Mary Horowitz, MD, MS, the Robert A. Uihlein, Jr. Chair in Hematologic Research, Professor of Medicine and Chief of Hematology and Oncology at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), was presented with the 2014 Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation...
The USTAR Center for Genetic Discovery is partnering with California-based Omicia, Inc, to make analyzing a patient’s genome as routine as performing a blood test. The center, codirected by Mark Yandell, PhD, and Gabor Marth, DSc, was launched this month with $6 million from the University of Utah...
Although cancer survival rates among pediatric and older adult patients continue to rise, survival rates for adolescents and young adults (AYAs), defined by the National Cancer Institute as those between the ages of 15 and 39, have remained stagnant for decades. In breast cancer especially, AYAs...
Three of the 10 projects recently awarded grants by the National Institutes of Health (see page 73) focused on cancer research. These include the following: Grant No. 1 U01 CA18303001 Title: Therapeutic Elimination of Stem Cells for Relapsed Pediatric AML Extramural Investigators: Drs. Yang Liu,...
On February 24, the Institute of Medicine National Cancer Policy Forum convened a workshop, “Contemporary Issues in Human Subjects Protection in Cancer Research,” in Washington, DC. In his introduction to the workshop, Steven Piantadosi, MD, PhD, Director, Samuel Oschin Cancer Institute,...
Ten projects that will enable nongovernment researchers to conduct clinical research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, were announced recently. Through these 3-year, renewable awards of up to $500,000 per year, scientists from institutions across the...
On the Cancer.Net Blog, your patients can read about the various health professionals involved in their diagnosis, treatment, and survivorship and listen to podcasts with these professionals discussing their roles in caring for people with cancer. This month, the Cancer.Net Blog highlighted...
ASCO has joined 26 of the nation’s leading public health and medical organizations in signing a joint letter calling on drug stores and other retailers to end the sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products. The open letter came just weeks after CVS Caremark announced it would stop selling...
ASCO has signed a joint letter to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius asking for clear and comprehensive guidance on the tobacco cessation benefit in the Affordable Care Act regulations. In the letter, the organizations applaud the Department of Health and Human ...
Join oncology professionals from around the world for the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting, which will be held May 30 through June 3 in Chicago. This year’s meeting will offer opportunities to learn about, debate, and discuss practice-changing advances in the field, and also highlight promising clinical...
By simply designating Conquer Cancer Foundation as a beneficiary of your estate, you will be leaving a legacy that builds the future of cancer research and cancer care. Typical bequest language is: “I give [the sum of $__] OR [__% of my estate] OR [all or __% of the rest, residue, and remainder of ...
Have you given any thought to the legacy you would like to leave? For many of you, your professional legacy will include the patients you have cared for, the research you have conducted, the students you have mentored, and the lives you have touched in the world of cancer care. You also have your...
The Society’s 2013 Policy for Relationships with Companies is scheduled to go into effect on April 22, with one large change to its original requirements. The policy will still require the full disclosure of all financial relationships by all authors; however, since announcing the new policy in...
It is a challenge faced time and time again by oncologists: how to achieve the best possible outcomes for patients while simultaneously controlling costs, providing care that is both high quality and high value. Raj Mantena, RPh, the first individual to donate $1 million dollars to the Conquer...
Learning about the particulars of each cancer patient’s pain and treating each case uniquely is the key to keeping pain manageable. That is the goal of the Duffey Pain and Palliative Care Program at The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center in Baltimore. The team consists of physicians, nurse...
The American College of Radiology (ACR) recently issued a statement applauding steps to reign in medical imaging and radiation oncology self-referral included in the President’s fiscal year 2015 budget. However, prior authorization for imaging services, also included in the FY2015 budget, is...
Use of e-cigarettes does not discourage, and may encourage, conventional cigarette use among U.S. adolescents.” This was the conclusion of a cross-sectional analysis of survey data from a representative sample of middle and high school students who completed the National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS) ...
According to data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program, rates for new cases of thyroid cancer in the United States have been rising on average 6.4% each year over the past 10 years, and death rates have been rising on average 0.9% each year over the same period. The...
In 2010, Jennifer S. Temel, MD, published her landmark study in The New England Journal of Medicine showing that the introduction of palliative care early after a diagnosis of metastatic non–small cell lung cancer, along with cancer therapy, not only provided patients with a better quality of life...
Last fall, Kirsten K. Ness, PhD, published her study1 on the prevalence of frailty as a sign of accelerated aging in adult survivors of childhood cancer, and the results are startling. Among the 1,922 participants in the study, the prevalence of prefrailty was 31.5% among women and 12.9% among men; ...
The recent study by Nam et al in The Lancet Oncology—reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post—provides a fresh perspective on complications other than incontinence or erectile dysfunction that commonly arise after primary treatment of localized prostate cancer.1 The authors conducted a...
Men with newly diagnosed localized prostate cancer face a decision between prostatectomy and radiotherapy, treatments deemed similarly effective but with well-established trade-offs in terms of treatment-related morbidity. Numerous clinical trials and other prospective studies, from both academic...
Colorectal cancer is a common malignancy that will impact 1.4 million individuals globally each year.1 Approximately 70% to 75% of patients will present with locally advanced disease. For patients with stage III colon cancer, adjuvant chemotherapy is commonly offered, whereas chemotherapy for those ...
Currently, one of the most challenging problems in oncology is to accurately predict whether neoplastic lesions detected by screening tests will progress. The focus on developing ever-more sensitive cancer screening tests has produced the clinical dilemma of overdiagnosis. Overdiagnosis occurs when ...
If a randomized, controlled trial of therapy for breast cancer was submitted for publication in which 1. The drug being tested was old and ineffective, and 2. prior to randomization, the women underwent a clinical breast examination and the study coordinators knew who had the largest cancers, and...
The recent report from the Canadian National Breast Screening Study (CNBSS)—published in BMJ and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post—concluded that annual mammography in women aged 40 to 59 does not result in a reduction in mortality from breast cancer beyond that of physical examination alone...
Webster K. Cavenee, PhD, was honored with the eighth annual American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Margaret Foti Award for Leadership and Extraordinary Achievements in Cancer Research at the AACR Annual Meeting held recently in San Diego. Dr. Cavenee is Director of the Ludwig Institute for ...
"Double-hit” lymphomas remain challenging tumors, and the best means of treatment remains somewhat elusive, according to studies presented at the 2013 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting in New Orleans, and experts who commented on these findings. “We still don’t have a standard of...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) recently announced the names of 15 researchers (see sidebar on page 15) who will receive interim support from the Society for hematology research proposals. These proposals earned high scores but could not be funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) ...
Physicians at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital and Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC, are studying the safety and effectiveness of prostate artery embolization in men with enlarged prostate glands and urinary obstruction. According to the National Institutes of Health,...
A patient with advanced bladder cancer experienced a complete response for 14 months to the drug combination everolimus (Afinitor) and pazopanib (Votrient) in a phase I trial, and genomic profiling of his tumor revealed two alterations that may have caused this exceptional response, according to a...
During the course of the 2014 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, The ASCO Post had the opportunity to speak with several of the world’s leading authorities about the state of the art in screening, diagnosis, and treatment for prostate and kidney cancers. In this second installment of a two-part...
On March 11, ASCO released its first-ever comprehensive assessment of the daunting challenges facing America’s ability to continue to deliver high-quality care to all patients with cancer. ASCO President Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP, introduced the assessment at a Congressional news briefing in...
In the March 1, 2014, issue of The ASCO Post we talked with Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), about the future of biomedical research at the NIH during this time of constrained federal funding. We continue that conversation here with our interview of...
Although breast-conserving therapy has been a standard practice for more than 20 years, controversy still exists over what constitutes the appropriate margin of normal breast tissue around a tumor that minimizes local recurrence while maintaining a good cosmetic outcome. Surveys of surgeons1 and...
The Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) and American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) formed a multidisciplinary expert panel in 2013 to examine the relationship between surgical margin width and ipsilateral breast tumor recurrence and develop guidelines on margins for breast-conserving...
MAY Association for Value-Based Cancer Care – 4th Annual ConferenceMay 6-9 • Los Angeles, CaliforniaFor more information: http://avbcconline.org/ Accelerating Anticancer Agent Development and Validation WorkshopMay 7-9 • Bethesda, MarylandFor more information: www.acceleratingworkshop.org/ Current...
The majority of current and former smokers would welcome screenings for lung cancer if their insurance covered the spiral computed tomography (CT) scans, according to research from Roswell Park Cancer Institute and the Medical University of South Carolina. The study by Jennifer Delmerico, MPH, and...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) inducted the 2014 class of elected Fellows of the AACR Academy at the Association’s Annual Meeting, held recently in San Diego. The AACR Academy is an entity within the AACR that recognizes those individuals who have made exceptional contributions ...
For much of her career in oncology, Teresa A. Gilewski, MD, has sought to bridge the science of medicine with the humanistic aspect of care. She has created the Art of Medicine lecture series at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, where she is a medical oncologist on the Breast...
Big changes came to the American Board of Internal Medicine’s (ABIM) Maintenance of Certification (MOC) program requirements in 2014. As of January 1, all diplomates, including “grandfathers” (or those certified before 1990 who are “board-certified for life”), must actively participate in MOC...
ASCO’s Community Research Forum has released the ASCO Research Program Quality Assessment Tool, designed to help community-based practices to assess their research programs. Quality Components The new tool provides an overview of important components of an internal quality assessment program as...
ASCO and 20 other organizations representing people impacted by serious or life-threatening diseases, specialty providers, and research professionals are urging the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to correct a long-standing inequity in Medicare coverage by requiring that Medicare ...
Based on ASCO’s recent recommendations, Cancer.Net has provided your patients with an article and an infographic on the importance of collecting family cancer history, what information to collect, what it can mean, and when and with whom to share this information. Direct your patients to...
At the end of the month, more than 25,000 oncology professionals from around the world will meet in Chicago for the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting. Will you be joining this global community? As you’re beginning to consider what to pack for your trip, keep in mind that you have a host of electronic...
Throughout the year, we are celebrating not only ASCO’s 50th anniversary, but also the tremendous progress achieved against cancer in the last 50 years. Thanks to the dedication and contributions of patients and researchers, and our nation’s long-standing commitment to funding clinical research,...
Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer diagnosed in both men and women in the United States, and about 1 in 20 individuals will develop colorectal cancer in their lifetime. The good news is that improvements in screening, earlier detection, and treatments are all leading to improved...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved ethiodized oil injection (Lipiodol) for selective hepatic intra-arterial use for imaging tumors in adults with known hepatocellular carcinoma. The agent received orphan drug designation for management of patients with known hepatocellular carcinoma ...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved ofatumumab (Arzerra) injection in combination with chlorambucil (Leukeran) for the treatment of previously untreated patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), for whom fludarabine-based therapy is considered inappropriate. The...
Kite Pharma, Inc, announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Office of Orphan Products Development granted orphan drug designation for the company’s lead investigational therapy, an autologous engineered T-cell product that targets CD19 expression on B-cell malignancies, for the...