Botensilimab (AGEN1181) in combination with balstilimab (AGEN2034) induced durable responses in patients with platinum-resistant or -refractory ovarian cancer, in the ongoing phase Ib C-800 study presented at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) 2023 Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer by Bruno...
Platinum resistance occurs in almost all patients whose ovarian cancer recurs. Single-agent chemotherapies are commonly used in this setting, but outcomes are generally poor, leaving a large unmet need for effective treatment. At the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) 2023 Annual Meeting on...
Carol Aghajanian, MD, Chief of the Gynecologic Medical Oncology Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, commented on the final analysis of NOVA for The ASCO Post. She highlighted the difficulty in truly measuring overall survival in recurrent ovarian cancer. Dr. Aghajanian also ...
After resolving missing survival data in the phase III ENGOT-OV16/NOVA trial, no statistically significant difference in overall survival was found for patients with platinum-sensitive recurrent ovarian cancer who received maintenance therapy with the PARP inhibitor niraparib, investigators...
Amanda Nickles Fader, MD, Professor of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Professor of Oncology, and Vice Chair of Gynecologic Surgical Operations at Johns Hopkins Health System, Baltimore, provided her thoughts on GOG 3026 for The ASCO Post. Dr. Fader applauded the investigators and the Gynecologic...
In patients with recurrent low-grade serous ovarian cancer, treatment with ribociclib plus letrozole was not only active, but led to outcomes that are comparable to those achieved with current agents—with a particularly striking 19-month duration of response—according to Brian M. Slomovitz, MD,...
Two studies presented at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) 2023 Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer underscore the importance of enrolling patients with gynecologic cancer on clinical trials and of assuring trial access to racial minorities. One study found a statistically significant...
The oral, small-molecule Wee1 kinase inhibitor adavosertib was clinically active but not well tolerated by more than half the patients with recurrent or persistent uterine serous carcinoma in the phase IIb ADAGIO trial. The findings were reported at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) 2023...
“Endometrial cancer is the most frequently diagnosed gynecologic malignancy in the United States, and it is the only one where the mortality has actually risen over the past 40 years,” noted Rebecca Arend, MD, MSH, Associate Professor at the University of Alabama and Associate Scientist in the...
The addition of a checkpoint inhibitor to standard chemotherapy as first-line treatment of advanced endometrial cancer reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 70% in patients with mismatch repair–deficient (dMMR) tumors in two recent phase III studies. The results of the two...
The sun was out, and the weather was beautiful for the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) 2023 Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer held in Tampa, Florida, in March 2023. Participants came from across the world for this second hybrid gathering since the COVID-19 pandemic to share ongoing advances in ...
Except for a ganglion cyst that had mysteriously popped up on the palm of my right hand in the winter of 2016, I appeared to be in excellent health. I had never had any serious illnesses in my then 55 years and rarely even got colds. If the annoying cyst hadn’t interfered with my normal daily...
There are “three main messages” to be gleaned from a study about emergency department visits and unplanned hospitalizations among patients with cancer, the study’s lead author, Amir Alishahi Tabriz, MD, PhD, MPH, told The ASCO Post. Dr. Alishahi is Assistant Member, Department of Health Outcomes...
Emergency department (ED) visits by patients with cancer increased by 67.1% between the start of 2012 and the end of 2019, compared with an increase of just 7.5% in cancer incidence, according to a recent study in JAMA Network Open.1 Factors identified as possible explanations for the...
The ASCO Post is pleased to present Hematology Expert Review, an ongoing feature that quizzes readers on issues in hematology. In this installment, we begin a new series of articles on cancer immunology and immunotherapy, in which the authors discuss how immunotherapy has become a major pillar of...
On April 3, 2023, enfortumab vedotin-ejfv with pembrolizumab was granted accelerated approval for patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma ineligible for cisplatin-containing chemotherapy.1,2 Enfortumab vedotin-ejfv is an antibody-drug conjugate targeting nectin 4....
In an article in Annals of the American Thoracic Society, James L. Mulshine, MD, of the Center for Healthy Aging, Department of Medicine, Rush University, and colleagues maintained that the high frequency of emphysema newly identified during low-dose computed tomography (CT) lung cancer screening...
In hormone receptor–positive metastatic breast cancer, tumors eventually become resistant not only to endocrine blockade but to inhibitors of cyclin-dependent kinases 4 and 6 (CDK4/6). This obstacle to successful treatment is being tackled with novel hormone receptor–directed therapies, with the...
Invited discussant Jarushka Naidoo, MBBCh, MHS, Professor of Medical Oncology and Consultant Medical Oncologist, Beaumont RCSI Cancer Centre, in Dublin, called the results of amivantamab-vmjw therapy in patients with EGFR exon 20 insertion–positive advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)...
Using liquid biopsies to detect circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) may soon transform treatment strategies for patients with advanced EGFR-mutant non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to data presented during the European Lung Cancer Congress 2023 by lead study author Jordi Remon, MD, PhD, of...
The invited discussant for the CodeBreaK 200 trial, Jarushka Naidoo, MBBCh, MHS, Professor of Medical Oncology and Consultant Medical Oncologist at Beaumont RCSI Cancer Centre in Dublin, underscored the importance of patient-reported outcomes in evaluating the effectiveness of oncology treatments,...
The latest research on sotorasib, a targeted therapy for KRAS G12C–mutated non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), reveals that patients may experience better quality of life while benefiting from improved clinical outcomes. Analysis of patient-reported outcomes presented during the European Lung...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) presented Olivier Delattre, MD, PhD, with the 2023 AACR–St. Baldrick’s Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement in Pediatric Cancer Research during the AACR Annual Meeting 2023 in April in Orlando, Florida. Dr. Delattre is Director of the...
Jaffer A. Ajani, MD, Professor of Medicine in the Department of Gastrointestinal Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, told The ASCO Post that obesity (defined as high body mass index of 30–39.9 kg/m2) is increasing around the globe; by 2035, more than 50% of adults will...
Formal discussant of the mRNA-4157-P201/KEYNOTE-942 trial, Margaret K. Callahan, MD, PhD, Research Director, Immunotherapeutics Program, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, agreed that finding an effective cancer vaccine has been challenging, and she is “cautiously optimistic” about...
The search for an effective cancer vaccine has been frustrating, but finally there may be light at the end of the tunnel. Adjuvant use of an investigational personalized mRNA vaccine (mRNA-4157) plus the PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab improved recurrence-free survival vs pembrolizumab alone in...
On May 9, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) posted a draft recommendation statement on screening for breast cancer. The USPSTF now recommends that all women get screened for breast cancer every other year starting at age 40 years (this is a B grade recommendation, meaning the USPSTF...
Researchers have revealed the impacts of several new developments in screening and treating patients with biliary tract cancer and colorectal cancer—including the development of patient-derived organoids to test chemotherapy response, the use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) to...
No one doubts the deadly nature of high-grade serous ovarian cancer. This histologic subtype is responsible for most ovarian cancer deaths, representing the eighth leading cause of cancer deaths in women worldwide and the fifth in the United States. Although there has been some progress in...
Screening that reduces cancer mortality serves as a foundational element of impactful care for certain cancers. That said, harms related to screening deserve our attention—overdiagnoses; diagnostic odysseys that may be invasive, expensive, or even unintentionally harmful; overtreatment of diagnosed ...
Invited discussant Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, Deputy Director of the Yale Cancer Center, New Haven, Connecticut, called this “a very exciting abstract exploring when surgery meets immunotherapy.” He commented: “NSCLC is a big disease, affecting 2 million or more people worldwide, and this is the tip...
Patients with treatment-naive resectable non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with neoadjuvant durvalumab plus chemotherapy and adjuvant durvalumab monotherapy had improved event-free survival and pathologic complete response rates compared with those who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy...
The parameters set to determine which patients can enroll in clinical trials testing new multiple myeloma treatments may disproportionately exclude patients from racial and ethnic minority groups, according to a new study published by Kanapuru et al in the journal Blood. Background Multiple myeloma ...
Researchers have found that acute radiation dermatitis may involve the skin bacterium Staphylococcus aureus and that a simple, low-cost treatment may prevent severe cases in patients undergoing radiation therapy, according to two novel studies published by Kost et al—one a randomized clinical trial ...
Formal discussant of this trial at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting, Rachna T. Shroff, MD, Associate Professor, Interim Chief of Hematology/Oncology, and Associate Director of Clinical Investigations, University of Arizona Cancer Center, said: “This is a very important...
In the phase I/II KRYSTAL-1 trial, the KRAS inhibitor adagrasib demonstrated clinical activity in previously treated patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, biliary tract cancer, and other solid tumors harboring KRAS G12C mutations, according to research presented at the ASCO Plenary Series ...
In a single-institution Dutch phase IIa feasibility trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Stibbe et al evaluated the pharmacokinetics and safety of the prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-targeted fluorescent tracer OTL78 in patients undergoing robot-assisted radical prostatectomy for...
Researchers have identified four warning signs and symptoms that may indicate an elevated risk of early-onset colorectal cancer, according to a new study published by Fritz et al in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The findings may be key to helping physicians more effectively detect...
A new artificial intelligence (AI) model could help physicians diagnose lung cancer earlier, according to a study published by Hunter et al in eBioMedicine. The findings suggested that the new model may yield a diagnosis more quickly and potentially more accurately than two existing risk assessment ...
Anita Mamtani, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses study findings showing that axillary lymph node dissection was required by less than 2% of patients with cT1NO triple-negative or HER2-positive breast cancer having upfront surgery. There was no clear advantage of neoadjuvant...
Researchers have discovered that the investigational optical imaging agent pegulicianine in fluorescence-guided surgery (pFGS) may have been effective at helping surgeons identify and remove residual tumor tissue in patients with breast cancer during breast-conserving surgery, according to a novel...
Researchers have found that pediatric patients with cancer undergoing radiation therapy may experience greater baseline and long-term neurocognitive outcomes when they have supportive environments compared with those who live in neighborhoods with economic hardship, according to a new study...
Investigators discovered both favorable and unfavorable changes in major cancer risk factors, preventive behaviors and services, and screenings in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study published by Star et al in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention....
Incorrect advice offered by an artificial intelligence (AI)-based decision support system could impair the performance of radiologists at every level of expertise when reading mammograms, according to a new study published by Dratsch et al in Radiology. Background Often touted as a “second set of...
Researchers have estimated that about 14 of every 10,000 transgender women may be at risk of developing prostate cancer, according to a new study published by Nik-Ahd et al in JAMA. Background Transgender women keep their prostates even after gender-affirming surgery, but the extent to which they...
Females in rural areas may be six times more likely to receive timely breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer screenings with remote outreach that involves interactive education and follow-up support by telephone compared with females in rural areas who don’t have remote outreach, according to a...
Researchers have found that studying the landscape of DNA and RNA alterations across multiple organs of metastasis may provide a new direction in cancer therapeutics to address treatment failure, according to a new study published by Liu et al in Nature Medicine. The new findings from analyzing...
Patients who underwent pathology evaluation of their sentinel lymph nodes during mastectomy surgery may have been significantly more likely to receive aggressive nodal therapy than patients whose lymph node biopsies and treatment strategies were evaluated after surgery. The new findings were...
Two new studies revealed that specialized exercise and wellness programs may significantly increase physical well-being and quality of life as well as reduce health-care costs in patients with breast cancer, according to findings presented by Wonders et al and Brahmbhatt et al at the 24th American...
Investigators have found that undergoing an annual surveillance mammography may remain common among geriatric patients with breast cancer, even in those with only a small risk of developing a second primary tumor or with significant competing mortality risks as a result of advanced age and...