The updated results of the European Randomised Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC)—reported in The Lancet by Fritz H. Schröder, MD, of Erasmus University Medical Center, and colleagues1 and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post—show a continued decline, as predicted,2 in the number...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Fast Track designation for Halozyme Therapeutics’ program investigating pegylated recombinant human hyaluronidase (PEGPH20) in combination with gemcitabine and albumin-bound paclitaxel (nab-paclitaxel [Abraxane]) for the treatment of patients...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted fast track designation to the investigation of motolimod (VTX-2337) when administered in combination with pegylated liposomal doxorubicin for the treatment of women with ovarian cancer whose disease has progressed on or recurred after...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today granted accelerated approval to the anti–PD-1 antibody pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for the treatment of patients with advanced or unresectable melanoma who are no longer responding to other drugs. Pembrolizumab is intended for use following treatment...
The three leukemia/lymphoma studies selected from the many 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting abstracts for presentation at the recent Best of ASCO meeting in Chicago “are really paradigm-shifting,” noted Lucy A. Godley, MD, PhD, of the University of Chicago. These studies, she said, “give great promise for...
Precision medicine in the management of ovarian cancer “is a work in progress, to be sure,” Steven B. Newman, MD, noted in wrapping up the session on gynecologic cancer at the recent Best of ASCO meeting in Chicago. “A list of different histologic types of ovarian cancer and potential targets are...
Despite its acceptance as standard of care for early-stage breast cancer almost 25 years ago, barriers still exist that preclude patients from receiving breast-conserving therapy, with some patients still opting for a mastectomy, according to research from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer ...
On September 11, 2001, the devastating terrorist attack that destroyed the World Trade Center left in its wake a unique toxic site in both mass and quantity of hazardous materials. It took 9 months to remove approximately 2 million tons of wreckage from Ground Zero, during which thousands of...
1. Chemotherapy Cures Advanced Hodgkin Lymphoma In the first chemotherapy breakthrough for advanced cancer in adults, a four-drug combination chemotherapy regimen, called MOPP (mustargen/oncovin/procarbazine/prednisone), induced long-term remissions in over half of patients with aggressive Hodgkin ...
ASCO has announced the “Top 5 Advances in 50 Years of Modern Oncology,” based on results of worldwide voting on CancerProgress.Net—ASCO’s interactive website documenting the history of progress against cancer. The “Top 5 in 50” results identify pivotal discoveries in chemotherapy, prevention,...
I am troubled by hypocrisy. An article in the July 25th edition of The ASCO Post on “Stakeholders Are Uniting Around Value in Cancer Care” (July 25, 2014, page 1) tells us how we must “rein in” costs. The vast majority of the articles in this issue, however, trumpet the “new wonder drugs” that we...
Patients with cancer and survivors of cancer are living longer than ever before as a result of significant advances made over the past decade. Importantly, however, cardiovascular complications of their cancer treatment may present a life-threatening issue after their cancer treatment has ended....
Newly launched in 2014 by LIVESTRONG, “The Big C” is a one-of-a-kind global competition to generate innovations that improve the daily quality of life for the 32.5 million people around the world living with cancer now. The competition was open to entrepreneurs, trailblazers, technology whizzes,...
Men with moderate pattern baldness on the front and the crown of the head at age 45 had a 40% increased risk, compared to men with no baldness at that age, of developing prostate cancer later in life, according to a study led by researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and published in...
Because nine human papillomavirus (HPV) subtypes were found to cause the majority of cervical precancers, a nine-valent HPV vaccine currently being investigated may be able to prevent more cervical cancers than current vaccines, according to research published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers...
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...
The following essay by Michael Feinstein, MD, is excerpted from The Big Casino: America’s Best Cancer Doctors Share Their Most Powerful Stories, which was co-edited by Stan Winokur, MD, and Vincent Coppola and published in May 2014. The book is available on Amazon.com and thebigcasino.org....
Several faculty members at Roswell Park Cancer Institute have been awarded nearly $5 million in grant funding from public and private organizations to further their efforts to find new and better ways to detect and treat cancer and improve patients’ quality of life. The 13 awards, including two for ...
OCTOBER 18th SIS World Congress on Breast HealthcareOctober 16-19 • Orlando, Florida For more information: www2.kenes.com/sis/Pages/Home.aspx 2014 Quality Care SymposiumOctober 17-18 • Boston, MassachusettsFor more information: quality.asco.org Atlanta Lung Cancer SymposiumOctober 18 • Atlanta,...
Bookmark Title: Survivorship: Living Well During and After CancerAuthor: Barrie Cassileth, PhDFormat: PaperbackISBN: 978-1-938170-35-5Pages: 216Publication Date: April 1, 2014Dimensions: 5.5 × 8.5Also Available: eBook Bookmark Title: Lighter as We Go: Virtues, Character Strengths, and...
Ketan K. Badani, MD, Professor of Urology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, has been named Vice Chairman of Urology and Robotic Operations and Director of the Comprehensive Kidney Cancer Program for the Mount Sinai Health System. Dr. Badani will also serve as Director of Robotic ...
Researchers at Roswell Park Cancer Institute have been awarded three of four grants by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Oncology Research Program to evaluate and define the clinical effectiveness of the investigational compound nintedanib. Nintedanib is an investigational...
A leader in the field of epigenetics whose work has led to important discoveries into how cancer develops and progresses has been named the co-leader of the Lung Cancer Program at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI), partner with UPMC CancerCenter. James Herman, MD, comes to...
Parents of twins often tell them apart through subtle differences such as facial expression, moles, voice tone, and gait. Similarly, physicians treating women with endometrial cancer must be able to distinguish between different versions of this disease form that, on the surface, appear the same....
Devices to accurately deliver high-dose radium therapy became extremely sophisticated during the late 1920s. In this photograph, the patient is being treated for a carcinoma of the back by a Sluys-Kessler machine. This apparatus could also accurately deliver therapy for a wide variety of internal...
One of the miracles produced by the x-ray was the relatively easy treatment of inoperable or disfiguring tumors. If not a cure, the results frequently gave the patients at least some time to look and feel normal. The young patient shown in these photographs had a remarkable response. Images such as ...
Antiseptic principles delivered the promise of safe surgery, while asepsis allowed safe major dissections and invasion of body cavities. The physicians who were using these techniques recognized the amazing difference in their surgical results and corresponding mortality rates and proselytized to...
In June 1851, Philip J. Bruckner, MD, hired a daguerreotypist to photograph this 275-pound, 33-year-old woman, who had borne five children while developing this massive tumor. Dr. Bruckner learned of this patient when Charles Breech, MD, of Wellington, Ohio, presented her case at a medical meeting. ...
In his powerful 2010 best-seller, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer (Scribner), Siddhartha Mukherjee, MD, chronicles the evolution of cancer from the oldest known description of the disease written on a papyrus from about 1600 BC to the present day’s understanding of the biology of ...
Researchers in Germany report that nearly a third of more than 2,100 patients with cancer interviewed at inpatient and outpatient care centers experienced a clinically meaningful level of mental or emotional distress that meets the strict diagnostic criteria for mental disorders including anxiety...
Although the focus of an oncologist’s attention is understandably attuned to the needs of the patient, when a patient is a parent, quality oncology care should also include attention to the patient’s role as a parent and to the needs of the patient’s children, according to Paula K. Rauch, MD,...
ASCO has called for increased education, research, and advocacy to reduce the toll of obesity, both as a leading cause of cancer and a complication in the care of patients with cancer. The Society’s recommendations outline four critical priorities, including increased education and awareness about...
Eleven days before Patricia J. Goldsmith, joined CancerCare as its CEO last May, she received the unexpected news that she had early-stage colorectal cancer. While the diagnosis was shocking, Ms. Goldsmith said it gave her a unique perspective on what it means to have this serious disease and a...
Earlier this year the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an agency of the World Health Organization, launched a World Cancer Report 2014. The report, a collaboration of over 250 leading scientists from more than 40 countries, described multiple aspects of cancer research and...
In 1974, First Lady Betty Ford spoke publicly about her breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. Remarkably, at the time of her action, public discussion of breast cancer in the United States was seen as off limits. Four decades later, cultural barriers to women’s health still exist, particularly in...
Stephen Hahn, MD, has been named as the Division Head of Radiation Oncology and Chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He joins MD Anderson on January 1, 2015. Dr. Hahn comes to MD Anderson from the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman...
At the ASCO Annual Meeting in June, the Conquer Cancer Foundation presented the 2014 recipients of prestigious grants and awards, including the Young Investigator Award, Career Development Award, and the Advanced Clinical Research Award in Breast Cancer. In announcing the awards, Charles W. Penley, ...
While the development of mentorship relationships is critical in launching and nurturing the academic careers of young investigators, it is also an essential component for continued success throughout their careers, according to Jennifer R. Brown, MD, PhD. Dr. Brown, Director of the CLL Center at...
A new report from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), an agency of the World Health Organization, urges health authorities of countries with high stomach cancer burden to include stomach cancer in their national cancer control programs and allocate more resources to control the...
In 2014, about 15,000 people in the United States will be diagnosed with some form of sarcoma, and of those, approximately 5,000 adults and children are expected to die of the disease. Sarcomas are a heterogeneous group of mesenchymal malignancies that have historically been difficult to diagnose...
Clinical depression is highly prevalent, associated with significant morbidity, often underrecognized, and inadequately treated in cancer patients. Professor Michael Sharpe and Jane Walker, PhD, and their colleagues’ seminal work on enhancing treatment of depression in cancer patients using a...
Temozolomide in combination with radiation for newly diagnosed glioblastoma was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2005—almost 10 years ago—but we have unfortunately made little progress in improving survival for this incurable brain tumor. Despite recent completion of three...
The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society has announced that Louis J. DeGennaro, PhD, has been appointed as President and Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately. “Dr. DeGennaro has tirelessly dedicated himself for almost a decade of service to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society mission and to...
The majority (62%) of America’s middle-income cancer survivors say they were not financially prepared for cancer diagnosis and treatment, according to a new study released by the Washington National Institute for Wellness Solutions (IWS). The study, “Insights from Survivors: Managing the Personal,...
The results of the ECOG E4402/RESORT trial recently reported by Kahl and colleagues,1 and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, provide interesting new information on the use of maintenance rituximab (Rituxan) vs retreatment with rituximab at progression in patients with low–tumor burden...
Researchers at the Salk Institute have reported on a synthetic derivative of vitamin D able to collapse the barrier of cells shielding pancreatic tumors, making this challenging cancer more susceptible to therapeutic drugs. The discovery has led to human trials for pancreatic cancer, even in...
Colon cancer screening using colonoscopy has significantly decreased the incidence and mortality of colorectal cancer in the United States. In the National Polyp Study (NPS), colorectal cancer was prevented by removal of adenomatous polyps.1 A more recent study looking at long-term follow-up from...
Keck Medical Center of the University of Southern California (USC) has become the first medical center in the world to use a new robotic technology in an outpatient procedure for a patient with kidney cancer. Urologic surgeons at the USC Institute of Urology, part of Keck Medicine of USC, used a...
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) recently launched “The Exceptional Responders Initiative,” a study to investigate the molecular factors of tumors associated with exceptional treatment responses of patients with cancer to drug therapies. Scientists will attempt to identify the molecular features ...
Each day, millions of patients with cancer around the world suffer unrelieved pain because they are denied morphine, the gold standard of cancer pain control. The World Health Organization has called access to morphine a human rights issue. Not surprisingly, the crisis in unrelieved cancer pain is...