In just 5 years since its launch in 2014, CancerLinQ®, ASCO’s big-data, rapid-learning, health information technology platform, has grown from 37 vanguard oncology practices to 58 participating practices in 2016 to 100 diverse oncology practices nationwide this year. CancerLinQ...
For recurrent, previously irradiated brain tumors, innovative treatment with surgically targeted brachytherapy yielded good local control and overall survival, as compared to historic controls, neurosurgeons reported at the 2019 Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Association of Neurological...
In a retrospective analysis published in European Urology, Sandler et al examined the protocol for treating aggressive prostate cancer. Researchers aimed to study the impact of whole-pelvis radiation on men with Gleason grade 5 disease who had been treated with external-beam radiotherapy with...
Colorectal cancer survivors’ risk for heart attack—five times that of the average person—may be linked to the amount of fat stored within the abdomen and abdominal muscles, not to body mass index (BMI), according to a new study of 2,800 colon cancer survivor health outcomes...
In the phase III IMmotion151 trial reported in The Lancet, Rini et al found that atezolizumab plus bevacizumab prolonged progression-free survival vs sunitinib in patients with previously untreated, programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1)-positive, metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Study Details...
In the phase III OPTIMISMM trial, reported by Richardson et al in The Lancet Oncology, researchers found that the addition of pomalidomide to bortezomib/dexamethasone improved progression-free survival in relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma previously treated with lenalidomide. Study Details...
ASCO and the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) hosted a reception on Capitol Hill for Members of Congress and their staff to underscore the two organizations’ shared policy priorities to improve research and cancer care delivery for patients and survivors. During the...
ASCO recently announced a new task force aimed at reducing disparities and improving outcomes for patients and survivors of cancer who live in rural communities. The new Rural Cancer Care Task Force will identify opportunities to close the rural cancer care gap and implement strategies to improve...
The Cancer.Net blog (accessible at cancer.net/blog) features daily posts covering research highlighted at the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting. Patients and caregivers can learn what this research means for their care and treatment. The Cancer.Net blog also offers continuing coverage from the ASCO Annual...
Join the discussion: Use #ASCO19 on Twitter and Instagram to follow and participate in conversations about the ASCO Annual Meeting in real time. During last year’s ASCO Annual Meeting, more than 17,000 health-care professionals, researchers, news outlets, patients, and advocates sent more than...
The work of nine researchers who have previously received funding from Conquer Cancer is featured in ASCO’s Clinical Cancer Advances 2019. Visit CONQUER.ORG/CCA for more details. In two separate trials, Conquer Cancer–supported investigators produced research results that improved treatment for...
Two of the nation’s leading lung cancer organizations—the Bonnie J. Addario Lung Cancer Foundation (ALCF) and the Lung Cancer Alliance (LCA)—announced in April their merger to form the GO2 Foundation for Lung Cancer. The new organization, which has offices in Washington, DC, and the San Francisco...
Improve the care your practice provides by participating in ASCO’s wide array of quality improvement programs. ASCO’s Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI®) is an oncologist-led, practice-based quality assessment program designed to promote excellence in cancer care by helping practices...
A must-attend event in cancer care, the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting will bring thousands of oncology professionals from around the world to Chicago. The theme for this year’s meeting, selected by 2018–2019 ASCO President Monica M. Bertagnolli, MD, FACS, FASCO, sets an exciting tone for the...
Mary Beckerle, PhD, Chief Executive Officer at Huntsman Cancer Institute and Professor of Biology and Oncological Sciences, University of Utah, and Martin McMahon, PhD, Huntsman Cancer Institute’s Senior Director of Pre-Clinical Translation and Professor of Dermatology, have been appointed to...
The University of Southern California (USC) Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center has launched a study to determine how financial assistance for costs associated with clinical trial participation might increase enrollment, particularly among low-income patients and racial and ethnic minorities. The...
Marcie L. Riches, MD, MS, Director of Clinical Research and Data Quality and Bone Marrow Transplant Clinic Medical Director, and Clinical Associate Chief of Hematology/Oncology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, commented on the study of tabelecleucel for The ASCO Post. At the...
An “off-the-shelf” allogeneic T-cell product, tabelecleucel, may effectively treat patients who develop Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-associated posttransplant lymphoproliferative disorder with central nervous system (CNS) involvement, researchers from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center reported at...
In a clinical practice guideline released April 15, an ASCO Expert Panel outlined the latest recommendations for the duration of adjuvant chemotherapy with a fluoropyrimidine and oxaliplatin for patients with completely resected stage III colon cancer.1 New recommendations were based on the results ...
ASCO and the American Society of Hematology (ASH) have released an update to existing guidelines for use of erythropoiesis-stimulating agents to manage anemia in patients with cancer.1 “The current update aims to increase awareness of recent developments regarding the use of...
In a Japanese phase I trial reported by Ueno et al in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology, researchers found nivolumab showed activity and had a manageable safety profile in patients with unresectable or recurrent biliary tract cancer. Methods The open-label phase I trial was conducted...
Julie Margenthaler, MD, FACS, Professor of Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine and a breast surgeon at Siteman Cancer Center, St. Louis, underscored the “overall excellent outcomes” being achieved with chemotherapy and HER2-targeted therapy for patients with HER2-positive breast...
The sequencing of trastuzumab administration with chemotherapy in the neoadjuvant setting seems to have no effect on outcomes for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer, according to data presented at the 2019 Society of Surgical Oncology Annual Cancer Symposium.1 The results of a phase III...
Julie Margenthaler, MD, FACS, Professor of Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine and a breast surgeon at Siteman Cancer Center, St. Louis, emphasized that these data confirm the very low risk of locoregional recurrence after mastectomy for pure ductal carcinoma in situ and ductal...
Young age appears to be a risk factor for locoregional recurrence after mastectomy for ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) with or without microinvasion, according to data presented at the 2019 Society of Surgical Oncology Annual Cancer Symposium.1 The retrospective analysis of more than 3,000 cases...
Susan G. Komen recently announced new organizational advisory roles for five breast cancer oncologists. The new appointees will join the group of breast cancer researchers, clinicians, and advocates who help guide the organization’s work, particularly through the organization’s $988 million...
The discovery of trastuzumab has been revolutionary in the treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer, both in the metastatic and early-stage settings.1-6 This cannot be disputed. In the early-stage setting, the addition of trastuzumab to standard chemotherapy has led to a 50% gain in...
In the phase III KATHERINE trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine,1Gunter von Minckwitz, MD, of the German Breast Group, Neu-Isenburg, and colleagues found that adjuvant treatment with the antibody-drug conjugate trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) improved invasive disease–free survival...
Results from a study published by Cykert et al in The Journal of the National Medical Association show that a pragmatic system-based intervention within cancer treatment centers can nearly eliminate existing disparities in treatment and outcomes for black patients with early-stage...
On May 14, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved avelumab (Bavencio) in combination with axitinib (Inlyta) for the first-line treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC). This is the first FDA approval for an anti–programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) therapy as...
On May 3, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved ado-trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1; Kadcyla) for the adjuvant treatment of patients with HER2-positive early breast cancer who have residual invasive disease after neoadjuvant taxane- and trastuzumab-based treatment. Patients should be...
Scientists have identified a genetic mutation in the tumors of some men with prostate cancer that is linked to very poor survival, and which could be used to help select certain patients for more intensive treatment. These findings were published by Abida et al in the Proceedings of the...
“MYSTIC is the second phase III trial to compare a first-line immune checkpoint inhibitor with platinum that failed to meet the primary endpoint. However, both MYSTIC and CheckMate 026 identified patients who benefited from an immune checkpoint inhibitor based on tumor mutational burden,”...
The search for biomarkers to identify patients who are likely to respond to immunotherapy continues. According to biomarker tissue and blood analysis of patients enrolled in the phase III MYSTIC trial, high tumor mutational burden in both tissue and blood identified patients with non–small cell...
In a phase III trial (TRINOVA-3/ENGOT-ov2/GOG-3001) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Vergote et al found that addition of the antiangiogenic agent trebananib to carboplatin/paclitaxel did not improve progression-free survival in first-line treatment of advanced ovarian cancer. Trebananib is a...
In a Norwegian study (To-Be) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Hofvind et al found that digital breast tomosynthesis (including synthetic 2D mammograms) did not perform better than standard digital mammography in a population-based breast cancer screening program. Study Details BreastScreen Norway ...
The 24th Annual Conference of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) was held this past March in Orlando, Florida. Updates to a number of Clinical Practice Guidelines (NCCN Guidelines®) were reported, including three relevant to the field of genitourinary oncology: kidney cancer,...
THE COMBINATION of lenvatinib plus pembrolizumab has demonstrated antitumor activity in patients with advanced urothelial cancer, including patients receiving later-line treatment. Results of a phase Ib/II trial showed an objective response rate of 25% and a median progression-free survival of 5.4...
PRELIMINARY EVIDENCE suggests that the antibody-drug conjugate sacituzumab govitecan is active in patients previously treated with chemotherapy or checkpoint inhibitor therapy for metastatic urothelial cancer. These results from a phase I/II basket study of this agent were presented at the 2019...
A phase III Egyptian trial presented by Mohamad S. Zaghloul, MD, et al at the 2019 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium focused on the benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy in patients with locally advanced bladder cancer treated with postoperative radiotherapy.1 Researchers compared postoperative...
May 14, 2019: Avelumab (Bavencio) plus axitinib (Inlyta) for the first-line treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC). April 19, 2019: Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) plus axitinib (Inlyta) for the first-line treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC). April 12,...
Adding enzalutamide to androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) significantly prolonged radiographic progression-free survival in men with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer, reducing the risk of disease progression or death by 61% compared with ADT plus placebo, according to the results of the ...
Efrat Dotan, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Hematology/Oncology, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, commented on this study. “This abstract presents the interim analysis of a phase II study evaluating the use of maintenance therapy with the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase PARP inhibitor...
The CARMENA trial presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, published simultaneously in The New England Journal of Medicine,1,2 and reported in this supplement to The ASCO Post, evaluated the role of nephrectomy in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Formal discussant of the trial,...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Karim Fizazi, MD, PhD, and colleagues, the final overall survival analysis in the phase III LATITUDE trial has shown a significant benefit with the addition of abiraterone acetate plus prednisone to androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) in newly diagnosed,...
In a trial with a modified primary endpoint due to slow accrual reported in JAMA Oncology,1 Axel Bex, MD, PhD, and colleagues found that deferred cytoreductive nephrectomy after sunitinib did not improve the 28-week progression-free rate vs immediate nephrectomy followed by sunitinib in patients...
Cabozantinib, a kinase inhibitor, is approved in metastatic renal cell carcinoma on the basis of studies in clear cell histology. Its activity in non–clear cell renal cell carcinoma is poorly defined. In a retrospective cohort study, Nieves Martinez Chanzá, MD, and colleagues reported that...
The poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor rucaparib holds promise as maintenance therapy for advanced, platinum-sensitive, BRCA- or PALB2-mutated pancreatic cancer, according to an interim analysis of an ongoing phase II clinical trial presented at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American...
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 Rini et al...
IN A RETROSPECTIVE analysis of median overall survival from the phase III METEOR trial,1 Ignacio Duran, MD, PhD, and colleagues sought to determine whether early tumor shrinkage following therapy with cabozantinib or everolimus could be an early indicator of prognosis for patients with...