organs, and allowing time to intervene with surgery or other therapies. These findings, reported by Rao et al in Cancer Research, suggest a path ...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Julie M. Vose, MD, MBA, FASCO, of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, and colleagues have provided a summary of the groundwork of an initiative by ASCO and the Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI) to identify and reduce...
For the majority of patients who are diagnosed with advanced-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), platinum-based doublets have been the standard of care for over 30 years. Recently, the immune checkpoint inhibitors nivolumab (Opdivo) and pembrolizumab (Keytruda) demonstrated superior survival ...
Although targeted drugs like imatinib (Gleevec) have revolutionized the treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), patients generally must take them for the rest of their lives and may cease benefiting from them over time. New research conducted by scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute...
A new study indicates that adolescent females with acute leukemia have low rates of pregnancy screening prior to receiving chemotherapy that can cause birth defects. These findings were published by Rao et al in Cancer. Although many chemotherapy drugs can cause birth defects, there are no...
Today, Vice President Joe Biden announced a series of new steps focused on increasing access to information about clinical trials and improving the efficiency of our clinical research system. These steps include making it easier for participants to find clinical trial opportunities as quickly as...
Federally funded research continues to spur progress against cancer; however, accelerating the pace of progress will require robust, sustained, and predictable annual funding increases for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the Food and Drug...
A drop in the number of cancer cells detected in a patient’s blood could be the best indicator yet as to whether treatment for prostate cancer is working. A new study, published by Lorente et al in European Urology, shows that a 30% decline in a patient’s numbers of circulating tumor...
The combined use of fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) identified non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with rare or novel anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene rearrangements, not otherwise identified by FISH alone, that showed response to...
On September 13, 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) modified the dosage regimen for nivolumab (Opdivo) for the currently approved indications for renal cell carcinoma, metastatic melanoma, and non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The currently approved recommended dosage...
A first-of-its-kind joint report from the American Cancer Society and Alliance for Childhood Cancer has compiled the latest information related to pediatric cancer, including statistics and trends; a current list of drugs used to treat pediatric cancers; ongoing pediatric cancer clinical trials;...
An animal study suggests that resistance to tamoxifen therapy in some estrogen receptor–positive breast cancers may originate from in utero exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals. The study provides a new path forward in human research, as about half of the breast cancers treated with...
The Chinese Journal of Cancer (CJC) is soliciting the 150 most important questions in cancer research and clinical oncology from cancer researchers around the world. The editors of CJC believe this will help provide important insights and guidance in future efforts to advance cancer research...
Among individuals with advanced cancer, frequent hospitalization is often at odds with patient preference and is increasingly viewed as a hallmark of poor quality care. Hospitalization contributes substantially to costs and regional spending variation in this population, but patterns and reasons...
Radiation oncologists are frequently involved in providing palliative and supportive care for patients with advanced cancers through delivery of palliative radiation. Whether they are confident in their ability to assess and initiate treatments for pain, nonpain, and psychosocial distress is...
In 1997, Oregon enacted a voter initiative allowing terminally ill residents to self-administer physician-prescribed medication to end their lives called the Oregon Death With Dignity Act (ORDWDA). Statute requires prescriptions written for lethal medications be reported; the state also collects...
During hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), patients sometimes experience physical and psychological symptoms that negatively impact their quality of life. Researchers led by Areej El-Jawahri, MD, Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Bone Marrow Transplant...
There are limited data on the illness understanding and perception of curability among patients with advanced cancer receiving palliative care around the world. In a study led by Sriram Yennu, MD, MS, Associate Professor in the Department of Palliative Care and Rehabilitation Medicine at The...
A large observational study examining the variation in breast density assessment among radiologists in clinical practice has found a wide variation—from 6.3% to 84.5%—in the percentage of mammograms rated as showing dense breasts, which persisted after adjusting for patient characteristics. The...
Randy L. Wei, MD, PhD, of the University of California, Irvine, discusses findings from a survey that focused on ASTRO members who assessed their ability to deliver palliative and supportive care, and their access to continuing medical education on the topic (Abstract 105).
Sriram Yennu, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses findings from a study of an international cohort of patients with advanced cancer who received palliative care. Nearly half the patients incorrectly believed their cancer was curable (Abstract 5).
Stephen T. Sonis, DMD, DMSc, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses the epidemiology, pathogenesis, and scope of oral complications of radiation therapy.
Jennifer S. Temel, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses increasing prognostic uncertainty in light of targeted treatments and immunotherapies, and the difficulty predicting who will benefit.
Scott A. Irwin, MD, PhD, of Cedars-Sinai’s Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute, discusses delirium—its definition, prevalence, consequences, assessment, and management.
Eric Roeland, MD, of the University of California, San Diego, discusses the key papers presented at this year’s Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium.
Emily Haozous, PhD, RN, of the University of New Mexico, discusses health disparities and cultural differences in palliative and end-of-life care, with case study examples drawn from American Indian communities.
Eileen Danaher Hacker, PhD, APN, AOCN, of the University of Illinois at Chicago, discusses study findings that show improvement in physical activity, fatigue, muscle strength, and functional ability (Abstract 190).
Charles F. von Gunten, MD, PhD, of OhioHealth, discusses hospice care as a measure of quality, and findings that show medical oncologists doubled the median length of hospice service from 20 days to 40 days (Abstract 45).
Joseph A. Greer, PhD, of Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses the development of a mobile application to address treatment adherence and symptoms (Abstract 104).
Areej El-Jawahri, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses ways in which palliative care can reduce symptoms, improve quality of life, reduce depression and anxiety, and potentially optimize end-of-life care for patients with hematologic malignancies.
J. Nicholas Dionne-Odom, PhD, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, discusses the “hidden” health-care workforce of family caregivers and what clinicians can do to help ease the burden on families.
James F. Cleary, MD, of the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center, talks about the many reasons that 80% of the world’s population lacks access to opioids, the mainstay of cancer pain management.
Tracy A. Balboni, MD, MPH, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, talks about how to preserve quality of life in the presence of complex spinal lesions, including novel ways to assess spinal instability and treat metastases.
Eduardo Bruera, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the need for outpatient palliative care programs to monitor and support these complex patients and their family members.
Charles D. Blanke, MD, of the Oregon Health & Science University and Southwest Oncology Group, discusses the nearly 20 years’ experience with Oregon’s Death With Dignity (DWD) Act, a voter initiative that led to the first such law enacted in the United States (Abstract 44).
The ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group (ECOG-ACRIN) announced that Robert L. Comis, MD, Professor of Medicine at Drexel University, is stepping down from his position as Group Co-Chair of the organization. His departure, effective February 28, 2019, will coincide with the end of ECOG-ACRIN’s current ...
I am writing to ask the ASCO community for help in addressing a policy decision by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) that requires oncologists to take a 700-hour course (on the full range of nuclear medicines) to give one medicine to their patients: prepackaged radioimmunotherapy. It’s...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Oreofe O. Odejide, MD, MPH, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and colleagues surveyed hematologic oncologists to identify acceptable end-of-life-care quality measures and barriers to such care. Respondents considered unrealistic patient...
High expression of T-cell and B-cell signatures in infiltrates in the tumor microenvironment predicted improved overall survival across many tumor types, according to a study reported by Iglesia et al in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Benjamin Vincent, MD, of UNC (University of North ...
The multikinase inhibitor regorafenib (Stivarga) prolonged progression-free survival vs placebo in patients with previously treated advanced gastric carcinoma, in a phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Nick Pavlakis, MBBS, PhD, of the University of Sydney, Australia, and...