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Showing 15951 - 16000HIV-Related Lymphoma Can Be Safely Treated With Transplant
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive patients with relapsed/refractory lymphoma can safely undergo autologous hematopoietic cell transplantation, according to results of a phase II multicenter trial presented at the 56th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition in...
PI3K Inhibition in Hormone Receptor–Positive Breast Cancer ‘Not Ready for Prime Time’
Interest is high in studying the PI3K pathway in hormone receptor–positive breast cancer, but it is not clear which of the PI3K inhibitors under development—if any—will be a “home run.” The phase II FERGI study, reported at the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, failed to meet its primary...
Expert Point of View: Hagan Kennecke, MD, Pamela L. Kunz, MD, and George Fisher, MD, PhD
Hagan Kennecke, MD, Associate Professor, University of British Columbia at the British Columbia Cancer Agency, said in an interview, “It was important to see the detailed subgroup analysis for pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors, because that is a major patient population we treat, and it was not...
Targeting Biliary Tract Cancers Through Genomic Profiling
Biliary tract cancers are challenging, but a large genomic profiling study has identified potentially clinically relevant genomic alterations in up to two-thirds of patients.1 “The diverse landscape of clinically relevant genomic alterations in biliary tract cancers can serve as targets for...
Inhibiting the MET Pathway in Gastroesophageal Cancer: Hits and Misses
The MET pathway appears to be important in gastroesophageal cancers, but response to a targeted agent may depend on the class of drugs. A robust response to the novel small-molecule MET inhibitor AMG 337 was observed, but a monoclonal antibody targeting MET fell flat, in studies reported at the...
New Data Reported in Colorectal, Gastric, and Pancreatic Cancers
The 2015 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium, held January 15–17 in San Francisco, attracted almost 4,000 attendees, who heard or viewed data from nearly 800 scientific abstracts and lectures. Here are our summaries of some of the many important developments from the meeting. Bevacizumab Plus...
Addressing the Global Cancer Burden
Since 1990, the annual global death toll from cancer has risen about 40%, and that number is projected to increase from the current level of approximately 8 million cancer deaths per year to more than 13 million by 2030. The poorer, resource-challenged regions of the world will suffer a...
Big Data and the Promise of Precision Medicine in Cancer
Precision medicine—and its promise to revolutionize how we understand disease and care for our patients—is a concept that oncology has understood and embraced for well over a decade. But millions of Americans recently heard about the concept for the first time when President Obama announced a...
Active Surveillance in Intermediate-Risk Prostate Cancer Called Into Question
A study presented at the 2015 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium calls into question the use of active surveillance in patients with intermediate-risk prostate cancer. Patients with intermediate-risk prostate cancer managed with active surveillance had almost a four times higher risk of prostate...
Caregivers May Want to Know About a Patient’s Impending Death but May Be Afraid to Ask
The likelihood of impending death of patients with advanced cancer “is one of those questions that many people want to know about, but they are too afraid to ask,” David Hui, MD, MSc, said in an interview with The ASCO Post. Dr. Hui is lead author of a study, published in Cancer, on clinical signs...
Recognizing Physical Signs Associated With Impending Death Can Assist Clinicians, Patients, and Caregivers With Complex Decisions
In a recently published study of patients with advanced cancer whose status was systematically documented twice a day, from the time of admission to a palliative care unit until death or discharge, investigators identified eight physical signs associated with death within 3 days. Taken together...
Patient Guides Available Through ASCO University Bookstore
ASCO Answers: Managing the Cost of Cancer Care explains the various costs associated with cancer treatment, including health-care coverage through the Affordable Care Act. It also provides a list of financial resources available to help offset expenses related to care and tips for organizing...
Having Cancer So Early in Life Gave Me Purpose
I had every classic brain tumor symptom in the book—severe headaches, dizziness, morning nausea—which plagued me for 16 years, starting when I was 8. In college, if I allowed myself to sleep more than 4 hours a night, the morning headaches, which were centered on the top of my head, were so severe, ...
The Center of Who We Are
The following essay by Eric M. Genden, MD, is adapted 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 thebigcasino.org. There’s...
Study Finds Websites That Market Personalized Cancer Care Services Overemphasize Benefits
A recent analysis of 55 Internet websites marketing a broad range of tests and services that promise the ability to personalize cancer treatment has found that the websites often overemphasize their purported benefits and downplay their limitations. In addition, the study results show that the...
Clinical Trials Actively Recruiting Patients With Esophageal Cancer
The information contained in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting observational, interventional, phase I, phase II, and phase III clinical studies for patients with newly diagnosed or recurrent esophageal cancer. All of the studies are listed on the National Institutes...
Wrestling With the Challenges of Breast Cancer
Bookmark Title: Then Came Life: Living With Courage, Spirit, and Gratitude After Breast CancerAuthor: Geralyn LucasPublisher: Gotham BooksPublication date: October 2, 2014Price: $19.89; hardcover, 240 pages Over the past decade or so, the oncology community has increased its understanding and...
Medicine Turned Upside Down
BookmarkTitle: The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine Is in Your HandsAuthor: Eric Topol, MDPublisher: Basic BooksPublication date: January 2015Price: $28.99; hardcover, 384 pagesMost books about health care center on fixing broken parts of the massive $3 trillion system, as seen with ...
Silvia C. Formenti, MD, Appointed Chair of Radiation Oncology at Weill Cornell and Radiation Oncologist-in-Chief at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell
Silvia C. Formenti, MD, has been appointed Chair of the newly established Department of Radiation Oncology at Weill Cornell Medical College and Radiation Oncologist-in-Chief at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, effective April 15. Dr. Formenti, currently the Chair of Radiation...
New Partnership Launches to Empower People Diagnosed With Lymphoma
The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS), together with the Lymphoma Research Foundation (LRF), CancerCare, the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC), and Genentech announced the launch of a new partnership, the Alliance for Resource Collaboration in Hematology (ARCH). ARCH was developed...
Five Questions Can Guide the Treatment of Relapsed Myeloma
Joseph Mikhael, MD, MEd, myeloma expert at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona, Scottsdale, and Associate Dean of the Mayo School of Graduate Medical Education, considers five questions when selecting treatment for patients with multiple myeloma who relapse. “With prolonged survival, which approaches 10...
Avoiding Burnout and Maintaining Well-Being While Caring for Seriously Ill Patients
A variety of studies, including one published this past year in the Journal of Clinical Oncology,1 have showed that clinicians who care for seriously ill patients are at high risk for diminished personal well-being, including high rates of burnout; moral distress, defined as the inability to act in ...
ASCO’s Patient Resources for Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month
Stock your practice with Cancer.Net resources. Cancer.Net has a comprehensive guide to colorectal cancer at www.cancer.net/colorectal and a shorter, one-page colorectal cancer fact sheet. You will also find specialized resources for survivorship, palliative care, and managing the cost of cancer...
Helping Patients Understand Palliative Care
The booklet Palliative Care: Improving Quality of Life for Patients and Families is one of the latest additions to the ASCO Answers collection of patient education materials developed by ASCO for people with cancer and their caregivers. These materials provide oncologist-approved information in a...
Beating the Odds in The Big Casino
More than 35 ASCO members contributed personal essays to a recently published collection of stories about humanism in medicine, including ASCO Past Presidents Paul A. Bunn, Jr, MD, FASCO, and Emil J. Freireich, MD, FASCO, and current President-Elect Julie M. Vose, MD, MBA, FASCO. The Big Casino:...
2015 Pre–Annual Meeting Seminars Feature Important Topics for Modern Cancer Care Providers
ASCO will once again be offering a series of Pre–Annual Meeting Seminars ahead of its 2015 Annual Meeting in Chicago. First offered in 2012, the Pre–Annual Meeting Seminars are a series of in-depth educational opportunities dedicated to topics of interest in the oncology community. The seminars are ...
Development and Approval of Biosimilar Products
INSIDE THE BLACK BOX is an occasional column providing insight into the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its policies and procedures. In this installment, Leah Christl, PhD, and Albert Deisseroth, MD, PhD, answer questions about biosimilar products. Dr. Christl is the Associate Director...
Lenalidomide in Combination With Dexamethasone in Newly Diagnosed Multiple Myeloma
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On February 18, 2015, the indication for lenalidomide (Revlimid)...
UPMC Whitfield Cancer Centre Receives Joint Commission International Accreditation
For the third time since 2008, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Whitfield Cancer Centre, operated by UPMC in Waterford, Ireland, has successfully achieved accreditation from the Joint Commission International (JCI). This recognition is based on an extensive review of the center’s...
Ongoing Controversies in Allocating Our Health‑Care Resources
Disparities of care that result in poorer outcomes among certain populations have long been an issue addressed by the cancer community and its major organizations such as ASCO. While ethnicity and race play key roles in this ongoing debate over equitable allocation of our precious health-care...
Physician-Controlled Decisions in Cancer Care Linked to Lower Quality Rating
Patients who described physician-controlled decisions about their cancer care vs shared decision-making were less likely to report receiving excellent quality of care, according to a study published by JAMA Oncology.1 The Institute of Medicine has called for shared decision-making and accommodation ...
SOFT Trial Results Inconclusive: Further Study Needed
The results of the SOFT trial—presented at the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, reported recently by Francis et al in The New England Journal of Medicine,1 and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post—were not as conclusive as we had hoped. In essence, the study enrolled women with resected ...
Adjuvant Ovarian Suppression May Benefit Women With Premenopausal Breast Cancer Who Received Prior Chemotherapy
In a phase III trial (SOFT) reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Prudence A. Francis, MD, of Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, Australia, Meredith M. Regan, ScD, of IBCSG Statistical Centre at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, and colleagues found that the addition of...
Increasing the Use of Hypofractionated Radiation in Early-Stage Breast Cancer: The Way Forward
Bekelman and colleagues are to be congratulated on the publication of an important paper—reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post—alerting us all to the underutilization of hypofractionated whole-breast irradiation in the treatment of early-stage breast cancer.1 As background, recent randomized...
Expert Point of View: Nancy Kemeny, MD
Nancy Kemeny, MD, Attending Physician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, discussed the study at the session and noted several limitations: The data could be outdated (chemotherapy and surgery could be better now), some...
Many Cancer Patients at Risk for Hepatitis B Virus Reactivation
In 2015, no cancer patients should be cured of their malignancy only to die of reactivation of hepatitis B virus (HBV),” according to Anna S. Lok, MD, the Alice Lohrman Andrews Research Professor in Hepatology and Director of Clinical Hepatology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. “I...
Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University Names New Chief Medical Officer and Chief Quality Officer
Sagar Lonial, MD, has been named Chief Medical Officer at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University and Charles A. Staley, MD, has been named Chief Quality Officer, according to an announcement recently released by the Cancer Institute. Both physicians join Winship’s senior leadership team and...
AACR Names Nancy E. Davidson, MD, President-Elect for 2015–2016
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) has announced the election of Nancy E. Davidson, MD, Director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and UPMC CancerCenter in Pittsburgh, as its President-Elect for 2015–2016. Dr. Davidson will officially become President-Elect at the...
Adjuvant Chemotherapy Favored in Locally Advanced Bladder Cancer Not Treated With Neoadjuvant Therapy
A large observational study presented at the 2015 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium in Orlando, Florida, found that adjuvant chemotherapy extended the likelihood of survival in locally advanced bladder cancer compared with observation alone.1 Using three different approaches to propensity scores...
Antiangiogenesis Plus Chemotherapy Pursued in Advanced Bladder Cancer
Two separate phase II studies lend support to the concept of antiangiogenesis in advanced bladder cancer. The combination of an antiangiogenic agent and chemotherapy may fulfill an unmet need in this disease, the studies suggest. Both studies were presented at the 2015 Genitourinary Cancers...
Expert Point of View: Andrew Loblaw, MD
Commenting on this study, formal discussant D. Andrew Loblaw, MD, a radiation oncologist at the Odette Cancer Centre, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Canada, said: “The trial showed that after a median follow-up of 7.0 years, there were no differences in overall survival between the two ...
Our Aging Population: Challenges in Caring for Older Patients With Cancer
Managing older-aged cancer patients represents one of the major challenges to our health-care system. Caring for older cancer patients, with their frequent multiple morbidities and a variable health status, requires special integration of an oncologic and geriatric approach. Moreover, our aging...
Health-Care Fraud and Abuse: Implications for Oncology
Health-care fraud is a long-standing problem in the United States, accounting for $75 billion in government expenses per year,1 while total spending on government health-care programs is over $1 trillion. Two decades ago, the Department of Justice increased its efforts to combat health-care fraud....
Remembering Neurosurgeon and Writer Paul Kalanithi, MD
What initially drew me to read the eloquent essay by Paul Kalanithi, MD, in The New York Times—“How Long Have I Got Left?”—was its provocative title.1 What kept me there was the moving description of his quick transition from healthy physician with a brilliant career in neurosurgery to terminally...
Are Physicians Choosing Wisely When Imaging for Distant Metastases in Early-Stage Breast Cancer?
Patients with early-stage breast cancer still undergo imaging for distant metastases despite evidence-based local, national, and international guidelines—and a recommendation from ASCO—to avoid such imaging, according to a retrospective review of staging imaging for distant metastases in patients...
Use of Minimally Invasive Colorectal Cancer Surgery Increases at NCCN Centers, but Wide Variation Exists
“Laparoscopic colectomy has been shown to have equivalent oncologic outcomes to open colectomy for the management of colon cancer, but its adoption nationally has been slow,” Heather Yeo, MD, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and colleagues noted in reporting on a study...
Adding Aflibercept to FOLFIRI Resulted in Persistent Improvement in Overall Survival Over Time in Patients With Metastatic Disease
Patients with metastatic colorectal cancer showed a continued and persistent improvement in overall survival over time when they received the VEGF inhibitor aflibercept in addition to FOLFIRI (leucovorin, fluorouracil, irinotecan), according to a study reporting on the overall survival benefit and...
Health and Economic Burden of Skin Cancer Substantial and Increasing, Highlighting the Value of Prevention Efforts
The average annual number of adults treated for skin cancer, both melanoma and nonmelanoma, in the United States increased from 3.4 million in 2002 to 2006 to 4.9 million in 2007 to 2011 (P < .001), according to a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. “During this...
Patient Guides Available Through ASCO University Bookstore
ASCO Answers: Managing the Cost of Cancer Care explains the various costs associated with cancer treatment, including health-care coverage through the Affordable Care Act. It also provides a list of financial resources available to help offset expenses related to care and tips for organizing...
I Refuse to Capitulate to Cancer
Editor’s note: We regret to announce that Paul Kalanithi, MD, passed away on March 9, 2015. Dr. Kalanithi was Chief Resident in Neurological Surgery at Stanford University when he shared his story, reprinted here, with The ASCO Post just over 1 year ago, in March 2014. We extend our deepest...
