A new drug designed to inhibit an enzyme that plays a crucial role in cell division and growth has shown signs of anticancer activity with manageable side effects in patients with liver cancer and up to three lines of previous unsuccessful treatment, according to a new study published by Reig et al ...
In a Chinese phase II trial (CARTIFAN-1) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Mi et al found that the anti–B-cell maturation antigen chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy ciltacabtagene autoleucel was active in patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma. Study Details...
In a French phase I trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Loap et al found that concurrent olaparib and radiotherapy was well tolerated in patients with triple-negative breast cancer who had incomplete pathologic response or unresectable disease after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Survival outcomes with the ...
Researchers have found that an incidental finding of clonal hematopoiesis in liquid biopsies can be used to trigger hematologic tests to assess the risk of developing myeloid malignancies, according to a new study published by Tagliamento et al in the European Journal of Cancer. The findings were...
Olaparib and adavosertib can be safely used to treat patients with cancers that are driven by certain mutations occurring in response to DNA damage if they are given in sequence rather than concurrently, according to a novel study published by Yap et al in the European Journal of Cancer. The...
Robin Kate Kelley, MD, Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, was invited to discuss the results of LEAP-002.1 She said the main take-away is that lenvatinib monotherapy is active as a preferred first-line agent for fit patients who have contraindications to ...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved cobimetinib (Cotellic), an oral inhibitor of MEK1 and MEK2, for the treatment of adult patients with the family of blood diseases known as histiocytic neoplasms. These diseases include Erdheim-Chester disease, Rosai-Dorfman disease, and...
Invited discussant James Larkin, PhD, a clinical researcher at the Royal Marsden Hospital, London, commented on the findings from NICHE-2.1 “These striking data are consistent with the recent report in locally advanced mismatch repair–deficient [dMMR] rectal cancer from Memorial Sloan Kettering.2...
Three negative phase III trials presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2022 may dampen enthusiasm for immunotherapy as adjuvant therapy for renal cell carcinoma (RCC). None of the three trials—CheckMate 914, IMmotion010, and PROSPER—met its primary endpoint.1-3 The...
The addition of cabozantinib to nivolumab plus ipilimumab prolonged progression-free survival in untreated intermediate-risk patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC), according to the first results of the phase III COSMIC-313 trial. These findings were presented as a Presidential Symposium ...
Formal discussant Mary O’Brien, MD, Head of the Lung Unit, the Royal Marsden Hospital, NHS Foundation Trust, London, commented on the POSEIDON trial. “The POSEIDON trial is the largest data set we have on KRAS-mutated [non–small cell lung cancer], with a positive signal in picking up some patients...
Colorectal cancer ranks third among cancer deaths in both men and women in the United States, with an estimated 106,000 new cases and 52,000 deaths anticipated in 2022.1 Colorectal cancer rates have declined by approximately 2% per year from 2014 to 2018 in people over the age of 50 years, which is ...
Andrea McKee, MD, and the late Brady McKee, MD, will be honored with the James L. Mulshine, MD, National Leadership Award on Thursday, November 3, at the Prevent Cancer Foundation’s 19th annual Quantitative Imaging Workshop. The annual Mulshine Award is given to an individual or individuals who has ...
At this year’s European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress, we experienced an eagerly awaited return to normality (or almost), and the quality of the science on display was anything but disappointing: from molecular medicine to treatment de-escalation, from early cancer detection and...
In a retrospective study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Attarbaschi et al described outcomes in patients with noninfant childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and 11q23/KMT2A rearrangements treated with chemotherapy regimens between 1995 and 2010. Study Details The study...
The combination of immune checkpoint inhibitors relatlimab and nivolumab for patients with stage III melanoma given before surgery was safe and completely cleared all viable tumor in 57% of patients in a phase II study, according to findings published by Amaria et al in Nature. In addition to...
Researchers have developed a new swab test that can identify origins of potentially dangerous cervical cell changes up to 4 years before they happen, according to a new study published by Barrett et al in Genome Medicine. Scientists found that the new cervical screening method was more sensitive...
Christian U. Blank, MD, PhD, Professor of Internal Medicine, staff member at Netherlands Cancer Institute, Professor at the University of Regensburg in Germany, and founding member of the International Neoadjuvant Melanoma Consortium, was the invited discussant of the MD Anderson study of...
In an international, multicenter phase II clinical trial, almost two-thirds of patients with stage II to IV cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma had tumors nearly or completely eradicated by neoadjuvant treatment with cemiplimab-rwlc, an agent targeting PD-1. The results were presented at the European ...
Overall cancer death rates continued to decline among men, women, children, adolescents, and young adults in every major racial and ethnic group in the United States from 2015 to 2019, according to the latest Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer. From 2014 to 2018, overall cancer...
A 3-week course of radiation therapy is as safe and effective as 4 to 6 weeks of treatment for patients with early-stage breast cancer who have a higher risk of having their tumors recur, results of a randomized phase III clinical trial show. Delivering fewer, but higher, doses of radiation...
Using a novel response-adapted ultra–low dose radiation therapy strategy, researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center observed a 90% complete response rate in patients with orbital indolent B-cell lymphomas. Results were presented by Pinnix et al at the 2022 American Society...
Nicholas J. Vogelzang, MD, FACP, FASCO, an expert in the treatment of patients with renal cell carcinoma, died on September 20, 2022. Dr. Vogelzang was 72 years old. Son of a Preacher Dr. Vogelzang was born on December 13, 1949, in Holland, Michigan, the oldest of seven children, in a close-knit...
The Republic of Austria is a high-income, landlocked country in south-central Europe and has been a member of the European Union since 1995.1 Vienna, the capital city of nearly 2 million people, is regularly ranked among the most livable cities in the world.2 The total population of Austria is more ...
In 2000, the da Vinci Surgical System broke new ground by becoming the first robotic surgery system approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for general laparoscopic surgery. In its early years, robot-assisted radical prostatectomy was characterized by some in the surgical community as an...
In our continuing effort to connect and learn more about our international oncology colleagues, The ASCO Post recently spoke with Rossana Berardi, MD, Professor in Medical Oncology and Director of the Postgraduate School of Oncology at the Università Politecnica Marche, Ancona, Italy, where she is...
The National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded the University of Oklahoma (OU) an expected $2 million over 5 years to develop a program to improve representation of Oklahoma Native American students in biomedical and cancer research. “American Indian...
Endocrine therapy is the foundation of first-line therapy in most patients with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer. Many of these patients respond to endocrine therapy but eventually become resistant to it through both intrinsic and acquired resistance mechanisms....
September 12, 2022 “President John F. Kennedy’s historic speech that inspired our nation and an entire generation of Americans to achieve manned space exploration underscored the courage and commitment it would take to accomplish this then-audacious goal: ‘We choose to go to the moon in this decade ...
The Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO) and ASCO have released a guideline that appraises the evidence to support incorporating integrative medicine approaches into managing pain in adults with cancer.1 The guideline builds upon existing ASCO guidelines on pain management, the growing body of...
In this installment of the Living a Full Life series, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with William L. Dahut, MD, who is currently serving as Chief Scientific Officer for the American Cancer Society (ACS). In this role, Dr. Dahut manages all pieces of the organization’s discovery work,...
Richter transformation, usually a diffuse large B-cell lymphoma developing in a person with CLL, remains a challenging entity, but novel regimens look promising, as described at the 2022 Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference by Matthew S. Davids, MD, MMSc, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard...
New research from Yale Cancer Center reveals a higher risk of cancer mortality in incarcerated adults, as well as among those diagnosed with cancer in the first year after release from prison. The findings were published in the journal PLoS One.1 “Cancer is the leading cause of death among people...
Three negative phase III trials presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2022 may dampen enthusiasm for immunotherapy as adjuvant therapy for renal cell carcinoma (RCC). None of the three trials—CheckMate 914, IMmotion010, and PROSPER—met its primary endpoint.1-3 The...
I continue to be struck by the creativity of medical oncologists. The reimagining of dosing, duration, or regimen composition to respond to patient symptoms or preferences is like a master chef in the kitchen. Although standardization has, with good reason, become the paragon, delivering...
It has been well documented that breast cancer is the most common malignancy in adolescent and young adult (AYA) women aged 15 to 39 years, accounting for 30% of cancers among this population.1 In addition, 5.6% of all invasive breast cancers occur in AYA women.1 A presentation by Rebecca H....
Treating high-risk, asymptomatic bone metastases with radiation may reduce painful complications and hospitalizations and possibly extend overall survival in people whose cancer has spread to multiple sites, a phase II clinical trial suggests. Results of the multicenter, randomized trial were...
FLASH radiation treatment—which delivers therapeutic doses of radiation in a fraction of a second—may be a potential treatment for tough-to-kill tumors, a first-in-human study in a small number of people with bone cancer suggests. The technology, previously tested in animals, was shown to be as...
Adding stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) to systemic therapy with sorafenib for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) may extend overall survival and delay tumor progression without compromising patients’ quality of life, findings from the randomized phase III NRG...
An artificial intelligence (AI) model developed by researchers may assist in predicting the likelihood that a patient may have an unplanned hospitalization during radiation treatments for cancer. The machine-learning model uses daily step counts as a proxy to monitor patients’ health as they go...
New research confirmed the safety of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in individuals with cancer who are undergoing immunotherapy, according to a novel study published by Widman et al in JNCCN–Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. The researchers analyzed the frequency of immune-related...
A multicenter analysis of patients with invasive lobular carcinoma—the second most common histologic subtype of invasive breast cancer in the United States—showed that, despite its prevalence, invasive lobular carcinoma was detected later with worse outcomes vs invasive ductal carcinoma and had...
Studies show that rural populations experience greater cancer disparities across the cancer control continuum—from prevention and incidence to survivorship and mortality—compared with their urban counterparts. Those living in rural parts of the United States also tend to have lower cancer screening ...
In 2020, 4.4 million women died from cancer worldwide, leaving behind an estimated 1.04 million maternal orphans (defined as children aged 18 years and younger who have lost their mother), according to the results from a study by Guida et al presented during a press conference at the Union for...
In a preplanned analysis of the PALLAS trial, the addition of adjuvant palbociclib to standard endocrine therapy did not improve outcomes over endocrine therapy alone in patients with stage IIA breast cancer. Palbociclib offered no additional benefit in terms of invasive disease–free survival (the...
Commercially available noninvasive screening tests for colorectal cancer—the fecal immunochemical test (FIT) and the Cologuard multitarget stool DNA test—are equally effective for screening patients with early-stage colorectal cancer. However, FIT costs about one-fifth of the multitarget stool DNA...
Patients with colorectal cancer who have certain clinical characteristics may benefit from more frequent chest imaging to help identify and target cancer that has metastasized to the lungs, according to a new study presented at the 2022 Scientific Forum of the American College of Surgeons Clinical...
Jensa C. Morris, MD, of the Yale School of Medicine, Smilow Hospitalist Service, discusses her findings on the benefits of hospitalist co-management of patients with cancer: It reduced the length of hospital stay by 1 day, increased early discharge (before 11:00 AM) by threefold; raised the...
Researchers at the Barts Cancer Institute at the Queen Mary University of London, the Italian Institute for Genomic Medicine, and the University of Milan may have identified a novel role for a cancer-causing gene in controlling an important genetic process that underpins genetic variation in...
In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month and World Hospice & Palliative Care Day, ASCO and its partners—the International Association for Hospice & Palliative Care; Tómatelo a Pecho, A.C.; the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center and Institute for Advanced Study of the ...