The addition of everolimus (Afinitor) to weekly trastuzumab (Herceptin) plus paclitaxel in the first-line metastatic breast cancer setting did not improve outcomes in the phase III BOLERO-1/TRIO-019 but did provide a “signal” in the hormone receptor–negative subset. The study was reported at the...
Among women with triple-negative breast cancer, overall, basal-like and non–basal-like tumors were equally likely to demonstrate a pathologic complete response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy, but they responded differently to the addition of carboplatin and bevacizumab (Avastin) to a standard...
The addition of the tyrosine kinase inhibitor nilotinib (Tasigna) to standard low-intensity chemotherapy improved outcomes in elderly patients with newly diagnosed Philadelphia chromosome–positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and may represent a new approach to this group of patients, who are ...
In patients with Hodgkin lymphoma who are at risk for disease progression following autologous stem cell transplantation, early consolidation with brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) post-transplant significantly improved progression-free survival compared with placebo in the phase III AETHERA trial.1...
As session moderator, Fredrick Hagemeister, MD, Professor of Medicine, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, commented during the discussion of Dr. Connors’ study. He first emphasized the need to establish the safety of new drugs in clinical trials before incorporating them...
Several studies presented at the 2014 ASH Annual Meeting supported the use of brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) in Hodgkin lymphoma. The Reed-Sternberg cells of classical Hodgkin lymphoma typically express CD30, which is targeted by brentuximab vedotin, an anti-CD30 monoclonal antibody conjugated by a ...
Results of the large International Breast Cancer Study Group (IBCSG)-coordinated SOFT trial present a convincing argument for the addition of ovarian function suppression to adjuvant hormonal therapy to reduce the risk of tumor recurrence in younger women with hormone receptor–positive early-stage...
Anyone who has awoken from a decades-long amnestic spell can be forgiven for thinking that physicians cannot do anything right nowadays. Compared with decades ago, when physicians did mostly right, we now seem to be nowhere close to correctness. Nearly every malady that befalls the health-care...
Epithelioid hemangioendothelioma is a rare and devastating vascular sarcoma that affects between 100 and 200 people, mostly young adults, each year in the United States. The cancer may arise as a solitary lesion but more commonly presents with metastatic involvement, usually in the liver and lungs. ...
Artificial antigen-presenting cells have been shown to stimulate antigen-specific T-cell responses, but their effect in vivo may be compromised by rapid macrophage clearance. In a study reported in Clinical Cancer Research, Bruns and colleagues added CD47 to classic two-signal artificial...
Mechanisms of lung cancer metastasis remain largely undefined. In a study reported in Cell Death & Differentiation that used genome-wide transcriptional analysis in a metastasis model, Moon and colleagues found that the epithelial basement membrane protein laminin γ2 (LAMC2) was significantly...
Resistance to castrating therapy and androgen deprivation therapy in prostate cancer is due in part to adaptive upregulation of androgen receptor levels by castration-resistant prostate cancer cells in the setting of prolonged exposure to a low-testosterone environment. In a study reported in...
The concept of “chemobrain” is underrecognized, noted Serena Wong, MD, co-investigator of a clinical trial examining the effects of chemotherapy and hormonal therapy on the brain. Dr. Wong is a medical oncologist at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey and Assistant Professor of Medicine at...
The novelty of our approach is that we are going to be using multiple modalities” to study the effects of chemotherapy and hormonal therapy on the brain, looking for structural changes within the brain and how these changes might affect psychomotor function, particularly upper-extremity movements...
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...
FEBRUARY AACR-SNMMI Joint Conference: State-of-the-Art Molecular Imaging in Cancer Biology and TherapyFebruary 11-14 • San Diego, California For more information: www.aacr.org 2015 BMT Tandem Meeting American Society for Blood and Marrow TransplantationFebruary 11 - 15 • San Diego, California For...
Friends of Cancer Research, in conjunction with the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at Brookings, recently held the seventh annual Conference on Clinical Cancer Research in Washington, DC. The panels that comprised the daylong meeting discussed a future that has already begun. The most...
Nearly 5,000 scientific abstracts were presented at the 2014 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exhibition in San Francisco. Along with our targeted coverage of the meeting’s key newsmakers, The ASCO Post provides you with these brief reports of other interesting...
Matthew J. Ellis, MB, BChir, PhD, Director of the Lester and Sue Smith Breast Center at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, commented on endocrine resistance and the potential of the four-gene panel for assessing resistance for The ASCO Post. Endocrine response and resistance is a research focus...
At the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, a research team led by Michael Dixon, MD, of Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, shed light on the development of endocrine resistance and presented a four-gene messenger RNA (mRNA) profile that can predict response to letrozole with a high degree ...
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. In December 12, 2014, ramucirumab (Cyramza) was approved for use in ...
ASCO has released a policy statement calling for greater access to and education about phase I clinical trials, the first-in-human studies of new agents designed to fight cancer. In “The Critical Role of Phase I Trials in Cancer Research and Treatment” ASCO policy statement, the Society stresses...
The Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO has announced the five recipients of the 2015 International Innovation Grant. This grant supports novel and innovative projects that may improve diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of cancer in low- and middle-income countries. For 2015, the 1-year grants of...
As reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Anirban P. Mitra, MD, PhD, of the University of Southern California, and colleagues identified a novel genome-based signature that improves prediction of postcystectomy recurrence in patients with high-risk bladder cancer.1 Use of the...
Treatment of advanced bladder cancer continues to prove challenging, and therapies that offer long-term survival remain elusive. The ASCO Post recently spoke with Derek Raghavan, MD, PhD, FACP, FRACP, FASCO, President of the Levine Cancer Center, Charlotte, North Carolina, about the current state...
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 December 4, 2014, ruxolitinib (Jakafi) was approved for the...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today expanded the approved use of ibrutinib (Imbruvica) for patients with Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia, a rare, indolent type of B-cell lymphoma. Ibrutinib is the first therapy indicated specifically for Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia and previously...
Inotuzumab ozogamicin combined with a low-intensity chemotherapy called mini-hyper-CVD achieved highly encouraging results in older patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in a phase II study reported at the 56th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology.1 After the...
Highlighted here are summaries of four abstracts presented at the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium: They focus on the EPO-ANE-3010 clinical trial of epoetin alfa (Epogen, Procrit) in anemic patients with metastatic breast cancer, a New York Cancer Consortium trial of fulvestrant (Faslodex)...
It is not enough for Mary-Claire King, PhD, to have identified the germline BRCA1 mutation associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancers. Her clinically applicable discovery is one of the world’s greatest in genetics and one for which she has been highly lauded. But not one to rest on her...
Ann H. Partridge, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, commented on this study to The ASCO Post: With taxanes after doxorubicin/cyclophosphamide (AC), it’s “dealer’s choice.” However, she noted that most oncologists do not give every-3-week paclitaxel now. “Many have...
An update of clinical trial E1199 showed that weekly paclitaxel and every-3-week docetaxel were both more effective than every-3-week paclitaxel in preventing deaths and tumor recurrences, according to Joseph Sparano, MD, Professor of Medicine and Women’s Health at the Albert Einstein College of...
The androgen receptor inhibitor enzalutamide (Xtandi) showed encouraging activity as a single agent in advanced triple-negative breast cancer patients expressing the androgen receptor, according to an international study presented at the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.1 Enzalutamide...
ASCO recently released its report, Clinical Cancer Advances 2015: An Annual Report on Progress Against Cancer, and for the first time announced its cancer Advance of the Year: gains made in the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). The report credited improvements in CLL care with four...
At the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, The ASCO Post sat down with geneticist Mary-Claire King, PhD, for some personal musings about her career and how she might guide young researchers who want to follow in her footsteps. Dr. King is known for a variety of accomplishments in genetics,...
Some patients with rectal cancer who achieve a complete response to neoadjuvant chemoradiation therapy can be monitored for tumor recurrence and may never need surgery, according to a retrospective review from patients at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, presented at the 2015...
I am writing in regard to the report and commentary in this issue on the RAISE Trial. To begin, a discussion of this phase III clinical trial presented at the 2015 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium (RAISE study) may not be the most appropriate forum to air legitimate views on finances and...
A special report in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded that atypical hyperplasia of the breast “confers an absolute risk of later breast cancer of 30% at 25 years of follow-up.1” This is higher than previously recognized, and the report’s authors urged “more intensive screening and...
Atypical hyperplasia of the breast has “special importance as a predictor of future breast cancer,” according to a special report in The New England Journal of Medicine.1 That special importance is based on the high incidence of atypical hyperplasia—found in around 10% of the 1 million breast...
Bucking national trends toward preserving the larynx in patients with advanced laryngeal cancer, treatment of patients for stage IV disease at Louisiana State University (LSU) Health-Shreveport were more likely to involve primary surgical therapy, including total laryngectomy, and more likely to...
FEBRUARY Genitourinary Cancers SymposiumFebruary 26-28 • Orlando, Florida For more information: www.gucasym.org 5th Annual Texas Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology ConferenceFebruary 27-28 • Houston, Texas For more information:...
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...
In 1995, I was diagnosed with advanced colorectal cancer and given little chance to live. The dire diagnosis came years after being assured by several physicians that the problem I was having with rectal bleeding and anemia was nothing more than the result of an internal hemorrhoid. Busy raising...
Scientific name: 8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide Brand names: Zostrix cream 0.025% or 0.075%, Salonpas Gel-Patch Hot, Sinus Buster (homeopathic intranasal spray). The use of dietary supplements by patients with cancer has increased significantly over the past 20 years despite insufficient evidence ...
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 December 3, 2014, blinatumomab (Blincyto) was granted...
The first poly ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor was developed in the early 1990s. Since then, the activity of PARP inhibitors has been explored in a variety of settings, including and perhaps most enthusiastically in the treatment of cancer. The greater dependence of several cancers on PARP,...
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 January 29, 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)...
INSIDE THE BLACK BOX is an occasional column offering insight into the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its policies and procedures. In this installment, former clinical pharmacology team leader Julie Bullock, PharmD, and current team leader Nitin Mehrotra, PhD, discuss how...
Case 1: Prerequisites for classification of myeloid neoplasm Question 1: Which statement is the one best explanation for the discrepancy observed between the blast percentage by bone marrow aspirate visual inspection and the flow-cytometry study? Correct Answer: C. Flow-cytometry study may not be...
The ASCO Post is pleased to introduce “Hematology Expert Review,” a new feature including a case report detailing a particular hematologic condition followed by questions. Answers to each question appear with expert commentary. In this first installment, we present two cases of older men with...