An interim analysis of a phase II trial reported by Jones et al in The Lancet Oncology indicates that venetoclax (Venclexta) produces a response in a high proportion of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) progressing on or after ibrutinib (Imbruvica) treatment. John C. Byrd, MD, of...
A phase II study (ACE-LY-004) reported in The Lancet by Michael Wang, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and colleagues showed durable responses with the Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitor acalabrutinib (Calquence) in patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma....
“I think I found the trial that is going to save your life,” Stefanie Joho’s sister said after checking out the ClinicalTrials.gov website. “And sure enough, it did. That is not an exaggeration. That is exactly what happened,” Ms. Joho, a health advocate and consultant based in Philadelphia, told...
“Immunotherapy has a completely different side-effect profile than chemotherapy, and that has caught physicians off guard,” noted Drew Pardoll, MD, PhD, in an article published earlier this year in The Washington Post.1 Since then, efforts have moved forward on several fronts to bring physicians,...
I’m sure every cancer survivor feels this way, but my diagnosis, in 1997, of stage III germ cell testicular cancer couldn’t have come at a worse time in my life. I was nearing the end of a 60-city tour with my figure skating show Stars on Ice, when a nagging pain in my abdomen became so severe I...
Thomas A. Gallo, MS, MDA, was named 2018–2019 President of the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) during its 44th Annual Meeting and Cancer Center Business Summit on March 16, 2018, in Washington, DC. Mr. Gallo is Executive Director of the Virginia Cancer Institute in Richmond. ACCC...
On March 22, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expanded the indication for nilotinib (Tasigna) to include treatment of first- and second-line pediatric patients 1 year of age or older with Philadelphia chromosome–positive chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in the chronic phase. In the United ...
Postmenopausal women with hormone receptor–positive breast cancer who took the aromatase inhibitor anastrozole for 2 years after an initial 5 years of adjuvant endocrine therapy received an equal benefit to those who took the drug for 5 additional years. The trial results suggest that a shorter...
At the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), Michael Gnant, MD, FACS, of the Medical University of Vienna presented the 9-year median follow-up of a trial looking at the length of extended aromatase inhibitor therapy. At least four other recently presented or published trials have...
The Consortium of Universities for Global Health, Perlmutter Cancer Center, and the Department of Population Health at NYU Langone Health are issuing the “New York Challenge,” an ambitious campaign to end cervical cancer worldwide. They are challenging all nations to achieve a 70% human...
Survival of patients with Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphomas is increasing, and with that comes the need, in some cases, for solid organ transplantation, often because of treatment-related toxicity. The factors involved in organ transplant among lymphoma survivors were discussed by Philip J....
The following essay by Elias Jabbour, MD, is adapted, with permission, from The Big Casino: America’s Best Cancer Doctors Share Their Most Powerful Stories, which was coedited by Stan Winokur, MD, and Vincent Coppola and published in May 2014. The book is available on Amazon.com and...
“This is a very exciting study. Acupuncture is another tool to address arthralgias associated with aromatase inhibitor therapy,” said Kathryn Ruddy, MD, of the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota. “I don’t think every patient with joint pain will opt for this for a variety of reasons, including...
Although aromatase inhibitors are highly effective as adjuvant therapy in metastatic breast cancer and for prevention of breast cancer, the side effects can be difficult to tolerate and often lead to discontinuation of therapy. A phase III randomized trial has found that acupuncture may relieve...
The phase III IMpower150 study met its coprimary endpoint of overall survival (OS) at interim analysis and showed that first-line treatment with the combination of atezolizumab (Tecentriq) and bevacizumab (Avastin) plus carboplatin and paclitaxel (chemotherapy) helped patients with advanced...
The average number of moderate or marked side effects reported by patients with breast cancer is lower if they are treated with radiotherapy to part of the breast or a reduced dose to the whole breast, rather than with standard whole breast radiotherapy (WBRT), according to new findings presented...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Gettinger et al, 5-year follow-up of patients receiving nivolumab (Opdivo) in a phase I study (CA209-003) in previously treated advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has shown prolonged survival and durable responses in a subgroup...
In a phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Fader et al found that the addition of trastuzumab (Herceptin) to carboplatin/paclitaxel improved progression-free survival among women with HER2-overexpressing uterine serous carcinoma. HER2 has been found to be overexpressed in...
In a Korean study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Choi et al found that antibiotic treatment for Helicobacter pylori was associated with a significant reduction in metachronous gastric cancer in patients who had undergone endoscopic resection of early gastric cancer or high-grade...
ARMO BioSciences, Inc, recently announced the completion of the first interim analysis in its phase III SEQUOIA trial in patients with pancreatic cancer. The Data Monitoring Committee (DMC) for SEQUOIA, a clinical trial studying pegilodecakin (AM0010) plus FOLFOX (leucovorin,...
Women with small, low-grade, well-defined breast tumors and a genetic profile that shows they are at low risk of the cancer metastasizing have only a 1.4% risk of locoregional recurrence within 5 years, according to new results from a large randomized trial of nearly 7,000 patients. This low risk...
Skin cancer is the most common cancer in the United States, and nonmelanoma skin cancer is the most common type of skin cancer, affecting more than 3 million Americans every year. Moreover, nonmelanoma skin cancer incidence is growing at an exponential rate—between 1976–1984 and...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Michalski et al, long-term follow-up in the NRG Oncology/RTOG 0126 trial showed no significant difference in overall survival with dose-escalated vs standard-dose radiotherapy in patients with intermediate-risk prostate cancer. High-dose radiotherapy was associated...
In an Asian phase III noninferiority trial (AXEPT) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Xu et al found that modified XELIRI (mXELIRI, capecitabine plus irinotecan) was noninferior in overall survival vs standard FOLFIRI (leucovorin, fluorouracil, and irinotecan), both given with or without bevacizumab...
In the phase III MURANO trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Seymour et al, the combination of the BCL2 inhibitor venetoclax (Venclexta) with rituximab (Rituxan) markedly improved progression-free survival vs bendamustine plus rituximab in patients with relapsed or refractory...
A combination of the immunotherapy pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and the DNA repair–blocking agent niraparib (Zejula) can be significantly more effective than either drug alone in women with hard-to-treat ovarian cancer, a phase I/II clinical trial led by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute researchers...
Sentinel lymph node biopsies may be safely avoided for some women, according to research presented at the 11th European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC-11). Two new studies show that women with either triple-negative or HER2-positive types of breast cancer, whose cancers respond well to chemotherapy ...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted accelerated approval to blinatumomab (Blincyto) to treat adults and children with B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) who are in remission but still have minimal residual disease (MRD). In patients who have achieved remission after...
According to the American Cancer Society, lung cancer is the leading cause of death among men and women, killing about 84,000 men and 71,000 women each year. Although lung cancer–related death rates in the United States have declined steadily since 1990 in men, they did not start to decline...
Linda D. Bosserman, MD, FACP, FASCO, has been named Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP), an ASCO publication. Dr. Bosserman is a recognized leader in cancer care delivery with a deep understanding of the issues impacting all types of oncology practices. "We are delighted ...
In the E3805 trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Morgans et al found that chemohormonal therapy with docetaxel and androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) was associated with poorer quality of life (QOL) at 3 months but better QOL at 12 months vs ADT alone in metastatic hormone-sensitive ...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Stanulla et al found that a gene profile including somatic deletions in the lymphoid transcription factor–coding gene IKZF1 and deletions in other genes was associated with minimal residual disease (MRD)-dependent very-poor prognosis...
Healthy women who carry a breast cancer–causing mutation in the BRCA1 gene not only reduce their risk of developing the disease but also their chances of dying from it if they have both breasts removed, according to new research presented at the 11th European Breast Cancer Conference...
On March 26, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Breakthrough Therapy designation to enfortumab vedotin, an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC), for patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial cancer who were previously treated with checkpoint inhibitors. Breakthrough Therapy ...
Parents are less likely to vaccinate adolescent boys than girls with the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, and they are twice as likely to report their main reason as a lack of provider recommendation, according to a study presented at the 2018 Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) Annual Meeting ...
A team of researchers led by Naruihiko Ikoma, MD, MS, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, analyzed outcomes in 316 patients with gastric cancer to determine whether patients who had clinically positive nodal disease before preoperative therapy have...
In a study reported in the Journal of Oncology Practice, Hoverman et al found that a Texas Oncology–Aetna Medicare Advantage collaboration resulted in cost savings, good adherence to treatment pathways, and high patient satisfaction over 3 years. Study Details The collaborative...
In a UK-based study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Fallon et al found that adding a clinician-delivered bedside pain assessment and management tool (Edinburgh Pain Assessment and Management Tool [EPAT]) to usual care improved some pain outcomes in cancer center inpatients. Study...
On March 23, the multiple-receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor lenvatinib mesylate (Lenvima) was approved in Japan for unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). This is the first approval worldwide of lenvatinib mesylate for the indication of unresectable HCC and the first new systemic therapy to...
Patients with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) are less likely to have recurrent disease if they are postmenopausal or if their tumor is estrogen receptor (ER)-positive, according to research presented at the 11th European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC-11) (Abstract 215). DCIS accounts for about...
Immunotherapy has transformed the treatment of metastatic melanoma, with 3-year survival rates surpassing 50% for appropriate patients. However, many of these patients still require surgery, but very little research has been done on this group of patients to determine whether surgery after...
On March 20, Genentech announced that the phase III IMpower131 study met its coprimary endpoint of progression-free survival (PFS) and demonstrated that the combination of atezolizumab (Tecentriq) plus chemotherapy (carboplatin and nanopartical albumin-bound [nab]-paclitaxel [Abraxane])...
The risk of a second breast cancer in patients with high-risk BRCA gene mutations can be more precisely predicted by testing for several other genetic variants, each of which are known to have a small impact on breast cancer risk, according to new research presented at the 11th European Breast...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Rathkopf et al, sensitivity analyses of radiographic progression-free survival in the PREVAIL trial comparing enzalutamide vs placebo in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer support use of the measure as a clinically meaningful endpoint in trials in this...
In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Depuydt et al identified two genomic copy number aberrations associated with risk of extremely poor survival in patients with high-risk neuroblastoma. Study Details The international collaborative study included normalized...
In a phase II trial reported in JAMA Oncology by Debra L. Richardson, MD, of Stephenson Cancer Center, Oklahoma University Health Science Center, and colleagues, the addition of pazopanib (Votrient) to paclitaxel did not improve progression-free survival among women with persistent or recurrent...
An interim analysis of a phase II trial reported by Jones et al in The Lancet Oncology indicates that venetoclax (Venclexta) produces a response in a high proportion of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) progressing on or after ibrutinib (Imbruvica) treatment. John C. Byrd, MD, of The ...
A phase II study (ACE-LY-004) reported in The Lancet by Michael Wang, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and colleagues showed durable responses with the Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitor acalabrutinib (Calquence) in patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma....
When I was 15, and just 6 weeks into my sophomore year in high school, I heard a loud sound similar to a gunshot in my head and minutes later I was engulfed in a grand mal seizure, now called tonic-clonic seizure, and rushed to the hospital. A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan found a small...
RESEARCHERS AT Baylor College of Medicine have received more than $3 million from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) to fund three new grants focused on tobacco control, cancer screening, and novel treatments for cancer in children and adults. CPRIT was launched in 2009...