Charles L. Shapiro, MD, Professor of Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, commented on the findings of the coopERA trial for The ASCO Post. He maintained that the oral selective estrogen receptor degraders now in development will be a...
In a prospective cohort study (CEASAR) reported in JAMA Oncology, Wallis et al found that patient expectations of treatment efficacy and adverse effects were associated with treatment-related regret at 5 years after diagnosis in men with localized prostate cancer. As stated by the investigators,...
Young adults diagnosed with cancer may require different treatments than those received by older patients, according to a study that systematically compared the genomes of 14 different types of cancers affecting both younger and older adults. The results, published by Lee et al in Cell Reports,...
When I was diagnosed with osteosarcoma of my left femur nearly 20 years ago, I remember telling my parents that I didn’t want to die. The diagnosis was terrifying because all the people I knew who had cancer had passed away, and I thought this cancer would kill me, too. That evening, my dad went...
Researchers have developed a new model that uses DNA and RNA sequencing data from hundreds of patients to identify specific genes and genetic alterations responsible for subtypes of multiple myeloma. They also identified potential targeted treatments based on the findings, which were reported by...
The results of a study published by Lee et al in Cell Reports suggest that several genetic hallmarks may play key roles in identifying precise treatment options for young adult patients with cancer. The investigators, who systematically compared the genomes of 14 different types of cancers that...
Individuals with solid tumors had an appropriate, protective immune response to vaccination against SARS–CoV-2, at least with the mRNA-1273 vaccine, and side effects were no more common than in the general population, according to a large Dutch study.1 The study was reported during the European...
Mary Pasquinelli, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC, was the recipient of this year’s James L. Mulshine, MD, National Leadership Award presented during the Prevent Cancer Foundation’s Quantitative Imaging Workshop held virtually earlier in November. Dr. Pasquinelli is a nurse practitioner in the Division of...
Patients with multiple myeloma lacking an antibody response to COVID-19 vaccine may also fail to mount a T-cell response, according to research from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Concerningly, this scenario was most common among patients actively treated with anti-CD38 and...
The National Cancer Act of 1971 established a national priority to address the widely shared dread of a cancer diagnosis. The goal of the National Cancer Act was to strengthen the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to more effectively carry out the national effort against cancer. After the Act was...
In a single-institution cohort study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Keilty et al identified factors associated with an increased risk of hearing loss in pediatric patients receiving radiation therapy and chemotherapy for central nervous system and head and neck tumors. The study...
Perspectives on ARIEL4 were provided for The ASCO Post by the invited discussant Ursula A. Matulonis, MD, Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Chief of Gynecologic Oncology and the Brock Wilson Family Chair at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, and Konstantin Zakashansky, MD,...
The past year has been a remarkable and noteworthy time with much exciting progress made in gynecologic cancers, despite the underlying presence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Several key studies were presented in 2020–2021 that detailed the results of novel therapies for our patients with cervical,...
A retrospective analysis of large data sets of biomarkers from tumors and healthy tissue by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center Convergence Institute suggests that older patients with cancer may benefit as much from cancer immunotherapies as younger patients. The findings,...
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the tragedy of patients dying in isolation, separated from family and friends to limit infection in hospital settings. The process has altered the experience of serious illness for patients and their loved ones, including their ability to grieve, share important...
In a prospective cohort study reported in Clinical Imaging, David Steiger, MD, of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New York, and colleagues in the International Early Lung Cancer Action Program (I-ELCAP) identified emphysema in ...
About one in four patients with blood cancer fail to produce detectable antibodies after COVID-19 vaccination, but results vary substantially by type of blood cancer, according to a study by Greenberger et al published in the journal Cancer Cell. Although earlier studies have shown that certain...
Robotic prostate surgery pioneer Mani Menon, MD, is joining Mount Sinai and will serve as Chief of Strategy and Innovation in the Department of Urology for the Mount Sinai Health System. He will also serve as Professor of Urology, Director of Education, and Director of the Precision Prostatectomy...
To complement The ASCO Post’s continued comprehensive coverage of the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, here are several abstracts selected from the meeting proceedings focusing on novel gene therapies for resistant non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHL), including...
Invited discussant of the FORWARD II trial,1Amit M. Oza, MD, MBBS, concluded that bevacizumab and mirvetuximab soravtansine was a “very well tolerated and effective” combination with “encouraging activity,” even in patients previously treated with bevacizumab and weekly paclitaxel. Dr. Oza is Head ...
Mount Sinai Health System has recruited an internationally recognized expert in the management of breast cancer and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-associated malignancies, Joseph A. Sparano, MD, FACP, as Chief of Hematology and Medical Oncology and Deputy Director of The Tisch Cancer Institute...
In a phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, John Mascarenhas, MD, and colleagues found that treatment with the telomerase inhibitor imetelstat at a dose of 9.4 mg/kg produced clinical benefit in patients with relapsed or refractory myelofibrosis after Janus-associated kinase...
Albert Einstein Cancer Center (AECC), Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Montefiore Health System have announced that cancer biologist Julio Aguirre-Ghiso, PhD, has been named founding Director of the Cancer Dormancy and Tumor Microenvironment Institute (CDTMI), Director of the Gruss-Lipper...
The dire cancer incidence and mortality statistics for Black patients compared with White patients are well known. Collectively, Black individuals have the highest mortality rate and shortest survival of any racial or ethnic group in the United States for most cancers. Black men also have the...
Patients with multiple myeloma had a wide variety of responses to COVID-19 vaccines—in some cases, no detectable response at all—pointing to the need for antibody testing and precautions for these patients after vaccination, according to a study published by Van Oekelen et al in Cancer Cell. Mount...
In the phase Ib/II CARTITUDE-1 trial reported in The Lancet, Jesus G. Berdeja, MD, and colleagues found that ciltacabtagene autoleucel (cilta-cel), a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy with two B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA)-targeting single-domain antibodies, produced a high rate of...
The Brigham and Women’s hospital community mourns the loss of Francisco Marty, MD, of the Division of Infectious Diseases, who died April 8, 2021, after a tragic accident while hiking in the Dominican Republic. He was 53. A member of the Brigham community for more than 20 years, Dr. Marty is...
Matt D. Galsky, MD, of the Tisch Cancer Institute at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, discusses results from a phase II trial designed to test gemcitabine and cisplatin plus nivolumab as neoadjuvant therapy in patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer and to better predict benefit in...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Karyn A. Goodman, MD, and colleagues, mature results of the phase II CALGB 80803/Alliance trial indicated that treatment guided by early positron-emission tomography (PET) assessment of response to induction neoadjuvant chemotherapy improved...
Clinical trial data show that adjuvant imatinib improves recurrence-free survival as well as overall survival, when administered for at least 3 years, among patients who undergo a macroscopically complete resection of a primary gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST), Chandrajit P. Raut, MD, MSc,...
Peter Marks, MD, PhD, Director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), was born in Brooklyn, New York, near Sheepshead Bay—an area named for the Sheepshead, a fish that can no longer be found in the waters that frame the neighborhood....
Peter Marks, MD, PhD, Director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), was born in Brooklyn, New York, near Sheepshead Bay—an area named for the Sheepshead, a fish that can no longer be found in the waters that frame the neighborhood....
STAND UP TO CANCER® (SU2C) has awarded $6 million to a multi-institutional team headed by Mount Sinai researchers to collaborate with other New York institutions in an initiative that addresses disparities in cancer clinical trials participation by patients who are Black, indigenous, and people of...
Drug-related interstitial lung disease occurred in less than 16% of patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer following treatment with trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) at the approved dose of 5.4 mg/kg. In addition, the majority of these cases were classified as grade 1 or 2,...
The Robert Larner, MD, College of Medicine at The University of Vermont (UVM), in collaboration with the UVM Health Network and the UVM Medical Center, has announced that Randall F. Holcombe, MD, MBA, has been appointed Director of the UVM Cancer Center and Chief of the Division of Hematology and...
Perspectives on ARIEL4 were provided for The ASCO Post by the invited discussant Ursula Matulonis, MD, Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Chief of Gynecologic Oncology and the Brock Wilson Family Chair at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, and by Konstantin Zakashansky, MD,...
The novel targeted agent CPI-0610 enhanced responses to ruxolitinib in patients with myelofibrosis enrolled in the global phase II MANIFEST-2 trial, investigators reported at the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition.1,2 “Preliminary data demonstrate the...
Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute has appointed cancer researcher Ze’ev Ronai, PhD, as Director of its National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Cancer Center. Established in 1976, the Cancer Center is one of only seven NCI-designated Basic Laboratory Cancer Centers in the...
In a prospective cohort study reported in Clinical Imaging, researchers in the International Early Lung Cancer Action Program (I-ELCAP) identified emphysema in nearly one-quarter of patients undergoing baseline low-dose computed tomography (CT) screening for lung cancer. Three-quarters of those...
Immunotherapy is not only significantly less effective in patients with liver cancer who previously had nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, but it actually may fuel tumor growth, according to a study published by Pfister et al in Nature. Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis affects as many as 40 million people...
Most people with cancer who are infected with COVID-19 produce antibodies at a rate comparable to the rest of the population—but their ability to do so depends on the type of malignancy and the treatments they’ve received, according to a new study published by Thakkar et al in Nature Cancer. The...
A survey of more than 6,500 U.S. patients with blood cancer and survivors revealed that only half are very likely to get a COVID-19 vaccine, while one in three is either unlikely or unsure about it. The nationwide survey was a collaboration between The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS), Boston...
Fred R. Hirsch, MD, PhD, of Mount Sinai Medical Center, invites his colleagues to enroll their patients in a large prospective study, for which he serves as Principal Investigator. The study is searching for solutions for treating patients with lung cancer who also have the coronavirus, because so...
Type I collagen produced by cancer-associated fibroblasts may not promote cancer development, but instead, may play a protective role in controlling pancreatic cancer progression. This new understanding supports novel therapeutic approaches that bolster collagen rather than suppress it, according...
In case you missed these while attending the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, below is a sampler of highlights that were not included in our first round of meeting coverage. Many of these reports are on early-phase clinical trials of agents that may raise...
Invited discussant of KEYNOTE-598,1Yun Fan, MD, Director of Thoracic Tumor Center at Zhejiang Cancer Hospital in Hangzhou, China, suggested that patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with low PD-L1 expression and those with high tumor mutational burden may, in fact, derive the most...
B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA) is the most frequent target of immunotherapies in relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, but bispecific T-cell–engaging antibodies with novel targets are also achieving promising results. Studies presented at the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual...
Engineering chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells to overcome CD58 loss may be a way to boost responses in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) who do not respond to treatment with axicabtagene ciloleucel and other CAR T-cell therapies, according to a study presented at the 2020...
The world of hematologic malignancies continues to move forward at a robust pace despite the challenges of the COVID era. Although some areas of clinical trials and basic research suffered short-term stoppages or delays due to the pandemic, the studies presented at the 2020 American Society of...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Peter Hoskin, MD, and colleagues, 5-year follow-up of the phase III noninferiority FoRT trial showed that radiotherapy at 24 vs 4 Gy continued to be associated with superior freedom from local disease progression in patients with follicular or marginal zone...