The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has announced a new Radiation Oncology Practice Assessment (ROPA) program to leverage recent advances in information technology to improve radiation therapy cancer care for our nation’s veterans. VA is working with the American Society for Radiation Oncology...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the “Art of Oncology” as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO). These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
JANUARY 2016 4th AACR-IASLC International Joint Conference: Lung Cancer Translational ScienceJanuary 4-7 • San Diego, CaliforniaFor more information: http://www.aacr.org/Meetings/Pages/MeetingDetail.aspx?EventItemID=74#.VbbijqTbJjo Genitourinary Cancers SymposiumJanuary 7-9 • San Francisco,...
West Cancer Center celebrated the grand opening of its East Campus location with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on November 17th. Located at 7945 Wolf River Boulevard in Memphis, Tennessee, the 123,000 square foot facility combines multispecialty services including medical, surgical, diagnostic, and...
John Andrew “Drew” Ridge, MD, PhD, FACS, Chief of Head and Neck Surgery and Louis Della Penna Family Chair in Head and Neck Oncology at Fox Chase Cancer Center–Temple Health, has been elected President of the Medical Staff at the Center. In his new role, Dr. Ridge will work with President and CEO...
Studies demonstrate that patients with advanced cancer who are not actively engaged in planning their end-of-life care often receive overly aggressive, physically taxing, costly and unnecessary treatment toward life’s end. Recent findings indicate that African Americans appear to be more apt to...
Bookmark Title: The Laws of Medicine: Field Notes From an Uncertain Science Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee Publisher: TED Books/Simon & Schuster Publication date: October 13, 2015 Price: $16.99; hardcover, 96 pages The Emperor of All Maladies, written by the Indian-born American oncologist...
The 15th Annual Conference of the International Society of Geriatric Oncology (SIOG) took place in Prague, Czech Republic, over 3 days (November 12–14, 2015). At the heart of the meeting were presentations on supportive care, comprehensive geriatric assessment and treatment—so that we fully...
Suleika Jaouad was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome and acute myeloid leukemia at age 22, shortly after her graduation from Princeton University. She is a columnist for The New York Times Well blog, “Life Interrupted,” which chronicles her journey as a young woman living with cancer. Ms....
The Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI) is developing a marketing campaign to highlight the value of academic cancer centers to their communities and the nation. Called “The Academic Difference,” the 2-year campaign is the initiative of AACI President George J. Weiner, MD, Director of...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) named Marilena Ciciarello, PhD, of the University of Bologna, the inaugural recipient of the ASH Giuseppe Bigi Memorial Award for Achievement in Hematopoiesis and Stem Cells for her research on the role of stem cells in leukemia initiation and progression....
The first class of National Cancer Institute (NCI) Outstanding Investigator Award recipients showcases the cutting edge of oncologic research and the 43 investigators behind it. NCI’s Outstanding Investigator Award supports accomplished leaders in cancer research, who are providing significant...
Older patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) have high relapse rates after induction chemotherapy, low survival rates, and fewer treatment options compared with younger patients. One of the options for both younger and older patients is hematopoietic cell transplantation, but relatively few...
Bookmark Title: Curing Medicare: One Doctor’s View of How Our Health Care System Is Failing the Elderly and How to Fix It Author: Andy Lazris, MD Publisher: CreateSpace Publication date: September 13, 2014 Price: $13.75; paperback, 290 pages Several years ago I decided to write a book about...
ASCO’s Leadership Development Program (LDP) offers mid-career oncologists the opportunity to learn valuable leadership skills from ASCO’s exceptional leaders and participate in networking and mentoring opportunities. Participants work on strategy development, interpersonal effectiveness and...
The Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), passed earlier this year, repealed the fundamentally flawed Sustainable Growth Rate formula and introduced significant changes in how Medicare will pay oncologists for the care they provide in the coming years. The new law will be...
Sometimes, cancer treatments that initially appear promising begin to lose their effectiveness. This is due to the ability diseases like cancer have to develop resistance to treatments over time and, essentially, outsmart them. But what if there were ways to ensure this didn’t happen? What if...
The concept of using activation of the innate immune system and an inflammatory response against a bacterial component to instigate an antitumor response was studied in the 1960s, which led to the development of intravesical bacillus Calmette-Guérin, now used in the treatment of superficial bladder ...
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) has become home to The Cancer Imaging Archive of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), with the transfer to UAMS of more than 40 terabytes of data from the archive’s former home at Washington University in St. Louis. Cancer researchers can use...
In the current climate of rising health-care costs, particularly in the field of oncology, clinical guidelines provide a crucial tool to guide practitioners in evidence-based care and to improve the quality and consistency of care.1 The ASCO review and endorsement of the American College of Chest...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology,1 ASCO has endorsed the current American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) guideline on treatment of small cell lung cancer (SCLC), released in 2013.2 After review of evidence from an updated literature search covering 2011 to March 2015, an ASCO...
The optimal management strategy for ductal carcinoma in situ has become increasingly controversial with respect to potential overdiagnosis and overtreatment. Much of the controversy for ductal carcinoma in situ stems from its exceptional breast cancer–specific survival, which approaches close to...
Over 10 years ago, we welcomed a new approach to cancer surgery when the 2004 COST trial demonstrated the benefits of laparoscopic compared with open surgery for colon cancer. This randomized trial of 872 patients showed improved perioperative recovery with laparoscopic colectomy without...
Two phase III trials, reported in JAMA by James Fleshman, MD, of Baylor University Medical Center, Dallas, and colleagues1 and Andrew R. Stevenson, MBBS, FRACS, of the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, and colleagues,2 failed to show noninferiority of surgical outcome for laparoscopic...
A new template published by the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) standardizes and streamlines the creation of patient-focused plans for long-term cancer survivor care following radiation therapy. As the number of cancer patients and survivors in the United States continues to...
V. Craig Jordan, OBE, PhD, DSc, FMedSci, a breast cancer research pioneer known for his development of the therapeutic drug tamoxifen, has been named a recipient of the Sir James Black Award from the British Pharmacological Society. Dr. Jordan, Professor in the Department of Breast Medical...
Launched by ASCO in 2005 to provide oncologists with original research on the delivery of high-quality cancer care, the Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP) enters its 11th year with a new look and feel. Beginning in January 2016, JOP will be copublished by ASCO and Harborside Press, the publisher of ...
On November 17, Friends of Cancer Research (FOCR) released a white paper report, Enhancing Use of Patient-Centered Data in Regulatory Decision Making.1 The contents of that paper are summarized below. Improving Patient Input Many stakeholders agree that to ensure truly transformational therapies,...
Cancer clinical trials in three distinct phases, as they have been conducted for decades, are probably no longer the best way to bring a drug or biologic agent to market. This was the consensus of three panels at the 8th Annual Conference on Clinical Cancer Research convened by Friends of Cancer...
Patients who have been treated for breast cancer may overestimate the value of follow-up testing and may expect—or even ask for—more testing than recommended, Harold J. Burstein, MD, PhD, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, Boston, told participants at the Lynn Sage...
Partnering endocrine therapy with new targeted agents for women with estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer “changes the nature of endocrine therapy from something easily tolerated, with not a lot that you have to do as physicians to monitor it,” William J. Gradishar, MD, of the Robert H. Lurie...
City of Hope recently announced the following new staff additions. Bart O. Roep, PhD Internationally recognized immunologist Bart O. Roep, PhD, has joined City of Hope as Chair of the Department of Diabetes Immunology within the Diabetes & Metabolism Research Institute. An expert in the...
Carlos Rodriguez-Galindo, MD, an international leader in pediatric solid tumor research, is joining St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to head the International Outreach Program. Dr. Rodriguez-Galindo will serve as International Outreach Program Director and an executive vice president. He will...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On November 24, 2015, nivolumab (Opdivo) was approved for use as...
A new guidance statement from ASCO and the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) could potentially lead to more standardized primary palliative care delivery across oncology settings, according to Kathleen E. Bickel, MD, MPhil, who presented the study findings at the 2015...
Both the concept of an antibody-drug conjugate combined with less-intensive chemotherapy and the actual regimen used in this study are exciting, according to Nikolai Podoltsev, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Division of Hematology, Yale University Medical Center, New Haven, Connecticut. “This has...
Frontline treatment with the antibody-drug conjugate inotuzumab ozogamicin plus deintensified chemotherapy is a promising option for older patients with Philadelphia chromosome–negative acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). Phase II results suggest that this combination has the ability to improve...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On November 23, 2015, nivolumab (Opdivo) was approved for use in...
Putting this trial into context, Mark J. Levis, MD, of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, said: “Six different FLT3 inhibitors have advanced into phase III trials. Midostaurin in the only one that has made it to the ‘station.’” “The fact that midostaurin is...
Upfront treatment with midostaurin added to standard chemotherapy improved survival compared with placebo plus chemotherapy in high-risk patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) characterized by FLT3 mutations. No new drugs have been approved for AML since 1990, and midostaurin is the first...
First-line treatment with the Bruton’s tyrosine kinase inhibitor ibrutinib (Imbruvica) significantly reduced the risk of dying or disease progression compared with chlorambucil (Leukeran) in older treatment-naive patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) in the RESONATE-2 trial. At the time...
There is good news about denosumab (Prolia). The primary analysis of the ABCSG-18 trial showed that adjuvant denosumab (given at low doses) reduces the risk of clinical fracture by 50% in postmenopausal women with early breast cancer who are taking an aromatase inhibitor.1 More good news is that...
Treatment with capecitabine increased disease-free and overall survival in breast cancer patients with residual disease after neoadjuvant chemotherapy, according to a study reported by researchers from Japan and Korea at the 2015 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.1 “It has been unclear whether...
As health-care providers, we have an obligation and a responsibility not only to care for our patients, but also to educate them—and the general public—about their cancer risk and ways to reduce or prevent it. We are living in the golden era of cancer prevention and treatment, made possible by...
The anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody daratumumab (Darzalex) took center stage among multiple myeloma studies presented at the 57th American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition. In relapsed/refractory patients, daratumumab plus lenalidomide (Revlimid)/dexamethasone yielded an 81%...
Breast cancer afflicts 1 in 8 women in their lifetime, and 1 in 25 die from this disease. Although a number of randomized trials have demonstrated the clear benefits of mammography screening in women up to age 74 on reducing mortality, data are sparse in women over age 74, especially among...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Killelea et al found that chemotherapy, particularly neoadjuvant chemotherapy, was more frequently given to black, Hispanic, and Asian women vs white women with stage I to III breast cancer, with the difference largely attributable to more...
Rapidly dividing cells rely on an enzyme called Dicer to help them repair the DNA damage that occurs as they make mistakes in copying their genetic material over and over for new cells. Researchers have built on the discovery of Dicer’s role in fixing DNA damage to uncover a new potential...
A gene that is known to suppress the growth and spread of many types of cancer has the opposite effect in some forms of colorectal cancer, University of Missouri (MU) School of Medicine researchers have found. It is a finding that may lay the foundation for new colorectal cancer treatments. Results ...
Long travel distances continue to be a significant obstacle to breast reconstruction after mastectomy for breast cancer, according to a study published by Abornoz et al in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. “While greater patient awareness and insurance coverage have contributed to greater...