Population-based genomic screening may facilitate early detection of medullary thyroid cancer in patients with variants in the RET gene, according to a new study published by Pichardo et al in JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery. Background Medullary thyroid cancer accounts for 2% to 5% of...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Aranzazu Fernandez-Martinez, MD, PhD, and colleagues found that several B-cell–related gene signatures provided better prediction of pathologic complete response and event-free survival than tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) levels among patients with...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, McDonald et al found that receipt of blood or marrow transplantation (BMT) was associated with an increased risk of subsequent malignant neoplasms of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. As stated by the investigators, “Survivors of BMT are at increased risk of...
New research shows that patients with type 2 diabetes may experience a substantially higher rate of cancer mortality than the general population—by 18% for all cancers combined, 9% for breast cancer, and as much as 2.4-fold for colorectal cancer—according to a new study published by Ling et al in...
In a Taiwanese study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Hsu et al found that survivors of childhood and adolescent cancers were at a significantly increased risk of multiple major psychiatric disorders compared to those without cancer. Study Details The study used data from a...
Most of us have felt our stomachs sink as we opened a patient’s radiology or laboratory report and realized the patient faced a grave situation. If we’re lucky, we have a couple of days before a scheduled patient appointment to prepare ourselves to deliver that bad news. Other times, we may have...
The four inaugural recipients of the Lubin Family Foundation Scholar Award have been announced by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Richard K. Lubin Family Foundation. Lubin Scholars are among the most promising physician-scientists pursuing cancer-relevant basic or translational...
Isaac Craig Henderson, MD, passed away at the age of 81 at his home in San Francisco on December 26, 2022, after a brief illness. Dr. Henderson was an internationally known medical oncologist who specialized in breast cancer, beginning his career at Harvard’s then-designated Sidney Farber Cancer...
Nancy Chan, MD, Director of Breast Cancer Clinical Research at NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, New York, commented on the monarchE analysis for The ASCO Post. She noted that the study investigated the addition of adjuvant abemaciclib (an oral CDK4/6 inhibitor) to endocrine therapy in a...
Results of a planned interim overall survival analysis of the phase III monarchE trial offered further support for the addition of abemaciclib to adjuvant endocrine therapy for patients with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative, node-positive, high-risk disease, according to Stephen R.D....
Jaime A. Suarez-Londono, MD, a medical oncologist at NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center and Assistant Professor of Medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, said the results of the ASAP study provide a basis for discussion with the transplant team. “The landscape of treatment of acute...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) will award the 19th AACR–Irving Weinstein Foundation Distinguished Lectureship to Andrea Schietinger, PhD, during the 2023 AACR Annual Meeting, held April 14–19, in Orlando, Florida. Dr. Schietinger, an associate member of the Immunology Program...
Options are growing in the treatment of mantle cell lymphoma after complete response. At the 2022 Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference,1 the use of these newer strategies in older patients was discussed by Brad S. Kahl, MD, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Lymphoma Service at Washington...
Oxidative stress is a key factor in the development of many diseases including cancer. Antioxidants prevent cellular damage by neutralizing free radicals and are being investigated as potential therapeutic strategies against cancer. In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology...
As an oncologist, I had cared for patients facing grave illness and death. I imagined the loss of loved ones and expected grief to be an unbearable sadness, most poignant in the earliest days and lessening with time. I somehow expected that counseling people who grieved would make me more prepared. ...
Lymphoma expert Jeremy S. Abramson, MD, was born in Westchester County, New York, but soon after, his family relocated to Bergen County, New Jersey, where he spent his formative years. “I attended Tenafly High School and had dual passions: one was the natural sciences and the other on the...
The promise of bispecific monoclonal antibodies in multiple myeloma continues to heighten as yet another one appears to be active. In a study reported at the 2022 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition,1 almost two-thirds of patients with triple-refractory disease who...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Pieter Sonneveld, MD, PhD, of Erasmus MC Cancer Institute, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and colleagues, the final overall survival analysis of the phase III CASTOR trial has shown a significant benefit of the addition of daratumumab to...
In the phase III NAPOLI-3 trial in previously untreated patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer, the NALIRIFOX regimen significantly improved overall survival and progression-free survival over nab-paclitaxel plus gemcitabine. NALIRIFOX contains liposomal irinotecan, fluorouracil, leucovorin,...
A new ASCO guideline on opioids in managing pain from cancer or cancer treatment in adults provides recommendations on administering them in the midst of interventions to address the public health crisis from their misuse and related deaths across the country.1 “ASCO took wonderful leadership in...
The formal discussant of ARC-7 was Solange Peters, MD, PhD, Chair of Medical Oncology, Centre D’Oncologie Chuv, Lausanne University Hospital, Switzerland, and President of the European Society for Medical Oncology. Dr. Peters described how TIGIT (T-cell immunoglobulin and ITIM domain) plays a role ...
Offering their thoughts on the study by Williams et al from the St. Jude Lifetime Cohort were Jane N. Winter, MD, Immediate Past President of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), and Catherine Bollard, MBChB, MD. Both moderated press briefings where the results were presented or discussed....
Long-term follow-up of survivors of childhood Hodgkin lymphoma from the St. Jude Lifetime Cohort showed signs of “epigenetic accelerated aging,” and many of these survivors had signs of neurocognitive impairment by their late 30s, researchers reported at the 2022 American Society of Hematology...
The next-generation Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor zanubrutinib demonstrated superior progression-free survival compared with ibrutinib, with an improved cardiac safety profile, in the first head-to-head comparison between these two BTK inhibitors in relapsed or refractory chronic...
Two separate studies presented at the 2022 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition provide preliminary evidence that triplet combinations may have a role in the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Both triplets were based on the addition of a third drug to standard ...
The 2022 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition was full of interesting abstracts in multiple myeloma. In addition to full coverage of several important presentations, The ASCO Post offers readers quick takes on some studies that could be practice-changing and others...
A pilot study provides a signal that the novel HER2 antibody-drug conjugate fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd), is active in the neoadjuvant setting in patients with HER2-low breast cancer. Overall response rates were 75% with T-DXd alone and 63% when T-DXd was combined with endocrine therapy...
For more than 2 decades, Don S. Dizon, MD, FACP, FASCO, has devoted his medical career to the care of women’s cancers and the sexual health of cancer survivors of all genders and sexual identities. Early in his career, Dr. Dizon founded the Center for Sexuality, Intimacy, and Fertility at Women...
A specific colonization of pathogenic microbes in the reproductive tract may be commonly found in patients with ovarian cancer, according to a new study published by Asangba et al in Scientific Reports. The discovery strengthens evidence that the bacterial component of the microbiome may be an...
In the single-center phase III MIRAGE trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Amar U. Kishan, MD, and colleagues found that use of margin reduction with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) resulted in significantly reduced acute genitourinary (GU) and...
Electronic nudges delivered to health-care clinicians based on a machine-learning algorithm capable of predicting mortality risk quadrupled rates of conversations with patients about their end-of-life care preferences, according to a new study published by Manz et al in JAMA Oncology. The study...
Researchers have developed and tested an artificial intelligence (AI) tool known as Sybil, which may accurately predict the risk of lung cancer for individuals with or without a significant smoking history using data from low-dose chest computed tomography (CT) scans, according to a new study...
Investigators discovered that PD-1 inhibition prior to surgery may be effective for patients with localized mismatch repair–deficient or microsatellite instability–high (dMMR/MSI-H) colorectal cancer, according to a study published by Xiao et al in JNCCN–Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer ...
Researchers discovered that a significant number of patients aged 65 years and older may be facing late-stage cervical cancer diagnoses and disease-related mortality—despite U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines recommending that most patients stop screening for cervical...
The adoptive T-cell receptor therapy afamitresgene autoleucel—which targets the MAGE-A4 cancer antigen—achieved clinically significant results for patients with multiple solid tumor types in a phase I clinical trial, according to a novel study published by Hong et al in Nature Medicine. Initial...
For patients with early-stage prostate cancer being managed by active surveillance, adding the hormonal agent apalutamide may lower the rate of positive biopsies during follow-up, suggest findings from a preliminary clinical trial published by Schweizer et al in The Journal of Urology. "In our...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Sjöström et al identified a 16-gene signature—Profile for the Omission of Local Adjuvant Radiation, or POLAR—that predicted low likelihood of benefit from adjuvant radiotherapy in preventing locoregional recurrence in patients with...
Seth Wander, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Mass General Cancer Center, Boston, commented on the findings of the EMERALD trial. “We have seen a large amount of new data emerging related to elacestrant and other novel SERDs [selective estrogen receptor degraders]. Despite initial expectations based...
In a UK study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Lee et al found that systematic random biopsies were more likely than endoscopically targeted biopsies to first detect signet ring cell carcinoma during endoscopic surveillance of individuals meeting testing criteria for hereditary diffuse gastric...
Despite widespread awareness of the importance of screening for asymptomatic, early detection of cancer, screening tests exist for only five cancer types. With few recommended cancer screening tests and generally low adherence to cancer screening recommendations, it is difficult to detect cancer...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Tian et al found that clonal hematopoiesis was associated with an increased risk of subsequent lung cancer, independent of known risk factors. Study Details Two nested case-control studies were performed. One included 832 incident lung cancer ...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and ASCO recently released a joint policy statement outlining the latest research on the use of e-cigarettes and other electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) and recommendations for regulating these products to protect public health. The...
The KRAS G12C inhibitor sotorasib demonstrated clinically meaningful anticancer activity with an acceptable safety profile in heavily pretreated patients with KRAS G12C–mutated metastatic pancreatic cancer, accordi�ng to a novel study published by Strickler et al in The New England Journal of...
New findings revealed that the highest mortality rates for prostate cancer among White male patients were found in the Western United States—including California—despite low incidence rates, according to a new study published by Schafer et al in European Urology. However, when compared with White...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Bröckelmann et al, final results of the German Hodgkin Study Group phase II NIVAHL trial indicate nearly 100% progression-free survival and 100% overall survival at 3 years among patients with early-stage unfavorable classical Hodgkin lymphoma...
The ASCO Post is pleased to present Hematology Expert Review, an ongoing feature that quizzes readers on issues in hematology. In the concluding half of this two-part installment, which began in our November 25 issue, Drs. Syed Ali Abutalib and Mrinal M. Patnaik continue to explore the current...
Despite the benefits of lung cancer screening, including the high cure rate when found by screening compared to being discovered based on symptoms, the uptake of this technique among those who are eligible and where the screening is fully covered by insurance remains dismally low, on the order of...
Diarrhea in patients with cancer is a well-known phenomenon with clear guidelines for prevention and management. However, it remains a condition with poorly explored consequences and a lack of sufficient and fast-acting treatments. In a webinar presented by members of the Multinational Association...
After a 4-year in-person hiatus because of the COVID-19 global pandemic, the World Cancer Congress, hosted by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), held its first hybrid in-person and virtual meeting in October in Geneva. The conference brought together more than 2,000 attendees from...
The cancer prevention and survival research organization World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) International recently launched the Global Cancer Update Programme, a new and updated version of the organization’s flagship research program, which was previously known as the Continuous Update Project. This ...