INVITED STUDY discussant Michael J. Overman, MD, Professor of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, is a co-investigator on CheckMate 142, which led to the approval of another immunotherapy doublet—nivolumab plus ipilimumab—in patients...
THE COMBINATION of durvalumab and tremelimumab prolonged median overall survival by 2.5 months compared with best supportive care alone in patients with advanced treatment-refractory colorectal cancer. These findings, which are from the randomized phase II Canadian Cancer Trials Group (CCTG) CO.26...
IN 2017, ASCO issued its recommendations for addressing the oncology care needs of sexual and gender minority cancer survivors and the unique challenges they face.1 There are myriad reasons for cancer disparities in this population compared to heterosexual cisgender cancer survivors, including...
THERE IS little doubt that the U.S. health-care system is under assault from many directions.1 It is clear that the costs of health management are no longer sustainable, and the United States has one of the highest per capita health costs among the 36 member nations of the Organisation for...
ANDREW X. ZHU, MD, PhD, of Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School, noted that Prep-02/ JSAP-05 is the first study to show the value of neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with resectable pancreatic adenocarcinoma. However, the findings are applicable only to Asian ...
SEVERAL STUDIES presented at the 2019 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium evaluated the benefits of neoadjuvant treatment in patients with pancreatic cancer—and in patients deemed fully resectable, not just “borderline” resectable.1-3 Although the standard of care for resectable pancreatic ductal...
Session moderator Mark Crowther, MD, MSc, FRCPC, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Leo Pharma Chair in Thromboembolism Research at McMaster University, in Ontario, Canada, said that the results of the PAUSE study provide the most definitive evidence to date regarding how...
The largest study to date addressing the common problem of perioperative direct oral anticoagulant (DOAC) management has shown that patients with atrial fibrillation can safely stop taking their anticoagulant for 1 day before and after procedures with a low risk of bleeding and for 2 days before...
For the first time in more than 20 years, patients with sickle cell disease may have another treatment option to reduce painful vaso-occlusive crises, according to data presented at the 2018 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition.1 Results of the phase II, randomized,...
Moderator of the session, Mark Crowther, MD, MSc, FRCPC, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Leo Pharma Chair in Thromboembolism Research at McMaster University, in Ontario, Canada, said that the CASSINI study represents a major advance in the management and prevention of a very...
Results of a recent study suggest that direct oral anticoagulants can reduce the risk of thromboembolism in patients with cancer who are starting a new systemic therapy regimen, without significantly increasing the risk of major bleeding. Data presented at the 2018 ASH Annual Meeting &...
Initial findings from a first-in-human trial have provided proof of principle for a groundbreaking approach to gene therapy for sickle cell disease, according to data presented at the 2018 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition.1 Early results of genetic targeting of...
The results of a recent pilot study suggest that low-dose rituximab provides similar efficacy to standard-dose rituximab for the treatment of acquired thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP), a finding that could point to potential cost savings for patients in the nonlymphoma setting. According...
Pioneering hematologist J. Evan Sadler, MD, PhD, an expert in the study and treatment of blood-clotting disorders, died December 13, 2018, at his home in Clayton, Missouri, following a brief illness. He was 67. Dr. Sadler was the Director of Hematology, the Ira M. Lang Professor of Medicine, and a ...
In interviews with The ASCO Post, Kenneth Shain, MD, PhD, Director of the Myeloma Working Group at Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, Florida, and Vincent Rajkumar, MD, Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, commented on the findings of the MAIA trial. “The study shows that...
In patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma who are not eligible for stem cell transplantation, the addition of daratumumab to lenalidomide and dexamethasone significantly reduced the risk of death or disease progression by 44%, according to a late-breaking abstract presentation by Thierry...
Over the past week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted multiple Priority Reviews and accepted a supplemental new drug application: Priority Review for Entrectinib in NTRK Fusion–Positive Solid Tumors and Metastatic, ROS1-Positive NSCLC This week, the FDA accepted new drug...
A new report indicates that without a national effort to transform health-care delivery in the United States, many people will not benefit from the ongoing improvements in cancer care. These findings were published by Yabroff et al in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. The article is the fifth...
BOOKMARK Title: Severed Trust: Why American Medicine Hasn’t Been FixedAuthor: George D. Lundberg, MD, With James StaceyPublisher: Basic BooksPublication date: March 2001Price: $28.00, hardcover, 336 pages Pathologist George D. Lundberg, MD, served as Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of the American...
As reported by Tombal et al in The Lancet Oncology, treatment with enzalutamide was associated with clinically meaningful delays in pain progression, symptom worsening, and deterioration in functional status vs placebo in the phase III PROSPER trial in nonmetastatic, castration-resistant prostate...
Bacteria may play an important role in whether a woman develops cervical cancer, according to global health research published by scientists from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and the Ocean Road Cancer Institute in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in mBio. Part of a growing body of research...
As reported at the 2019 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium (Abstract 543) and in The New England Journal of Medicine, Rini et al found significant benefits in overall and progression-free survival with the combination of pembrolizumab plus axitinib vs sunitinib in the first-line treatment of advanced...
In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Stephanie B. Wheeler, MPH, PhD, of the Department of Health Policy and Management, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and colleagues found that black women reported nonadherence to endocrine therapy for breast cancer more ...
Mayo Clinic researchers have identified estradiol as a potential new treatment for a subset of women with triple-negative breast cancer. Their findings were published by Reese et al in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. “Triple-negative breast...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Fabrice Barlesi, MD, and colleagues, the phase III JAVELIN Lung 200 trial has shown no overall survival benefit with avelumab vs docetaxel in patients with platinum pretreated programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1)–positive advanced non–small cell lung cancer ...
Northwestern Medicine has received a $10 million gift to fund the creation of a new multidisciplinary institute dedicated to urologic cancers. The Polsky Urologic Cancer Institute of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University at Northwestern Memorial Hospital (Polsky ...
The first symptom of my multiple myeloma appeared 6 months before I received the official diagnosis. I began having some discomfort, not pain exactly, in my right hip, and developed a pronounced limp. I had recently left my medical practice to launch Global Girls Global Women, a nonprofit...
Women diagnosed with breast cancer at age 50 or younger had twice the risk of developing either osteoporosis or osteopenia after adjuvant treatment than did women of the same age who did not have cancer, according to a study led by researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,...
Younger women who have been treated for breast cancer have a higher risk for osteopenia and osteoporosis than do their cancer-free peers, and that risk seems to rise when treatment involves chemotherapy plus hormone therapy or aromatase inhibitors alone. Researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg...
The 2019 Szent-Györgyi Prize for Progress in Cancer Research will be awarded to Steven A. Rosenberg, MD, PhD, of the Center for Cancer Research (CCR) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The prize, awarded annually by the National Foundation for Cancer Research (NFCR), recognizes Dr. Rosenberg’s ...
Peter Huntsman, Chief Executive Officer of the Huntsman Foundation and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Huntsman Cancer Foundation (HCF), recently announced a $30 million gift from the family’s foundation. This donation allows Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah to...
On November 27, 2018, the American University of Beirut Medical Center (AUBMC) dedicated the conference room on its oncology floor in the name of faculty member Nagi El Saghir, MD, FACP, FASCO, Head of the Hematology/Oncology Division and Director of the Breast Center of Excellence at AUBMC. Dr....
Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP, FASCO, ASCO Chief Executive Officer, on the effects of lower drug costs on people with cancer: While ASCO supports efforts to control drug prices, we are keenly aware that optimal cancer care requires patient access to the most medically appropriate drug, at the most...
Physician wellness is emblazoned upfront in the news with attention-seeking headlines on a daily basis. The fact that one or two physicians commit suicide every day in this country sometimes elicits more of a sympathetic acknowledgment than a committed call to address it. Moreover, these sobering...
A study published in Nature Medicine found that an artificial intelligence program could distinguish between the histologic diagnosis of adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma.1 Experienced pathologists often struggle to differentiate these tumor types without confirmatory tests. The artificial ...
GUEST EDITOR Dr. Abraham is the Director of the Breast Oncology Program at Taussig Cancer Institute, and Professor of Medicine, Lerner College of Medicine, Cleveland Clinic. In this installment of the Living a Full Life series of articles, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, interviewed Norman E. ...
Bexarotene is a retinoid approved for the treatment of patients with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL) who have not responded to at least one previous treatment regimen. Hypertrigylceridemia is the most frequent adverse event related to treatment with bexarotene in CTCL. Even with prophylactic...
Annual screening for women aged 35–39 who have a family history of breast cancer may be highly effective in detecting tumors earlier, according to findings published by Evans et al in The Lancet’s online journal EClinicalMedicine. The FH02 trial found that annual mammograms for...
In a retrospective analysis reported in the Journal of Oncology Practice, Parikh et al found that more than one-quarter of hospitalizations in Medicare patients with prostate cancer were potentially avoidable. Study Details The study involved 99 evaluable patients in the Mount Sinai Health System ...
In the phase II DYNAMO trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Flinn et al found a response rate of nearly 50% with duvelisib, an oral dual inhibitor of phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)-γ and -δ, in indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma refractory to rituximab and either...
In the phase III RAINFALL trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Fuchs et al found no apparent benefit of the addition of the VEGFR-2 inhibitor ramucirumab to first-line cisplatin and fluoropyrimidine treatment in metastatic gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma. Study Details The...
Howard I. Scher, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses circulating tumor cell number as a transitional surrogate endpoint for survival in phase II trials on metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (Abstract 143).
Stefanie C. Fischer, MD, of Manchester Cancer Research Centre and The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, discusses an international retrospective analysis of the rare clinical scenario of men relapsing after adjuvant treatment with bleomycin/etoposide/cisplatin for clinical stage I nonseminoma...
Laurence Albiges, MD, PhD, of Gustave Roussy, discusses findings on the safety and efficacy of nivolumab used in a “real world” prospective study on metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC). This research was conducted after nivolumab was approved for the treatment of mRCC following failure of one or ...
Brian C. Baumann, MD, of Washington University School of Medicine, discusses phase III study findings on adjuvant sequential chemotherapy plus radiotherapy vs adjuvant radiotherapy alone for locally advanced bladder cancer after radical cystectomy (Abstract 351).
Nicholas J. van As, MD, of The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, discusses an analysis of acute toxicity in the PACE-B study, which compared stereotactic body radiotherapy with conventionally fractionated or moderately hypofractionated external-beam radiotherapy for localized prostate cancer...
Scientists have identified genetic variations in a fourth gene that are associated with an increased risk of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in Hispanic children. These findings were published by Qian et al in Blood. The gene is ERG, a transcription factor that is also...
The TIVO-3 trial was conducted to confirm progression-free survival results from the TIVO-1 trial, which found an improvement in median progression-free survival in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma treated with tivozanib vs sorafenib. Findings from TIVO-3 were presented by...
In a patient-level meta-analysis reported in The Lancet, the Early Breast Cancer Trialists’ Collaborative Group (EBCTCG) found that an increased dose intensity of adjuvant taxane and anthracycline chemotherapy in early breast cancer was associated with a decreased risk of recurrence and death ...
In a phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Wen et al found minimal activity of the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) inhibitor buparlisib in patients with recurrent glioblastoma with PI3K pathway activation. The study included 2 cohorts. In cohort 1, 14 evaluable patients ...