Maciej (Matt) Lesniak, MD, has been named the Michael J. Marchese Professor and Chair of the Departments of Neurological Surgery at Feinberg School of Medicine and Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Prior to joining Northwestern, Dr. Lesniak was a Professor of Neurosurgery, Neurology, and...
Breast cancer and ovarian cancer specialist, Victoria L. Seewaldt, MD, has joined City of Hope as the Ruth Ziegler Chair in Population Sciences. Dr. Seewaldt, who is a specialist in developing risk models for aggressive cancers, will also serve as the Associate Director of the Comprehensive Cancer...
Nancy A. Speck, PhD, has been named Chair of the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the Associate Director of Penn’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Co-Leader of the Hematologic Malignancies Program at...
The Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF) announced that it has appointed Marc Hurlbert, PhD, as its new Chief Mission Officer (CMO). Formerly the Executive Director of the Avon Breast Cancer Crusade, Dr. Hurlbert succeeds Margaret (Peg) Mastrianni, who will retire in January 2016 after serving...
In 2014, the Institute of Medicine report Dying in America: Improving Quality and Honoring Individual Preferences Near the End of Life called for more conversations about improving care for those who are dying. Improving the care of the imminently dying is an important issue in the oncology...
On October 21 in Washington, DC, the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship (NCCS) hosted a reception to honor Richard Pazdur, MD, and Ellen Goodman. NCCS Chief Executive Officer, Shelly Fuld Nasso, welcomed attendees to the special awards reception. NCCS Public Service Leadership Award The...
Renowned clinician-scientist Alec Kimmelman, MD, PhD, has been named Chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at NYU Langone Medical Center. His appointment is effective February 1, 2016. Dr. Kimmelman joins the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone following a distinguished...
Manuel Hidalgo, MD, PhD, an oncologist whose work in experimental cancer therapy and tumor model development has led to key advances in the treatment of pancreatic cancer, has been named Director of the Leon V. & Marilyn L. Rosenberg Clinical Cancer Center and Chief of the Division of...
Sandra L. Wong, MD, MS, the William W. Coon Professor of Surgical Oncology and Associate Chair of Clinical Affairs at the University of Michigan Health System, has been named Chair of Surgery at Dartmouth-Hitchcock and the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and Senior Vice President of the...
On October 28, 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the monoclonal antibody ipilimumab (Yervoy) for the adjuvant treatment of patients with cutaneous melanoma with pathologic involvement of regional lymph nodes of more than 1 mm who have undergone complete resection, including ...
While inhibitors of programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) or its ligand (PD-L1) are becoming established in melanoma, non–small cell lung cancer, and renal cell carcinoma, their efficacy is also being evaluated in numerous other tumor types, with promising results, according to studies presented...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved irinotecan liposome injection (Onivyde), in combination with fluorouracil (5-FU) and leucovorin, to treat patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer who have been previously treated with gemcitabine-based chemotherapy. The effectiveness of...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the novel chemotherapy drug trabectedin (Yondelis) for the treatment of specific soft-tissue sarcomas—liposarcoma and leiomyosarcoma—that are unresectable or metastatic. Trabectedin is a novel marine antineoplastic alkaloid with a unique mechanism ...
In 1997, after surviving a storm of high-court legal challenges, Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act went into effect, making Oregon the first American state to legalize physician-assisted suicide. The Supreme Court ruled that there was no right to assisted suicide in the Constitution but implied that...
Mercy Killers is a one-man show that details the consequences of a medical health-care catastrophe (breast cancer) in a family.1 This disturbing fictional account is actually a daily event in cancer centers: losing insurance for technicalities, losing a home because of an inability to pay the...
Intensity-modulated radiation therapy appears to be preferable to three-dimensional (3D) conformal radiation therapy as part of treatment for patients with locally advanced (stage III) non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Compared with 3D conformal radiotherapy, intensity-modulated radiotherapy...
Susan G. Komen has announced the recipients of the 2015 Brinker Awards for Scientific Distinction, which honors leading scientists who have made the most significant advances in breast cancer research and medicine. The 2015 recipients of the Brinker Awards for Scientific Distinction are Myles A....
As Chair of the American Cancer Society (ACS) panel that issued an updated guideline for breast cancer screening, Kevin C. Oeffinger, MD, has answered questions and offered perspective on the updated guideline and its development for The New York Times, USA Today, and other major media outlets. As...
The reactions to the updated breast cancer screening guideline from the American Cancer Society (ACS) have been many, varied, and not consistently favorable but not surprising to Kevin C. Oeffinger, MD, who chaired the ACS panel that issued the guideline. Breast cancer screening “is an area that...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) will honor Curt Civin, MD, and Craig Kitchens, MD, MACP, with 2015 Mentor Awards at the 57th ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition in Orlando, Florida, for their sustained, outstanding commitment to the training and career development of early-career...
Bookmark Title: Dr. Mütter’s Marvels: A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern MedicineAuthor: Cristin O’Keefe AptowiczPublisher: Gotham BooksPublication date: September 8, 2015Price: $17.00, paperback; 384 pages In the late 1740s, John Wesley—a British evangelist and...
DECEMBER Markers in Cancer 2015December 1-2 • Brussels, Belgium For more information: http://markersincancer.org 9th European Colorectal Congress (ECC)December 1-4 • St.Gallen, Switzerland For more information: www.colorectalsurgery.eu Advances in Cancer ImmunotherapyTMDecember 4 • New Orleans,...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) has announced the names of 18 medical students and 10 residents selected to receive a 2015 ASH HONORS Award. The ASH HONORS Award aims to support hematology research projects for North American medical students and residents who are interested in hematology...
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...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) will honor Barbara Furie, PhD, of Harvard Medical School, and Bruce Furie, MD, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, with the 2015 E. Donnall Thomas Lecture for their groundbreaking research in hemostasis and thrombosis over the ...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted accelerated approval for daratumumab (Darzalex) to treat patients with multiple myeloma who have received at least three prior treatments, including a proteasome inhibitor and an immunomodulatory agent, or who are double-refractory to a proteasome...
On November 10, 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the MEK inhibitor cobimetinib (Cotellic) in combination with the BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib (Zelboraf) to treat metastatic or unresectable melanoma in patients whose tumors express the BRAF V600E or V600K mutation. Approval...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the “Art of Oncology” as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO). These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
In June, the Commission on Cancer of the American College of Surgeons published a revision of its Facility Oncology Registry Data Standards (FORDS) manual, which contains all the data items, codes, and rules to abstract data into cancer registries at the more than 1,500 Commission on...
A team at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto has used focused ultrasound to enable temporary and targeted opening of the blood-brain barrier, allowing the more effective delivery of chemotherapy into a patient’s malignant brain tumor. This is the first known report of the noninvasive...
Two years ago, Richard L. Schilsky, MD, FACP, FASCO, Chief Medical Officer of ASCO, proposed a unique clinical trial concept during an educational session on the challenges of delivering precision medicine services in a community setting at ASCO’s Annual Meeting. The idea was to design a clinical...
Not only is breast cancer among the most common cancers in women, but it is also one of the most common causes of premature death. Rates of death from the disease vary widely around the world, reflecting variations in risk, screening, and access to highest quality treatment. Although female gender...
The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) announced that Richard G. Battaglia, MD, FACP, has joined the senior leadership team of the organization and will serve as Chief Medical Officer, leading ABIM’s effort to incorporate feedback from practicing physicians and key stakeholders into...
A Century of Progress The text and photographs on this page are excerpted from a four-volume series of books titled Oncology Tumors & Treatment: A Photographic History, by Stanley B. Burns, MD, FACS. The photos below are from the volume titled “The X-ray Era: 1901–1915.” To view additional...
In the October 25 issue of The ASCO Post, we presented two important studies in previously treated advanced renal cell carcinoma, including the paper by Motzer et al “Nivolumab versus everolimus in advanced renal-cell carcinoma” (CheckMate 025), published in The New England Journal of Medicine,...
In late August 2015, Gregory A. Masters, MD, and colleagues published an update to the ASCO guidelines for systemic therapy for stage IV non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), summarized in this issue of The ASCO Post.1 This builds on the full guidelines published in 20092 and the additional switch...
For the past 30 years, mammography screening has been one of the most contentious issues in medicine. Controversy has generally centered on the age at which to begin mammography screening (40 vs 50 years) and also, to a lesser extent, on the age at which it should stop. The recent American Cancer...
According to recent national headlines, the American Cancer Society (ACS) now recommends that women at average risk of breast cancer should “screen later and less often.”1 While the new ACS recommendations (summarized in this issue of The ASCO Post) might initially be taken as casting doubt on the...
Launched in 2002 as a pilot program to promote excellence in oncology care, the origins of ASCO’s Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI®) date as far back as 1997, when the Institute of Medicine (IOM) created a National Cancer Policy Board to assess the state of cancer care in the United...
The Commonwealth Foundation for Cancer Research has pledged $20 million to the Bridge Project, a collaborative research program of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC), to accelerate the...
City of Hope in Duarte, California, recently announced the following new appointments. Susanne G. Warner, MD Dr. Warner has been appointed Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Surgery. She received her medical degree from Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine, where...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) will recognize Nancy Speck, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, and Karl Welte, MD, of Hannover Medical School, with the 2015 Henry M. Stratton Medal for their seminal contributions in the areas of basic and...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) will honor Alfred Goldberg, PhD, of Harvard Medical School, and Paul Richardson, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, with the 2015 Ernest Beutler Lecture and Prize for their significant research advances in the area of proteasome inhibitors and their...
The number of targeted therapies approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the treatment of a variety of cancers, especially hematologic malignancies, continues to rise. In 2014 alone, 4 of the 10 new agents directed at discrete molecular targets approved by the FDA were for blood...
The genetic basis for inherited colorectal cancer is proving to be a much bigger and more complicated “pie” than was appreciated just a few years ago, according to Michael Hall, MD, Director of Gastrointestinal Risk Assessment at Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia. “With next-generation...
The final 2016 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule released October 30, 2015, by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) included cuts to radiation oncology clinics that were slightly less severe than anticipated, according to a news release issued by the American Society for Radiation...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) recently announced that Stephen S. Chung, MD, will receive the inaugural Jake Wetchler Foundation ASH Scholar Award for Pediatric Innovation for his research on the mechanisms of bone marrow failure syndromes. This work could ultimately lead to an improved...
Updated analysis of the STAMPEDE trial found no benefit for zoledronic acid in reducing deaths or skeletal-related events and confirmed the overall survival benefit of docetaxel in men with advanced hormone-sensitive prostate cancer. MDV3100, in advanced triple-negative breast cancer, found a...
The 2015 European Cancer Congress (ECC), held recently in Vienna, represented the combined efforts of the European Cancer Organisation (ECCO), the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), and other partner organisations, constituting the largest European platform for oncology education. At...
The International Society of Gastrointestinal Oncology (ISGIO) has named Howard Hochster, MD, as President-Elect. Dr. Hochster, Professor of Medical Oncology; Associate Director for Clinical Sciences at Yale Cancer Center; and Director of the Gastrointestinal Cancers Program at Smilow Cancer...