Eruptive melanocytic nevi are observed in patients receiving the multikinase inhibitor sorafenib (Nexavar) and the selective BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib (Zelboraf). In a case reported in JAMA Dermatology, Shen et al found that the addition of the MEK inhibitor cobimetinib to vemurafenib in a woman...
The combination of continuous daily-dosed sunitinib (Sutent) and hypofractionated stereotactic radiation therapy produced acceptable toxicity and “encouraging” 6-month progression-free survival in previously irradiated patients with recurrent high-grade glioma, according to the results...
Combining the molecular targeted drug ibrutinib (Imbruvica) with the investigational anticancer agent ABT-199 may improve outcomes for patients with mantle cell lymphoma and chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), according to preclinical data presented at the American Association for Cancer Research...
Using genomic profiling and next-generation sequencing of patients with BCR-ABL1-like B-progenitor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-cell ALL) and Philadelphia chromosome–like ALL, researchers recently identified alterations targeting 18 kinase or cytokine receptor genes. They then determined...
In a Scottish study reported in The Lancet Psychiatry, Walker et al assessed the prevalence and adequacy of treatment of major depression in patients with cancer of different primary sites. The prevalence of major depression ranged from 5.6% in patients with genitourinary cancers to 13.1% in those...
In a Scottish study (SMaRT Oncology-2) reported in The Lancet, Sharpe, Walker et al found that an integrated collaborative treatment program for depression (‘depression care for people with cancer’) was associated with significantly higher depression response and remission rates...
In a prospective cohort study in the population of the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial, Zhou et al found that frontal plus moderate vertex baldness at age 45 is associated with increased risk of aggressive prostate cancer. The findings were reported in the...
Navidea Biopharmaceuticals, Inc, recently announced that technetium 99m tilmanocept (Lymphoseek Injection) has been granted Orphan Drug Designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in sentinel lymph node detection in patients with cancer of the head and neck. The designation...
The oral mTOR inhibitor ridaforolimus was modestly active and reasonably tolerated in women with recurrent or metastatic endometrial cancer, according to the results of a phase II study reported in Gynecologic Oncology. Tsoref et al suggested that it may prove to be an effective therapeutic...
There are few data available on long-term risk of colorectal cancer mortality after adenoma removal. In a Norwegian study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Løberg et al found that patients who had low-risk adenomas removed had lower colorectal cancer mortality risk and those...
A large, international analysis of patients with stage IV non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) indicates that a patient’s overall survival rate can be related to factors including the timing of when metastases develop and lymph node involvement, and that aggressive treatment for low-risk...
Patients with inoperable, early-stage lung cancer who receive stereotactic body radiation therapy have a 5-year survival rate of 40%, according to long-term results presented at the American Society for Radiation Oncology’s (ASTRO) 56th Annual Meeting (Abstract 56). Such a positive survival...
Serum levels of VEGF-A and TGF-β1 may be helpful in tailoring neoadjuvant treatment regimens for patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, according to research presented at the American Society for Radiation Oncology’s (ASTRO) 56th Annual Meeting (Abstract 10). Results of...
More than one-quarter of young adults with the most common form of acute lymphoblastic leukemia have a high-risk subtype with a poor prognosis and may benefit from drugs widely used to treat other types of leukemia that are more common in adults, according to multi-institutional research led by St. ...
In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Portschy et al found an absolute 20-year overall survival difference of < 1% with contralateral prophylactic mastectomy in women with stage I or II breast cancer without BRCA mutation. The authors had hypothesized that the...
Use of cisplatin or cetuximab (Erbitux) with radiotherapy improves overall survival in stage III or IV head and neck carcinoma, and adding cetuximab to platinum therapy improves overall survival in metastatic disease. In the phase III Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) 0522 trial reported in...
The ASCO Clinical Practice Guidelines Committee and the Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) program in evidence-based care have released a clinical practice guideline on systemic therapy in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. The guideline is reported by Basch et al in the Journal of...
When factoring in what is now known about breast cancer biology and heterogeneity, breast-conserving therapy may offer a greater survival benefit over mastectomy to women with early-stage, hormone receptor–positive disease, according to research from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer ...
A new breast cancer vaccine candidate, GP2, provides further evidence of the potential of immunotherapy in preventing disease recurrence. This is especially the case for high-risk patients when it is combined with a powerful immunotherapy drug. These findings were presented at the 2014 Breast...
Despite conjecture in the lay media that wearing a bra may be a risk factor for breast cancer based on the potential for bras to interfere with lymph circulation and drainage, hampering the removal of waste and toxins, there were few scientific studies investigating the issue. Now, a new study by...
The American Society of Clinical Oncology has released a new clinical practice guideline on chemotherapy and targeted therapy for women with advanced HER2-negative or unknown HER2 status breast cancer. The guideline is published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. In formulating the consensus...
Results from a large population-based study of 189,734 women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer in California show the percentage opting for a bilateral mastectomy has increased substantially over the past decade even though the procedure was not associated with a lower risk of death than...
A new analysis of 30-day post-surgery complications among more than 18,000 women with breast cancer undergoing bilateral and unilateral mastectomy with breast reconstruction found that complications were generally rare for either type of surgery, with an overall rate of complications of 5.3%....
A large study conducted through the BC Cancer Agency in British Columbia, Canada, reports that adding family physician–signed reminder letters to the standard schedule of postcard reminders substantially improves return rates for screening among women who are overdue for such screening. In a...
An analysis of data from 12 large clinical trials found that the cancer’s pathologic response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy and tumor subtype are strong predictors of locoregional breast cancer recurrence. According to the researchers, the study showed that these two predictors may be more...
A retrospective review of records at an academic cancer center in Ontario, Canada, found that referrals for genetic counseling and the rates of genetic testing performed almost doubled over the 6-month period after Angelina Jolie announced she underwent a preventive double mastectomy because she...
Cytoreductive surgery with or without hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy extended survival over systemic therapy alone in well-selected candidates with peritoneal hepatocellular carcinoma, according to the results of a small retrospective trial reported by Tabrizian et al in the Journal of...
In the phase III CENTRIC EORTC 26071-22072 trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Stupp et al found that adding the selective αvβ3 and αvβ5 integrin inhibitor cilengitide to standard temozolomide chemoradiotherapy produced no survival benefit in newly diagnosed glioblastoma...
Circulating tumor cell clusters—clumps of from 2 to 50 tumor cells that break off a primary tumor and are carried through the bloodstream—appear to be much more likely to cause metastasis than are single circulating tumor cells, according to a study from investigators at the...
A subset of patients with stage III colon cancer had improved survival rates when treated with irinotecan-based therapy, according to a new study in Gastroenterology. When added to the standard chemotherapy treatment—fluorouracil [5-FU] and leucovorin—adjuvant irinotecan therapy...
Sequencing RNA, not just DNA, could help doctors predict how prostate cancer tumors will respond to treatment, according to research published in the journal Genome Biology. Because a tumor’s RNA shows the real-time changes a treatment is causing, the authors believe that this could be a...
The ACOSOG Z0011/Alliance trial showed that axillary lymph node dissection provides no benefit over sentinel lymph node biopsy in patients with breast cancer with one or two positive sentinel lymph nodes undergoing lumpectomy, radiotherapy, and systemic therapy. In an analysis reported in the...
Although chemoradiation has been increasingly used in advanced laryngeal cancer as part of an organ-preservation strategy, there is concern that this practice may have contributed to a decline in survival suggested by some data in this setting. In a population-based cohort study reported in JAMA...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Tworoger et al found that inclusion of endogenous hormone levels in the Gail and Rosner-Colditz risk scores improved prediction of postmenopausal invasive breast cancer. Study Details The study involved 437 patients with breast cancer and...
Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations found in the circulating-free tumor DNA from the plasma of advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients correlates well with the EGFR mutations from patient-matched tumor tissue DNA, according to new data reported by Douillard et...
An international, multi-institutional research group led by scientists at the Cancer and Blood Diseases Institute (CBDI) at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center has identified a novel molecular pathway that causes an aggressive form of medulloblastoma, The study, reported by He et al ...
In a retrospective study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Kollmannsberger et al found that active surveillance for patients with clinical stage I testicular cancer is associated with very good outcomes. Most relapses occurred within 2 years of orchiectomy in patients with nonseminoma...
Approximately half of all patients with posterior uveal melanoma develop metastatic liver disease within 15 years. Although brachytherapy utilizing current isotopes may be hindered by associated toxicities, the isotope ruthenium-106 has been reintroduced into the U.S. market. In a study published...
An international scientific collaboration led by Baylor College of Medicine as part of The Cancer Genome Atlas initiative has revealed clues about genetic alterations that may contribute to a rare form of kidney cancer. The study, which describes the landscape of somatic genomic alterations of...
Although the majority of patients with mantle cell lymphoma respond to initial therapy, the duration of remission is typically short (1.5 to 3 years). Although bortezomib (Velcade) and lenalidomide (Revlimid) as single agents have been associated with response rates as high as 53% in patients with...
In an analysis in the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study population reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Ford et al found that adult woman survivors of childhood cancer have poorer psychosexual function than their siblings without childhood cancer. Risk factors for poorer function included...
Despite advances in the treatment of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (the most common subtype of non-Hodgkin lymphoma), including the introduction of rituximab (Rituxan), diffuse large B-cell lymphoma patients living in low-socioeconomic-status neighborhoods have a 34% greater risk of dying from...
Updated recommendations (the Lugano Classification) for initial evaluation, staging, and assessment of response in patients with Hodgkin lymphoma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) have been presented in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Cheson et al. The recommendations are the result of two...
Barrington et al in the International Conference on Malignant Lymphomas Imaging Working Group have presented updated consensus guidelines on 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron-emission tomography (PET)-computed tomography (CT) for staging and response assessment for FDG-avid lymphomas. The...
Despite updates on cancer screening guidelines from several medical societies—including ASCO, the American Cancer Society, the American Urological Association, the American College of Physicians, as well as the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force—which use life expectancy and/or age as...
BluePrint in combination with MammaPrint molecular subtyping reclassified more than 20% of breast cancer patients into a different subgroup compared with conventional assessment, according to the results of the prospective Neoadjuvant Breast Registry Symphony Trial (NBRST). In Annals of Surgical...
The phase III NeoALTTO trial showed a significantly improved pathologic complete response rate with lapatinib (Tykerb) plus trastuzumab (Herceptin) vs either alone in women with HER2-positive early breast cancer. As reported in The Lancet Oncology by de Azambuja et al, the combination was not...
Links between a number of common respiratory diseases and an increased risk of developing lung cancer have been found in a large pooled analysis of seven studies involving more than 25,000 individuals. The findings by Denholm et al were published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Schleiermacher et al found ALK mutations at relapse of neuroblastoma that were not present at diagnosis. They also found that subclonal mutations may be present at diagnosis with clonal expansion observed at relapse. The study involved...
Researchers at Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) have found that the expression pattern of a unique class of tumor-associated antigens, known as the MAGE cancer-testis antigens (CTAs), correlates with clinical outcome in epithelial ovarian cancer. Based on their findings, the researchers have...