Immunotherapeutics that target human papillomavirus (HPV) genotype 16 appear to boost the activity of pembrolizumab in advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. Two examples were presented in posters at the 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting.1,2 The phase II VERSATILE-002 trial evaluated PDS0101,...
The first-in-class bifunctional antibody BCA101—which inhibits both the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β)—given with the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab, is showing activity and tolerability in recurrent or metastatic head and neck...
In patients with relapsed or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, a regimen of the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab plus carboplatin and paclitaxel, evaluated in the phase IV KEYNOTE-B10 trial, demonstrated antitumor activity, with a good safety profile, investigators reported ...
A challenging patient population with advanced head and neck cancer may have a new treatment option, according to data presented during the 2022 Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Annual Meeting.1 Results from Cohort 17 of the COSMIC-021 study showed that the combination of the kinase...
The ASCO Post asked for comment from Glenn J. Hanna, MD, Director of the Center for Salivary and Rare Head and Neck Cancers, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Hanna said it is important to put the findings of KEYNOTE-4121 into context...
Pembrolizumab plus chemoradiation therapy failed to demonstrate a statistically significant improvement in event-free survival vs chemoradiation therapy alone in patients with locally advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, but favorable numerical trends were demonstrated, according to...
This is Part 3 of New Directions in Metastatic Colorectal Cancer, a three-part video roundtable series. Scroll down to watch the other videos from this Roundtable. In this video, Drs. Michael Overman, Laura Goff, and Katrina Pedersen discuss later-line treatment options for metastatic colorectal...
In a phase III study (ENGOT-EN5/GOG-3055/SIENDO) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Ignace B. Vergote, MD, PhD, and colleagues found that a progression-free survival benefit with maintenance selinexor vs placebo after first-line chemotherapy in patients with advanced or recurrent...
In a phase I/II trial (CC-92480-MM-001) reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Paul G. Richardson, MD, and colleagues found that the combination of the novel cereblon E3 ubiquitin ligase modulator mezigdomide and dexamethasone showed activity in heavily pretreated patients with relapsed...
A modified adenocarcinoma classification approach may enhance reproducibility and may be an improvement on the existing World Health Organization (WHO) classification system, according to findings presented by Thunnissen et al at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC)...
In the Chinese phase III NOTABLE trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Shukui Qin, MD, and colleagues examined the addition of the EGFR inhibitor nimotuzumab to gemcitabine in patients with KRAS wild-type locally advanced or metastatic pancreatic cancer. Study Details In the...
On September 11, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved motixafortide (Aphexda) in combination with filgrastim to mobilize hematopoietic stem cells to the peripheral blood for collection and subsequent autologous transplantation in patients with multiple myeloma. Motixafortide is...
Extended pleurectomy decortication combined with chemotherapy was associated with worse survival outcomes, a higher incidence of serious adverse events, and a diminished quality of life in patients with resectable mesothelioma compared with platinum and pemetrexed chemotherapy alone, according to...
ASCO has updated a guideline on the practical assessment and management of age-associated vulnerabilities in older patients receiving systemic cancer therapy.1 Among the updates, the guideline adds more detail to domains that should be evaluated in geriatric assessments (GAs) and expands patient...
Lung cancer, both small cell and non–small cell, is the second most common cancer in both men and women in the United States, with about 238,340 new cases diagnosed each year, and the leading cause of cancer-related mortality, accounting for more than 127,000 deaths annually.1 Lung cancer in...
Long ago, as an ethical alternative to military service, I joined the National Cancer Institute’s Yellow Beret Program, and was assigned to its Division of Cancer Treatment (Dr. Vince DeVita) Cancer Therapy Development Branch (Dr. Steve Carter). This program reviewed and rejected or approved all...
On July 20, 2023, quizartinib was approved for use with standard cytarabine and anthracycline induction and cytarabine consolidation and as maintenance monotherapy following consolidation chemotherapy in adults with newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia that is FLT3 internal tandem duplication...
Novel treatments beyond the current chemoimmunotherapies are offering more treatment options in small cell lung cancer (SCLC), though real breakthroughs remain elusive, according to Ticiana Leal, MD, Associate Professor in the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology, Emory University School...
The first-in-class bifunctional antibody BCA101—which inhibits both the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-β)—given with the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab, is showing activity and tolerability in recurrent or metastatic head and neck...
Two phase III trials presented at the 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting explored treatments under study for patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). In an exploratory analysis of the CodeBreaK 200 trial, the KRAS inhibitor sotorasib was compared with docetaxel chemotherapy in subsets of patients...
In patients with melanoma who are undergoing neoadjuvant therapy with immune checkpoint blockade, response to treatment may guide the intensity of additional treatment, according to a retrospective analysis of two major trials presented by Irene L.M. Reijers, an MD/PhD candidate in the Christian...
Two new bispecific antibodies—teclistamab and talquetamab—have been shown to be active in relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma when used in combination, including in patients with extramedullary disease, without compounding toxicity. Results of two clinical trials with these two agents were...
Tumor treating fields (TTF) therapy in combination with immune checkpoint inhibition improved overall survival in the pretreated, primarily immunotherapy-naive setting in metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to findings from the phase III LUNAR study. These results were...
In patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), gut microbiome characteristics differed between those who had durable responses to immunotherapy and those who did not, according to a retrospective study presented at the 2023 ASCO Breakthrough meeting.1 The presence of Clostridium...
Postoperative molecular residual disease detected by circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) at 4 weeks after resection has emerged as the strongest prognostic risk factor for disease-free survival in patients with resected colorectal cancer. This finding was observed regardless of BRAF V600E status and...
It seems that exercise is good for almost everything, including prostate cancer. In fact, exercise had a positive effect on sexual function and enjoyment in men with prostate cancer, according to a recent study presented at the 2023 ASCO Breakthrough meeting by lead study author Daniel Galvão, PhD, ...
After a year of hard work preparing a strong abstract for the prestigious 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting, I finally received an acceptance letter from the scientific committee. I was overjoyed to see the efforts of our multinational team being rewarded. A few moments later, I received the decision...
Thomas J. Herzog, MD, took office as President of the GOG Foundation (GOG-F, formerly the Gynecologic Oncology Group), Inc, on July 20, 2023, at the NRG Oncology Summer Meeting. Former GOG-F President, Larry J. Copeland, MD, passed the presidential gavel to Dr. Herzog at the GOG-F Board of...
Guest Editor’s Note: Insomnia is common in patients with cancer and cancer survivors, and it has significant negative consequences. Cognitive behavior therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is an effective approach for managing insomnia but is not easily available to many patients. In this installment of The ...
Sarah Cannon Research Institute (SCRI) recently announced that Vivek Subbiah, MD, has joined the organization as Chief, Early-Phase Drug Development. In his role, Dr. Subbiah will oversee SCRI’s nine drug development units and lead the expansion of early-phase capabilities and programs across the...
On August 2, 2023, the fixed combination of trifluridine, a nucleoside metabolic inhibitor, and tipiracil, a thymidine phosphorylase inhibitor, was approved for use with bevacizumab for metastatic colorectal cancer previously treated with fluoropyrimidine-, oxaliplatin-, and irinotecan-based...
In a phase II trial (I-SABR) reported in The Lancet, Joe Y. Chang, MD, of the Department of Radiation Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, and colleagues found that the addition of immunotherapy with nivolumab to stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) improved ...
Cathy Eng, MD, FACP, FASCO, the David H. Johnson Chair in Surgical and Medical Oncology, Professor of Medicine, Hematology and Oncology, Co-Director of GI Oncology and Co-Leader of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Research Program at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, Nashville, commented that the...
In the final analysis of the phase III LEAP-017 study, the combination of lenvatinib plus pembrolizumab failed to improve outcomes over the standard of care in previously treated patients with metastatic colorectal cancer that lacked high microsatellite instability or mismatch repair deficiency...
On July 31, 2023, the immune checkpoint inhibitor dostarlimab-gxly was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use with carboplatin and paclitaxel, followed by single-agent dostarlimab, for patients with primary advanced or recurrent endometrial cancer that is mismatch...
Long-term follow-up of selinexor maintenance therapy has demonstrated promising efficacy in patients with TP53 wild-type endometrial cancer, according to data presented during the ASCO Plenary Series: July 2023 Session.1 Selinexor is a selective inhibitor of nuclear export (SINE) approved for use...
In a phase II study (coopERA Breast Cancer) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Sara A. Hurvitz, MD, and colleagues found that 2 weeks of the addition of neoadjuvant giredestrant—a novel nonsteroidal selective estrogen receptor (ER) degrader—to palbociclib showed a stronger antiproliferative effect...
In a single-center, phase I, first-in-human trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Yoshie Umemura, MD, and colleagues investigated treatment with the combination of two adenoviral vectors expressing HSV1-TK (Ad-hCMV-TK) and Flt3L (Ad-hCMV-Flt3L) in adults with primary high-grade glioma. As stated...
In a phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Hargrave et al found that dabrafenib plus trametinib was highly active in pediatric patients with relapsed or refractory BRAF V600–mutant high-grade glioma. Study Details In the trial, 41 previously treated patients (median age, 13...
New 10-year follow-up data were published by Restrepo et al in Pediatrics on girls and boys who received a three-dose regimen of the 9-valent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine between the ages of 9 and 15. The long-term follow-up study was conducted from 2009 through 2021 across 13 countries and 5 ...
In a systematic review and meta-analysis reported in JAMA Oncology, Xie et al explored outcomes associated with immune checkpoint inhibition among patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma with Child-Pugh B vs Child-Pugh A liver function. Study Details The analysis included 22 studies...
Improving hospital care pathways may help reduce inpatient opioid use by 50% and cut the median opioid prescription volumes at discharge to zero in patients undergoing pancreatic cancer surgery, according to a recent study published by Boyev et al in JAMA Surgery. The new findings could help reduce ...
The Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) has provided standardized guidance on the selection and management of patients receiving lutetium-177–labeled PSMA-617 (LuPSMA) radionuclide therapy for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, according to a new consensus...
In a genetic analysis from the Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network 1102 Study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Versluis et al found that allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) improved overall survival compared with non-HCT treatment in patients with...
Patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma who were treated with a chemoimmunotherapy regimen containing the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab experienced significantly improved overall survival compared with those treated with chemotherapy alone, with acceptable tolerability, according...
Black patients with stage IA low-grade endometrioid endometrial carcinoma may be less likely to undergo a hysterectomy and survive their cancer than White patients with the same type of cancer, according to a recent study published by Taylor et al in Gynecologic Oncology. Background “We’ve known...
In a phase III trial (LUNAR) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Leal et al evaluated the addition of tumor treating fields therapy to standard systemic therapy in patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with disease progression on or after platinum-based chemotherapy. As stated by ...
In the phase III ATALANTE/ENGOT-ov29 trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Kurtz et al found that the addition of atezolizumab to bevacizumab and platinum-based doublets did not significantly improve progression-free survival among patients with platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer....
A new report published by Knudsen et al in PLOS ONE focused on the clinical validation of a drug response predictor (DRP) biomarker algorithm for dovitinib, a receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor of VEGFR1–3, PDGFR, FGFR1/3, c-KIT, FLT3, and topoisomerase 1 and 2. Data showed that the DRP-dovitinib...
Presented here are some brief summaries of novel therapies under study from the 2023 ASCO Breakthrough meeting in Yokohama, Japan. The subjects range from new observations about a HER2-directed bispecific antibody and systemic treatment of gastric cancer to an option for treating hand-foot syndrome ...