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...
For patients with cancer who already have compromised immune systems, what may seem like a minor medical issue—ie, fever, dehydration, viral infection—can rapidly escalate into an emergency situation requiring care from a medical team familiar with managing the side effects of cancer treatment....
Approximately 12% of women in the United States will develop breast cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. That’s more than 30,000 in Tucson alone, 2,500 of whom are estimated to have a genetic risk factor for cancer. In response to this growing concern, The Breast Center at Carondelet...
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) Center for Global Health announced grants that will support the development and validation of low-cost, portable technologies. These technologies have the potential to improve early detection, diagnosis, and noninvasive or minimally invasive treatment of several...
Fifteen years ago, David Fishman, MD, launched the National Ovarian Cancer Early Detection Program as part of the National Cancer Institute’s Early Detection Research Network. The goal of the research effort was to develop methods to accurately detect ovarian cancer while it was still confined to...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) is accepting submissions of ideas for the Stand Up To Cancer–Ovarian Cancer Research Fund–Ovarian Cancer National Alliance–National Ovarian Cancer Coalition (SU2C-OCRF-OCNA-NOCC) Translational Research Dream Team Grant that will offer up to $6...
The goal of clinical, translational, and basic research is, in the end, the betterment of life on earth. Advances in basic and clinical science ultimately should lead to information that, in turn, enables clinicians to make better treatment decisions for individual patients in order to improve...
Fourteen distinguished ASCO members have been selected by the ASCO Nominating Committee as candidates for open leadership positions within the Society for the 2015 ASCO Election. Biographical information and interviews with each candidate, as well as instructions for casting a proxy ballot, will be ...
The investigators and sponsors of the phase III REVEL trial should be congratulated and probably commiserated. In this large study, reported by Garon and colleagues in The Lancet and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, 1,253 patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) were...
In the phase III REVEL trial reported in Lancet, Edward B. Garon, MD, of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA/Translational Research in Oncology–US Network, Los Angeles, and colleagues found that the addition of the antiangiogenic vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR)-2...
CancerCare, a leading national nonprofit organization providing free, professional support services to anyone affected by cancer, has received a $1.5 million grant to assist people diagnosed with breast cancer. The grant will support a CancerCare program in partnership with Susan G. Komen called...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted Orphan Drug Designations to aldoxorubicin in three indications: glioblastoma multiforme, small cell lung cancer, and ovarian cancer. Aldoxorubicin combines doxorubicin with a novel single-molecule linker that binds directly and specifically to...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted orphan drug designation to MabVax Therapeutics’ vaccine for the treatment of relapsed or recurrent high-risk neuroblastoma in remission or with limited residual disease after best available treatment. The bivalent vaccine is intended to elicit ...
Aron Goldhirsch, MD, was presented with the 2014 Gianni Bonadonna Breast Cancer Award and Lecture during the 2014 Breast Cancer Symposium, held recently in San Francisco. Dr. Goldhirsch is Director of the Multidisciplinary Program of Senology and Deputy Scientific Director at the European Institute ...
At the Breast Cancer Symposium, William M. Sikov, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, gave a talk on the use of pathologic complete response in the clinic and summarized the CTNeoBC findings for The ASCO Post. “The...
Women who achieve a pathologic complete response (pCR) to neoadjuvant chemotherapy rarely have local or regional recurrence of breast cancer, but this largely depends on tumor subtype, which remained an independent predictor of locoregional recurrence when pathologic response was taken into account ...
Subcutaneous implants containing testosterone in combination with a low dose of anastrozole can relieve menopausal symptoms in breast cancer survivors, according to research presented at the 2014 ASCO Breast Cancer Symposium.1 “Menopausal symptoms can be quite severe in breast cancer survivors in...
Harold Burstein, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, spoke to The ASCO Post about the multidisciplinary discussion of margin assessment during the 2014 Breast Cancer Symposium. Should Oncologists Be Concerned? “There is a real art to being a good...
Margaret Foti, PhD, MD (hc), Chief Executive Officer of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), received the Ellen V. Sigal Advocacy Leadership Award from the national advocacy organization Friends of Cancer Research (Friends) at its 18th Annual Cancer Leadership Awards Reception held...
Robert S. Miller, MD, FACP, FASCO, Assistant Professor of Oncology and Oncology Medical Information Officer at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, has been named Medical Director of the Institute for Quality (iQ) of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). Dr....
The bane of treating non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with druggable mutations has been the development of resistance to targeted agents. New compounds are meeting the challenge of treating resistant disease, according to Fadlo R. Khuri, MD, FACP, Professor and Chair of Hematology and...
Navidea Biopharmaceuticals, Inc, recently announced that technetium 99m tilmanocept (Lymphoseek Injection) has been granted Orphan Drug Designation by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for use in sentinel lymph node detection in patients with cancer of the head and neck. The designation ...
Antibody-drug conjugates are being tested against several types of lymphomas and for some of these agents, “activity is quite impressive,” Andrew M. Evens, DO, MSc, reported at the recent Best of ASCO meeting in Chicago. Dr. Evens, Professor of Medicine, Chief, Division of Hematology/Oncology, and...
Survivors of non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who never smoked or who are former smokers at the time of diagnosis have a lower risk of developing secondary primary lung cancers compared to those who are current smokers, suggesting that increased tobacco exposure is associated with a higher risk...
Optimal duration of androgen-deprivation therapy as part of primary therapy for prostate cancer continues to be an important question. Two well-conducted studies reported recently at the 56th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) provide data that can help inform...
I swear by Apollo the physician, and Asclepius, and Hygieia and Panacea and all the gods and goddesses as my witnesses, that, according to my ability and judgement, I will keep this Oath and this contract: To hold him who taught me this art equally dear to me as my parents, to be a partner in life...
On the face of it, the idea that a code of professional conduct dating to the ancient Iron Age could possibly retain any relevance in the current era of “Big Data,” religious and cultural pluralism, trillion-dollar government budgets, and nanotechnology seems preposterous. Yet the well-publicized...