In a retrospective cohort study reported in JAMA Oncology, Ricciuti et al found that patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with higher tumor mutational burden (TMB) had better outcomes with PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitor treatment vs those with lower TMB across thresholds of PD-L1...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Neal D. Shore, MD, FACS, and colleagues, the phase II ENACT trial has shown a reduced risk of disease progression with the addition of enzalutamide to active surveillance in patients with low- or intermediate-risk localized prostate cancer. Study Details In the...
The all-oral combination of dabrafenib plus trametinib—two targeted therapies—significantly improved the overall response rate vs standard-of-care chemotherapy with carboplatin plus vincristine in pediatric patients with BRAF V600 mutation–positive low-grade gliomas. The clinical benefit rate...
Data from the world’s largest prostate cancer screening study provides further evidence to support the introduction of a targeted screening program for the disease, said researchers. In 2009, the European Randomised Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC) showed that screening can reduce...
Researchers have found a significant difference in the gut microbiota of patients with prostate cancer compared with those who have benign biopsies. Although the finding is an association, it could partly explain the relationship between lifestyle effects and geographic differences in prostate...
The invited discussant of PARADIGM, Chiara Cremolini, MD, PhD, Professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Pisa, Italy, said the findings prospectively confirm the superior benefit of FOLFOX (fluorouracil, leucovorin, oxaliplatin) paired with panitumumab rather than bevacizumab in RAS...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Bertamini et al found that higher levels of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) at diagnosis were associated with poorer progression-free and overall survival in transplant-eligible patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma. The prognostic...
In 2020, nearly 150,000 Americans, mostly those aged 50 and older, were diagnosed with colorectal cancer. However, about 18,000 of those individuals were younger than age 50. And while colorectal cancer rates have decreased for people over age 50, they have been increasing by 51% since 1994 for...
The treatment of breast cancer abounding in the protein HER2 was revolutionized with the introduction of drugs like trastuzumab that target the protein. When researchers discovered that breast cancers with lower levels of HER2 often respond to a trastuzumab-and-chemotherapy drug conjugate, they...
In a Dutch study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Klatte et al provided findings from a 20-year follow-up of a pancreatic cancer surveillance program including carriers of germline CDKN2A pathogenic variants. Study Details The study included 347 carriers in the Netherlands who...
On June 24, the editors of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published an editorial online in response to the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Court held in a vote of 5 to 4 that the Constitution of the United States does...
Ben Creelan, MD, Associate Member of Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, Florida, provided some context for the CHRYSALIS study. “This dual bispecific antibody targeting both EGFR and MET clearly has potent single-agent activity in patients with MET exon 14 skipping NSCLC,” he said. “For now, it is not...
In a cohort study reported in JAMA, Karla Kerlikowske, MD, and colleagues found that screening with digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) vs digital mammography was not associated with a lower risk of interval invasive breast cancer and was associated with a reduced risk of diagnosis of advanced...
In an analysis of the KEYNOTE-048 trial reported in a research letter in JAMA Oncology, Yu et al identified outcomes with pembrolizumab alone or combined with chemotherapy vs cetuximab plus chemotherapy in patients with recurrent or metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma with a low or...
Maxwell Oluwole Akanbi, MD, PhD, of McLaren Regional Medical Center, discusses the study he conducted, using the SEER database, to evaluate the impact of lung cancer screening recommendations on low-dose CT scanning. The data suggest that guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force led...
Our growing knowledge of the molecular and genomic drivers of cancer has translated into a robust pipeline of promising anticancer agents. However, bringing new drugs from the lab to the patient with cancer can be frustratingly slow. To that end, the accelerated approval system was created by the...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Garcés et al found that increasing levels of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) at diagnosis were associated with poorer outcomes in newly diagnosed patients with transplant-eligible multiple myeloma, and that inclusion of CTCs in a risk model...
On June 23, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval for dabrafenib (Tafinlar) plus trametinib (Mekinist) for the treatment of adult and pediatric patients aged 6 years and older with unresectable or metastatic solid tumors with a BRAF V600E mutation whose disease...
In a single-institution phase II study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Tapan M. Kadia, MD, and colleagues found that venetoclax and a lower-intensity backbone of cladribine and low-dose cytarabine alternating with azacitidine and venetoclax resulted in a high response rate in older...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Dbouk et al, in the multicenter Cancer of Pancreas Screening-5 (CAPS5) study and in the total CAPS cohort (CAPS1–5 studies), cases of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma among enrolled high-risk individuals that were screen-detected during...
Invited discussant Patricia LoRusso, DO, PhD, of Yale School of Medicine, said to the assembled audience at the 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting: “I see you are as excited about these data as I am,” after the applause ended following Dr. Modi’s presentation. “I want to thank our colleagues for helping to...
The antibody-drug conjugate fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) doubled progression-free survival compared with chemotherapy alone in patients with “HER2-low” metastatic breast cancer—ie, patients with low levels of HER2 expression. The agent also extended overall survival for patients with low ...
New research published by Zeng et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network raises issues with clinical trial findings that show adjuvant hormone therapy–related hot flashes predict better treatment outcomes among patients with estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer. The...
William Catalona, MD, Professor of Urology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, and past Principal Investigator on the Northwestern-based prostate SPORE, explained the evolution of his views regarding active surveillance in men with low-risk prostate cancer. Although...
Most men with low-risk prostate tumors now opt for active surveillance, but overtreatment remains a problem, according to data presented during the 2022 American Urological Association (AUA) Annual Meeting.1 A retrospective analysis of more than 20,000 patients with low-risk prostate cancer showed...
People with blood cancers living in rural areas are less likely to receive end-of-life hospice care compared to those living in metropolitan regions, according to a new study published by Hussaini et al in the journal Blood Advances. In this study, researchers identified significant disparities in...
On June 17, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized emergency use of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine and the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for the prevention of COVID-19 to include use in children as young as 6 months of age. For the Moderna vaccine, the FDA amended the emergency...
Adults who survive childhood cancer have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease than the general population, yet they are 80% more likely to be undertreated for several cardiovascular risk factors, such as hypertension, diabetes, and high cholesterol, according to new research published by Eric J. ...
In a study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Liu et al found that hypomethylating therapy was associated with upregulation of the oncogene SALL4 in a high proportion of patients with myelodysplastic syndrome. They also identified the gene region that is demethylated and responsible...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by D’Agostino et al in the European Myeloma Network, a second revision (R2-ISS) of the Revised International Staging System (R-ISS) incorporates a risk scoring system that permits delineation of four prognostic risk groups in newly diagnosed multiple...
FLT3-ITD–mutated acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is an aggressive disease usually resistant to available treatment options, resulting in high front-line response rates but short response durations and low survival rates. Quizartinib—a potent selective FLT3 inhibitor—can work synergistically with...
In a study reported in a research letter in JAMA Oncology, Nimgaonkar et al found that less than half of patients with urothelial cancer who had received first-line platinum-based therapy underwent testing for FGFR alterations and that less than half of patients with susceptible alterations...
Lisa A. Carey, MD, of the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Shanu Modi, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discuss the phase III findings from the DESTINY-Breast04 trial, which compared fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) vs treatment of...
The invited discussant of the TUXEDO-1 trial1 was Mafalda Oliveira, MD, PhD, of Vall d’Hebron University Hospital and Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, Barcelona. Dr. Oliveira noted that 40% of the 15 patients in TUXEDO-1 had symptomatic disease, and 60% had central nervous system metastases...
The Moroccan Cancer Society (MCS; Société Marocaine de Cancérologie/https://smc.ma) was created in 1992 by a group of Moroccan medical and radiation oncologists, surgeons, and pathologists who had led the field in the 1980s. To date, this scientific society has more than 350 members practicing in...
In the single-center phase II TUXEDO-1 trial of patients with advanced HER2-positive breast cancer, fam-trastuzumab-deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) showed efficacy in patients with active brain metastases, yielding intracranial responses in 73.3% of the population and a median progression-free survival of...
The COVID-19 pandemic and the confluence of events that followed—including the rapid development of vaccines, the mixed messaging on mitigation efforts to prevent coronavirus infection, and the growing political polarization—helped spark public mistrust and skepticism toward science. This mistrust...
It is estimated that globally, more than 600,000 women per year are diagnosed with cervical cancer, and more than 300,000 die annually of the disease.1 Many women continue to be diagnosed with cervical cancer at an advanced stage, with a high risk of recurrence. To date, the most effective...
Preliminary results of the basket BEGONIA trial showed that the antibody-drug conjugate datopotamab deruxtecan (Dato-DXd), paired with the immune checkpoint inhibitor durvalumab, has strong activity in advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer among patients not biomarker-selected for...
Since the introduction of trastuzumab in the late 1990s, overall survival for patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer has substantially improved. Median overall survival in the pivotal first-line trial was only 20.3 months in the chemotherapy arm, and 25.1 months in the...
Although overall cancer incidence and mortality are declining across all population groups, compared with White individuals, racial and ethnic minorities and other medically underserved populations continue to shoulder a disproportionate burden of cancer, according to the study results published in ...
Manali I. Patel, MD, MPH, of Stanford University School of Medicine, discusses clinical trial findings on the best ways to integrate community-based interventions into cancer care delivery for low-income and minority populations. Such interventions may improve quality of life and patient activation ...
Timothy J. Whelan, MD, of McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences, discusses findings from the LUMINA study, which found that women aged 55 or older who had grade 1–2 T1N0 luminal A breast cancer following breast-conserving surgery and were treated with endocrine therapy alone had very low ...
In the updated final analysis of the phase II ECOG-ACRIN E2211 trial, patients with advanced pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors experienced a significant improvement in progression-free survival with capecitabine plus temozolomide over temozolomide alone.1 Although the 5-month difference in overall...
Researchers from the SWOG Cancer Research Network, a clinical trials group funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), found that the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) expansion of Medicaid insurance in 2014 was followed by a significant increase in the proportion of patients enrolling in SWOG trials...
Based on guidance from biomarker screening, patients with low-grade luminal A–type breast cancer aged 55 and older may need endocrine therapy alone following breast-conserving surgery and may be able to avoid radiation therapy entirely, according to new research findings presented by Timothy Joseph ...
The combination of two targeted therapies, the BRAF inhibitor dabrafenib and the MEK inhibitor trametinib, significantly increased the overall response rate compared to the standard-of-care chemotherapy combination of carboplatin plus vincristine in pediatric patients with BRAF V600...
To fully evaluate hormone-blocking therapy following surgery for patients with early-stage high-risk hormone receptor–positive/HER2-negative breast cancer, researchers should continue to track patients for at least 5 years after the completion of active treatment, according to a study reported at...
The use of fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki doubled progression-free survival compared with the standard-of-care treatment plus conventional chemotherapy. It also significantly improved overall survival for patients with metastatic breast cancers expressing low levels of the HER2 receptor,...
A new genomic test designed to measure the endocrine sensitivity of estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer has the potential to identify patients diagnosed with the disease who could benefit more from dose-dense chemotherapy—a regimen in which chemotherapy is administered more frequently than...