In patients with locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer, the addition of sorafenib (Nexavar), a broad-spectrum tyrosine kinase inhibitor, to capecitabine did not improve progression-free or overall survival in the phase III RESILIENCE trial. The findings were presented at the European Society ...
Hope S. Rugo, MD, Professor of Medicine and Director of Breast Oncology and Clinical Trials Education for the University of California, San Francisco, Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, discussed the two studies on maintenance bevacizumab (Avastin) for metastatic breast cancer...
Although bevacizumab (Avastin) may no longer be an active player in metastatic breast cancer, phase III studies presented at this year’s European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress reignited interest in the drug as part of maintenance therapy. The TANIA trial met its primary endpoint,...
Formal discussant Giorgio V. Scagliotti, MD, PhD, Professor and Chair of Medical Oncology at the University of Turin and San Luigi Hospital, Orbassano, Italy, tackled each of the studies presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) session on metastatic non–small cell lung cancer...
The effort to identify new biomarkers for response and outcomes in lung cancer is advancing, according to studies presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2014 Congress in Madrid. Immunohistochemical expression of folate receptor for vintafolide and thymidylate synthase for...
Patients who received postoperative radiation therapy lived an average of 4 months longer when compared to the patients who had the same disease site, tumor histology, and treatment criteria and who did not receive postoperative radiotherapy, according to research presented at the 2014 Chicago...
For advanced nonsquamous non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), targeting of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation and the ALK abnormality has become an established strategy. Later-generation drugs in these categories are now showing efficacy in trials, including for the treatment of...
Patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) can achieve remission on tyrosine kinase inhibitors, but almost all of them eventually develop resistance to these agents. The PAZOGIST trial results suggest that pazopanib (Votrient)—a broad-spectrum tyrosine kinase inhibitor—may be an effective ...
Formal discussant of the poster presented by Cullen et al at the ESMO Congress, Mark A. Rubin, MD, of Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, said the Oncotype DX Genomic Prostate Score could be used to measure disease aggressiveness in paraffin-embedded prostatectomy and biopsy samples and should ...
A prospectively designed study establishes the17-gene Oncotype DX prostate cancer test as a robust and independent predictor of the aggressiveness of prostate cancer based on a patient’s diagnostic specimen. Tumor aggressiveness, as measured by the test’s Genomic Prostate Score, was similar in...
Final results from the RADIANT-3 trial showed a 6-month difference in overall survival favoring everolimus (Afinitor) plus best supportive care over placebo plus best supportive care in patients with well-differentiated advanced and progressive pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors.1 Although the...
The final analysis of the international phase III QUASAR2 trial confirmed the lack of benefit for bevacizumab (Avastin) as part of the adjuvant treatment of colorectal cancer. “There is no role for bevacizumab in combination with capecitabine as adjuvant treatment for colorectal cancer,” said...
The phase III CONCUR trial1 of regorafenib (Stivarga) monotherapy in Asian patients with previously treated metastatic colorectal cancer confirmed the overall survival benefit seen in the previous CORRECT trial,2 and in a planned subgroup analysis, suggesting the benefit is substantial in patients ...
Putting the maintenance trials into context was Axel Grothey, MD, Professor of Oncology at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, who commented, “These studies inform our clinical practice and have a meaningful impact on how we treat our patients.” DREAM Trial In the DREAM Trial, Dr. Grothey...
Studies presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2014 Congress in Madrid added insight regarding maintenance therapy in metastatic colorectal cancer, an area lacking a clear recommended strategy following first-line regimens. Two phase III trials found benefit for bevacizumab...
During a special session at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2014 Congress, additional analyses from the FIRE-3 and Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB)/SWOG 80405 trial were presented, and an expert panel was charged with putting the findings into context. Role of Subsequent...
Now that clinicians know to “think beyond KRAS” in metastatic colorectal cancer—and test for all RAS mutations, not just those in exon 2—it seems this is still not sufficient for selecting the best drugs. At the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2014 Congress in Madrid, a proffered paper ...
The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center and Moffitt Cancer Center have joined forces to create the Oncology Research Information Exchange Network (ORIEN), the largest collaboration of its kind designed to accelerate discoveries in cancer research. Members of this alliance of cancer...
Suleika Jaouad, a journalist, was 22 and had just gotten her first chance to cover a major news story—the revolution underway in Tunisia—when she was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome that had evolved into acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Months into her treatment, she began to write again, but...
More than 150 oral and poster presentations were featured at the 2014 Breast Cancer Symposium, held September 4–6 in San Francisco. The multidisciplinary meeting is sponsored by ASCO, the American Society of Breast Disease, American Society of Breast Surgeons, American Society for Radiation...
The use of targeted therapies in indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) is a burgeoning area. New targeted therapies directed at the cell surface, intracellular pathways, and the microenvironment are being studied for relapsed indolent NHL. These treatments, if validated in large randomized trials,...
ASCO has issued an endorsement of the American Urological Association (AUA)/American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) guideline on the use of adjuvant and salvage radiotherapy after prostatectomy, which was based on a systematic review of medical literature. The ASCO endorsement was published ...
Over the past 50 years, there have been incredible changes in the field of colorectal cancer,” Emily K. Bergsland, MD, noted in opening the colorectal cancer session at the Best of ASCO meeting in Chicago. Dr. Bergsland is a gastrointestinal oncologist at the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive...
Two phase III studies presented at the Best of ASCO meeting in Chicago shed more light on the role of maintenance therapy in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer undergoing first-line treatment with oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy. The two studies compared maintenance therapy with bevacizumab...
Magee-Womens Hospital of University of Pittsburgh is offering its patients the FDA-cleared breast cancer test assessing a woman’s risk of cancer recurrence by providing a risk category and numerical score. The hospital is the first in the tri-state area (Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia) to offer...
Targeted agents have started to make inroads in sarcoma therapies, and gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) is the poster child for this success,” Mark Agulnik, MD, stated in summarizing progress in GIST and other sarcomas at the Best of ASCO meeting in Chicago. Dr. Agulnik is Associate Professor, ...
Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell has announced an initiative that will fund successful applicants who work directly with medical providers to rethink and redesign their practices, moving from systems driven by quantity of care to ones focused on patients’ health outcomes, and...
New studies reported at ASCO’s 2014 Quality Care Symposium provided insight on the role social factors play in cancer treatment disparities, as well as effective approaches to improving the quality of care. “The research presented [here] highlights how the conditions facing people living with...
It turns out that in addition to treatment-related toxicity, cancer patients commonly experience “financial toxicity,” a phrase that is increasingly coming into parlance in the cancer community. Patients should be assessed for financial toxicity as early as possible following diagnosis so that they ...
Over the past decade, there has been growing concern in the oncology community about overdiagnosis and overtreatment of cancers that prove to be indolent and nonlethal, resulting in unnecessary and sometimes harmful procedures. At this year’s ASCO Quality Care Symposium in Boston, this important...
The image of aging that Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD, expresses in his essay, “Why I Hope to Die at 75,” in the October issue of The Atlantic,1 is bleak indeed and one that has contributed mightily to the negative views of aging imbedded in our society. But I refute his description of growing older as...
Advances in science and medicine have led to humans living longer than at any other time in history. According to a new report1 on mortality from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, life expectancy in the United States is at an all-time high of...
The treatment of acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) represents one of the major triumphs in the field of hematologic malignancies. With either the vitamin A derivative all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) combined with anthracycline-based chemotherapy or ATRA plus arsenic trioxide (Trisenox),...
The IMPRESS trial found no benefit for continuing treatment with the epidermal growth factor receptor (EFGR) tyrosine kinase inhibitor gefitinib (Iressa, discontinued in the United States) plus chemotherapy vs chemotherapy alone in patients with EGFR-mutated non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who...
An analysis of nonsurgical menopause risk among 2,127 women treated for Hodgkin lymphoma found that “risk of premature menopause increased more than 20-fold” after ovarian radiotherapy, alkylating chemotherapy other than dacarbazine, or BEAM (carmustine [BiCNU], etoposide, cytarabine, melphalan)...
For patients with relapsed or refractory aggressive lymphoma in a National Cancer Institute of Canada clinical trial, second-line treatment with GDP (gemcitabine, dexamethasone, and cisplatin) was as effective as DHAP (dexamethasone, cytarabine, and cisplatin). Treatment with GDP “can be considered ...
A surveillance strategy for patients with esophageal adenocarcinoma treated with chemoradiation and surgery (trimodality therapy) can potentially be customized based on surgical pathology stage, according to an analysis of 518 patients with esophageal adenocarcinoma who underwent trimodality...
At least 14 million major medical conditions among U.S. adults aged 35 years and older were attributed to cigarette smoking by a study estimating the disease burden of cigarette smoking, which, according to the study’s authors, “remains immense.” Among current and former smokers, prevalence ratios...
In a study reported in Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Wang and colleagues found that adding an mTOR inhibitor to cetuximab (Erbitux) resulted in marked improvement in antitumor activity in squamous cell carcinomas of the head and neck expressing PIK3CA and RAS oncogenes. Cetuximab...
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) has published the 20th annual edition of the NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines) for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC), one of the eight original NCCN Guidelines published in November 1996. “Since the first NCCN...
Screening for thyroid cancer should be discouraged to prevent an “epidemic of diagnosis”—like the one occurring in South Korea—from happening in the United States and other countries, according to the authors of an analysis of the South Korean screening program. That study was published in The New...
An “epidemic of diagnosis” of thyroid cancer is occurring in South Korea and “absolutely could happen here,” according to H. Gilbert Welch, MD, MPH, Professor of Medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Hanover, New Hampshire. Dr. Welch is coauthor of an article...
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center announced that it has named D. Gary Gilliland, MD, PhD, an expert in cancer genetics and precision medicine as its new President and Director. He will take the helm as the Center’s new leader on January 2. Dr. Gilliland comes to Fred Hutchinson from the...
The information contained in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes clinical studies actively recruiting people with Hodgkin lymphoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), including AIDS-related NHL, as well as studies that are also recruiting patients with multiple myeloma and mantle cell lymphoma....
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today approved hydrocodone bitartrate (Hysingla ER), an extended-release opioid analgesic to treat pain severe enough to require daily, around-the-clock, long-term opioid treatment and for which alternative treatment options are inadequate. The product...
I know it sounds odd, but the past 10 years spent living with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) have been very productive, wonderful years. It is not the life I had before my diagnosis, but it is the life I remember most clearly, and knowing how deadly this cancer is, I’m grateful for every day of ...
When Thomas Alva Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park, heard of Roentgen’s discovery of the x-ray, he directed his research staff to create x-ray tubes and better screens on which to view the images. Edison owned America’s first industrial research laboratory and could easily supply the know-how,...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On November 14, 2014, bevacizumab (Avastin) in combination with...
The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) praised the November 11, 2014, decision proposal by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to provide coverage for annual lung cancer screening via low-dose computed tomography (CT) screening for those at highest-risk for lung...
BOOKMARKTitle: Being MortalAuthor: Atul Gawande, MDPublisher: Metropolitan BooksPublication date: October 7, 2014Price: $26.00; hardcover, 304 pages Mortality is the invisible observer in the oncology exam room. When people hear the three words, “You have cancer,” they see their world as they...