The Johns Hopkins Greenberg Bladder Cancer Institute awarded research grants to four projects that focus on bladder cancer treatments in women and how biology could offer new targets for cancer therapy.The Institute awards grants of $25,000 to $50,000. David McConkey, PhD, Director of the...
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 Living a Full Life, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, spoke with Howard A. “Skip” Burris III, MD, FACP,...
Stephen J. Forman, MD, Leader of City of Hope’s Hematologic Malignancies and Stem Cell Transplantation Institute and the Francis & Kathleen McNamara Distinguished Chair in Hematology and Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, recently received the 2019 DKMS Mechtild Harf Science Award in...
Matthew J. Loscalzo, LCSW, of the City of Hope, discusses the ways in which a person’s gender influences how he or she reacts to and copes with a cancer diagnosis and treatment.
In the 20-plus years I have spent in hematologic oncology, I have been fortunate to have a ringside seat to watch “game-changing” advances come into our field—all-trans retinoic acid for acute promyelocytic leukemia, tyrosine kinase inhibitors starting with imatinib for chronic myeloid leukemia,...
Sumanta K. Pal, MD, of City of Hope, talks about the need for investigators across the country to enroll their patients with rare tumors in clinical trials. He describes a trial he is leading for papillary kidney cancer and how others can join his efforts.
Researchers have found that some commercial cancer cell lines used for laboratory studies have mislabeled ancestry when it comes to minorities. These findings were published by Hooker et al in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. “A lack of diversity is prevalent in every level...
Nearly half of all childhood cancers are not being diagnosed globally, according to a new modeling study published by Ward et al in The Lancet Oncology. “Our model suggests that nearly one in two children with cancer are never diagnosed and may die untreated,” said lead...
There is a plethora of educational books for patients with cancer and their families; advocates and patients themselves write most. Books in this genre often have a difficult time distilling the hard science of oncology into a lay-friendly narrative that keeps the reader engaged from cover to...
Prosecuting health-care fraud is a top priority for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and other federal government agencies.1,2 After all, the government earns a $6 return for every $1 that it spends on enforcement. In December 2018, the DOJ announced that it had obtained more than $2.5 billion...
Shortages of essential chemotherapy drugs for children undergoing cancer treatment have been an increasingly frequent obstacle for patients and hospitals in the United States. These shortages can result in increased medication errors, delayed administration of life-saving therapy, inferior...
As reported by Betty R. Ferrell, PhD, MA, FAAN, FPCN, of the Division of Nursing Research and Education, City of Hope Medical Center, Duarte, California, and colleagues in the Journal of Palliative Medicine, the National Consensus Project (NCP) of the National Coalition for Hospice and Palliative ...
Kim A. Margolin, MD, of City of Hope, summarizes a session she co-chaired on combination immunotherapies, locoregional therapies, systemic therapies, and enhancing natural killer cells.
“This is an intriguing agent,” said ASCO expert Robert Dreicer, MD, MS, MACP, FASCO, of the University of Virginia Cancer Center and moderator of a press briefing where these data were discussed. “Survival rates are low for patients with metastatic castration--resistant prostate cancer, and the...
The checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab plus the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) tyrosine kinase inhibitor axitinib significantly improved overall survival, progression-free survival, and objective response rates vs sunitinib as first-line therapy for clear cell metastatic renal cell...
Leadership from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued the following statement yesterday: As the NIH Director stated in September, sexual harassment is about power. The goal of the perpetrator, most commonly but not exclusively a man, is to objectify, exclude, demoralize,...
THE LARGEST PROSPECTIVE trial of hydroxyurea for sickle cell anemia has shown that this treatment is feasible, accepted, well tolerated, and safe for children living in sub-Saharan Africa. Hydroxyurea has long been the standard of care for treating children with sickle cell anemia in developed...
SOME PATIENTS with advanced head and neck cancer may achieve durable responses with immunotherapy, and recent trial results suggest first-line immunotherapy may increase survival among patients with recurrent or metastatic disease. However, concerns remain about selecting patients most likely to...
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...
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...
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...
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. ...
Sumanta K. Pal, MD, of City of Hope, who served as a Co-Executive Editor of the 2019 publication Clinical Cancer Advances, discusses progress made during the past year in research and policy. The report was compiled with a team of experts in oncology subspecialties, cancer prevention, quality care, ...
Five years ago, I was living my dream life. I was under contract as a commentator on Fox News, which necessitated commuting weekly from my home in Los Angeles to New York, and was building a new home in Palm Springs with my partner, Matt Lashey. Not only was my career and personal life going well,...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently granted the following designations and applications and also issued a statement: Priority Review for Pexidartinib in Tenosynovial Giant Cell Tumor The FDA has accepted a new drug application (NDA) and granted Priority Review for pexidartinib...
A study published by Cook et al in JAMA Oncology focused on whether treatment with checkpoint inhibitors is both safe and effective in patients with advanced cancer who are also human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive. Because checkpoint inhibitors manipulate the immune system, the concern has...
In a Chinese, single-center, noninferiority phase III trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Wang et al found that postmastectomy hypofractionated radiotherapy was noninferior to and associated with similar toxicities vs conventionally fractionated radiotherapy in patients with high-risk breast...
By including a planned gift to ASCO’s Conquer Cancer Foundation in your estate plans, you can help make a dramatic difference for patients with cancer years—even decades—into the future. With just one small change to your will or trust, your planned gift of any size will deliver a big impact, and...
The burgeoning pipeline of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies targeting B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA) in multiple myeloma was on full display at the 2018 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition. A bispecific antibody also made its debut in this busy...
Each year, The ASCO Post asks Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, Director of the Breast Oncology Program at Taussig Cancer Institute and Professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, to offer his picks for the most important research presented at the 2018 San Antonio Breast Cancer ...
JOSEPH MIKHAEL, MD, press conference moderator where these data were discussed, commented on the BEAT AML trial: “One of the greatest challenges in the concept of personalized medicine is that by the time you determine what is right for a patient [ie, genomic analysis], the horse is out of the...
Personalized treatment plans may extend life expectancy for patients with early-stage kidney cancer who also have risk factors for worsening kidney disease, according to a new study published by Kang et al in Radiology. Kidney tumors are often discovered at an early stage and are frequently...
John Mendelsohn, MD, President Emeritus of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, died of glioblastoma on January 7, 2019, at his home in Houston at age 82. He was an internationally acclaimed leader in the field of medicine and scientist whose research helped pioneer a new type of...
The oncology community is deeply saddened by the untimely passing of Arti Hurria, MD, FASCO, a nationally regarded expert and advocate for elderly patients with cancer. Dr. Hurria died on November 7, 2018, in a traffic accident. At the time of her tragic death, Dr. Hurria was Director of the City...
In the summer of 2002, I was a physically active 17-year-old boy on the cusp of adulthood. I was about to enter my senior year in high school, and like other teens my age, I was excited about college and the promise of the undreamed-of opportunities that lay ahead. At first, the lethargy I was...
Researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston are testing a first-of-its-kind personalized cancer vaccine combined with an immunotherapy drug, with the aim of improving outcomes for patients with kidney cancer who are at high risk of recurrence after surgery. A two-pronged approach to...
Patients diagnosed with cancer who also have other illnesses or conditions, such as hypertension, asthma, or a prior cancer, are less likely to talk with their health-care provider about a cancer clinical trial, are less likely to be offered to join a clinical trial, and are ultimately less likely...
A new report commissioned by the National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) and published by the IQVIA Institute demonstrates that the 7-year market exclusivity granted to drugs designated under the Orphan Drug Act of 1983 for rare diseases is working as intended. In nearly every case, orphan...
Thirteen years ago, at age 34, I was healthy and enjoying life. I went to the gym almost daily, and when I wasn’t at the gym, I was shooting hoops with my friends. During a gym workout while on a family vacation, I suddenly felt excruciating pain in my left shoulder and thought I must have strained ...
Immunotherapy has significantly improved the overall survival of patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and is generally better tolerated than traditional chemotherapies, but the results of a retrospective study suggested that immunotherapy side effects may be more common than initially...
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...
“When people don’t respond [to chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy] as well as they should, it may be that the T cells are depleted and functionally exhausted. The mechanism of exhaustion is in part mediated by checkpoint-related killing. By thwarting that process with pembrolizumab...
Commenting on the ibrutinib (Imbruvica)/chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell approach at a press conference, Joseph C. Alvarnas, MD, said: “Patients with CLL do not do as well on CAR T-cell therapy as those with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and by combining ibrutinib with CAR T cells,...
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Foundation recently launched an educational tool using virtual human technology to improve patient-provider conversations about neutropenia as a side effect of chemotherapy. This new resource is part of the Preventing Infections in Cancer...
A seven-gene assay could improve care for patients with gastroesophageal cancer by predicting their likelihood of relapse after chemotherapy and surgery. These findings were published by Smyth et al in Annals of Oncology. A team at The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), London, and The Royal...
Hope S. Rugo, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, discusses how treatment with a lower dose of palbociclib (100 mg vs 125 mg) in combination with fulvestrant or tamoxifen is associated with a lower rate of high-grade neutropenia (Abstract PD2-12).
Although overall cancer survival rates continue to improve among all age groups in the United States—there are currently an estimated 15.5 million cancer survivors, and that number is expected to increase to 20.3 million by 20261—survival rates for adolescents and young adults with cancer (AYAs)...
ONE OF the pressing issues in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer is the development of resistance to therapies directed at the androgen receptor (AR), such as enzalutamide (Xtandi) and abiraterone acetate (Zytiga). Research is ongoing to identify mechanisms of resistance in the hope of ...
FORMAL DISCUSSANT of the ACE trial, Rebecca Dent, MD, of the National Cancer Center in Singapore, commented that the phase II ENCORE 301 study provided proof of concept that a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor can reprogram epigenetic changes.1 In that randomized, double-blind,...
STEVEN A. ROSENBERG, MD, PhD, Chief of Surgery at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), began his pioneering research in adoptive cell transfer using interleukin (IL)-2 in the mid-1970s. His IL-2 studies were among the clinical trials that led to the first U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval ...