In a randomized phase II trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Siu et al found that the combination of the programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) inhibitor durvalumab (Imfinzi) plus the cytotoxic T-lymphocyte–associated protein 4 (CTLA-4) inhibitor tremelimumab and durvalumab alone showed evidence ...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently issued the following new approvals and designations: Approval for Pegfilgrastim Biosimilar The FDA recently approved a pegfilgrastim biosimilar, pegfilgrastim-cbqv (Udenyca). The biosimilar has been approved to decrease the incidence...
Squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) are malignancies arising from squamous epithelium of various organs, such as esophagus, head and neck, lung, and skin. Previous studies demonstrated that two master transcription factors, TP63 and SOX2, effect genomic activation in SCCs. Now, researchers from...
In the phase II PERSIST-5 study reported in JAMA Oncology, Raut et al found that 5 years of adjuvant imatinib therapy was associated with little risk of recurrence in patients with resected intermediate- or high-risk primary gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST). As noted by the investigators, 3...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Shaitelman et al, 3-year outcomes of a phase III noninferiority trial indicate that hypofractionated whole-breast irradiation (HF-WBI) followed by a tumor bed boost is not inferior to conventionally fractionated whole-breast irradiation (CF-WBI)...
As reported by Hwang et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, subsequent molecular profiling of histologically diagnosed central nervous system supratentorial primitive neuroectodermal tumors (CNS-PNET) in patients showed molecular and clinical heterogeneity that strongly affected prognosis. The ...
A study of 112 patients with metastatic solid tumors found that the use of an artificial intelligence (AI)-based smartphone app reduced both the severity of patients’ reported pain and hospital admissions. After an 8-week period, patients who used the AI-powered app to monitor and address...
An analysis of nearly 2,800 patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who received the immune checkpoint inhibitors nivolumab (Opdivo), pembrolizumab (Keytruda), or atezolizumab (Tecentriq) found that adverse events may be more common than reported in the initial trials that led...
In a cohort study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Melamed et al found that minimally invasive radical hysterectomy was associated with poorer overall survival compared with open radical hysterectomy in women with early-stage cervical cancer. Study Details The study involved...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Latham et al found that microsatellite instability (MSI) and/or mismatch repair deficiency (MMR-D) is predictive of Lynch syndrome across a greater than heretofore recognized breadth of the solid tumor spectrum. As noted by the...
In an analysis from the Children’s Oncology Group AAML0531 trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Getz et al found that early treatment-related cardiotoxicity may be associated with poorer event-free and overall survival in pediatric acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Study Details...
On November 9, 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to pembrolizumab (Keytruda) for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma who have been previously treated with the kinase inhibitor sorafenib. KEYNOTE-224 Approval was based on KEYNOTE-224, a single-arm,...
Three leading oncology practices have united with partners in technology and finance to launch OneOncology, a physician-driven company that aims to unite more than 225 community oncology providers from 60-plus locations. Altogether, OneOncology will treat nearly 158,000 cancer patients a year. The...
The ASCO Post is pleased to present Hematology Expert Review, an ongoing feature that quizzes readers on issues in hematology. In this installment, Drs. Abutalib and Medeiros explore the recently updated World Health Organization (WHO) classification of hematopoietic and lymphoid tissue...
FIRST-LINE TREATMENT options for advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) include single- agent immunotherapy for patients with a programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) tumor proportion score of at least 50% or in combination with chemotherapy in unselected patients.1-3 Single immunotherapy is...
IN A STUDY reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Kathryn C. Arbour, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and colleagues found that baseline treatment with corticosteroids was associated with poorer efficacy of programmed cell death protein 1/programmed cell death ligand 1...
In December, The University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School will launch an innovative cancer care model called the CaLM (cancer life re-imagined) Clinic as part of its new cancer center, the Livestrong Cancer Institutes. The goal of the Livestrong Cancer Institutes and the CaLM Clinic is to...
ALTHOUGH FINANCIAL toxicity has become an important issue in the oncology community, evidence suggests the subject is rarely addressed by oncologists, exacerbating its grave effects on patients with cancer and their families.1 “But I don’t think it’s because health-care providers don’t want to...
On June 8, 2018, venetoclax (Venclexta) was granted regular approval for treatment of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL), with or without 17p deletion, who have received at least one prior therapy.1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data APPROVAL WAS BASED on ...
ACCORDING TO a study by Johns Hopkins, medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States.1 Lakshmi Santanam, PhD, tackled such sobering data at the 2018 ASCO Quality Care Symposium. “Incident learning systems are not just about medical errors or data; it’s kind of a first...
IN ORDER TO rein in the untenable rise in costs while delivering high-value cancer care, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation developed a new payment system—the Oncology Care Model. At the 2018 ASCO Quality Care Symposium, Cardinale B. Smith, MD, PhD, shed light on the system’s...
A NUMBER OF STUDIES from the palliative care literature have shown that nonbeneficial health-care interventions actually may harm patients’ quality of life, increase patient and caregiver distress, and drive costs. Yet, according to the National Cancer Institute, about 30% of all cancer spending...
THE AMERICAN SOCIETY of Hematology (ASH) will honor Alan D. D’Andrea, MD, of Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Neal S. Young, MD, of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health, with the 2018 Ernest Beutler Lecture and Prize for...
THE AMERICAN Childhood Cancer Organization (ACCO) supported the World Health Organization’s (WHO) announcement of a new global initiative to address the disparity between childhood cancer survival in low-middle versus high-income countries. The announcement came at the United Nations General...
ATEZOLIZUMAB (TECENTRIQ), an anti–program cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) antibody, combined with carboplatin/ etoposide as first-line treatment for extensive-stage small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) improved overall and progression-free survival and may represent a new standard of care, according to...
THE INTERNATIONAL Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) 19th World Conference on Lung Cancer was the largest in its history. One of the key themes of the meeting was to focus on the patient. Here are highlights of presentations from this conference that demonstrate the role of the...
“BACILLUS CALMETTE-GUÉRIN (BCG) failures are quite common, with a 66% recurrence rate at 5 years, and about 25% of patients will have disease progression,” explained formal discussant Shahrokh Shariat, MD, Chair of the Department of Urology at Medical University, Vienna, and Adjunct Professor at...
THE ANTI–PROGRAMMED cell death protein 1 (anti–PD-1) checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was found to have antitumor activity in patients with high-risk non–muscle invasive bladder cancer who were nonresponsive to bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), according to the preliminary results of the ...
FORMAL DISCUSSANT Robert G. Bristow, MD, PhD, of the Manchester Cancer Research Centre, Manchester, United Kingdom, called this trial “an exemplar.” “Radiation to the prostate should be considered standard of care in the setting of hormone-sensitive low-metastatic burden. The treatment is well...
MEN WITH newly diagnosed metastatic prostate cancer do not typically receive treatment to the primary tumor with radiation or surgery. A new analysis of the STAMPEDE trial found that radiation administered to the prostate can improve overall survival in men with newly diagnosed metastatic prostate...
“A KEY AIM of treatment is the need to focus on preventing recurrence, which happens in 70% of patients. Over the past 20 years, we have made few inroads in preventing recurrence. This study brings a poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor olaparib (Lynparza) to the first-line setting,...
TWO-YEAR MAINTENANCE therapy with olaparib (Lynparza), a poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitor, achieved a significant improvement in progression-free survival in patients with newly diagnosed advanced ovarian cancer and a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation, according to results of the phase III SOLO-1...
AS AN INTERNIST, I strived to give patients hope by prescribing therapies that increased their chance—their hope—of the best outcome and by encouraging them with hopeful words. My own hope was to care for patients until I was old. Just weeks after celebrating my 36th birthday, I was diagnosed with ...
FORMAL STUDY discussant, Fiona Blackhall, MD, PhD, of the University of Manchester, UK, welcomed brigatinib (Alunbrig) as a new first-line option for ALK-positive patients but said, “In the absence of comparisons of next-generation ALK inhibitors, it will take some time to determine if there is...
THE FIRST-LINE USE of brigatinib (Alunbrig) was superior to standard-of-care crizotinib (Xalkori) in patients with advanced anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to the first report of the phase III ALTA-1L trial presented at the International...
“IMPASSION130 IS a positive study of immuno-oncology that brings breast cancer into the immunotherapy era,” said the invited discussant of the trial, Giuseppe Curigliano, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Oncology at the University of Milan and Chair of Early Drug Development at the Institute of...
IMMUNOTHERAPY APPEARS to be the new upfront standard of care for patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, based on a late-breaking presentation at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2018 Congress1 and simultaneously published in The New England Journal of Medicine.2 In ...
Contrary to the advice most patients with cancer receive when they go through radiation treatment, topical skin treatments, unless applied very heavily, may not increase the radiation dose to the skin and can be used in moderation before daily radiation treatments, according to findings from a new...
Final results of SWOG Cancer Research Network’s international Prevention of Early Menopause Study (POEMS) showed continued evidence that women who get injections of the hormone drug goserelin along with standard breast cancer chemotherapy are more likely to become pregnant, without developing ...
In the phase III TAGS trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Shitara et al found that trifluridine/tipiracil (Lonsurf) significantly improved overall survival vs placebo in patients with heavily pretreated metastatic gastric cancer. In the double-blind trial, 507 patients with nonresectable...
Findings in a study reported by Mullen and colleagues for the Children’s Oncology Group in the Journal of Clinical Oncology suggest that routine computed tomography (CT) surveillance may not be necessary for recurrence detection in favorable-histology Wilms tumor. The study was a...
Patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) receiving treatment at academic centers have an increased 2-year survival compared to patients treated at community-based centers, according to findings published by Ramalingam et al in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology. An...
A review and analysis of randomized clinical trials published by Kovic et al in JAMA Internal Medicine questioned whether interventions that prolong progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with cancer improve their health-related quality of life (HRQoL). The systematic review and quantitative...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Clarke et al found that triage with p16/Ki-67 dual-stain testing (DS) was associated with better risk stratification for cervical precancer than Papanicolaou cytology testing over 5 years among human papilloma virus (HPV)–positive women. Study Details...
In a multicohort study (VE-BASKET study) in patients with BRAF V600–mutant nonmelanoma cancers in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Kaley et al found evidence of activity of vemurafenib (Zelboraf) in gliomas that appeared to vary by glioma subtype. Study Details In the study, 24...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Slavin et al determined the prevalence of a set of germline cancer predisposition gene mutations incidentally identified by cell-free circulating tumor DNA (cfDNA) testing in patients with advanced solid tumors. Study Details The study...
By combining data on individuals’ lifetime sun exposure and their genetics, researchers may be able to generate improved predictions of their risk of skin cancer, according to findings presented by Fontanillas et al at the 2018 American Society of Human Genetics Annual Meeting (Abstract PgmNr ...
In a phase Ib study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Advani et al found that the combination of rituximab (Rituxan) and the CD47-blocking monoclonal antibody Hu5F9-G4 (or 5F9), a macrophage immune checkpoint inhibitor, was active in patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. CD47, which is ...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Guinter et al found that better prediagnosis and postdiagnosis dietary patterns were associated with improved overall and colorectal cancer–specific survival among patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer. Study Details The...
On November 6, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved elotuzumab (Empliciti) injection for intravenous use in combination with pomalidomide (Pomalyst) and dexamethasone for the treatment of adult patients with multiple myeloma who have received at least two prior therapies,...