Bookmark Title: The New Generation Breast Cancer Book: How to Navigate Your Diagnosis and Treatment Options—and Remain Optimistic—in an Age of Information Overload Author: Elisa Port, MD Publisher: Ballantine Books Publication date: September 2015 Price: $20.00; paperback, 320 pages When a new...
Bookmark Title: Empty Hands, A Memoir: One Woman’s Journey to Save Children Orphaned by AIDS in South Africa Author: Sister Abegail Ntleko Publisher: North Atlantic Books Publication date: September 1, 2015 Price: $12.95; paperback, 176 pages With the development of the multidrug highly active...
The ASCO Post is pleased to introduce this special focus on the worldwide cancer burden, beginning in this issue with a close look at the cancer incidence and mortality rates in the United States. The aim of this special feature is to highlight the global cancer burden for various countries of the...
Acupuncture has been practiced for thousands of years in Eastern Asian cultures as a component of traditional Chinese medicine.1 In the United States, acupuncture became known to the public as a complementary and alternative medicine technique in the 1970s, but it took many years before it was...
A multi-institutional international investigation led by scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, has revealed new information about how molecules called long noncoding RNAs (lncRNA) interact with HIF-1, a signaling pathway that is overexpressed in many cancers....
Treatment of mantle cell lymphoma continues to evolve, both in the front-line and relapsed settings. Key advances include better use of established agents, such as the incorporation of high-dose cytarabine into initial induction regimens and application of rituximab (Rituxan)...
In aphase III trial reported in The Lancet and at the recent American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition, Martin Dreyling, MD, of the European Mantle Cell Lymphoma Network, and colleagues found that ibrutinib (Imbruvica) was associated with improved progression-free survival vs...
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Oncology Research Program (ORP) has awarded five grants to investigators to evaluate and define the preclinical and clinical effectiveness of enzalutamide (Xtandi) in mantle cell lymphoma and endometrial, hepatocellular, and prostate cancers. These...
Breast cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer deaths among women in the United States. In 2015, according to the National Cancer Institute, 231,840 women were to be diagnosed with the disease and 40,290 were to die from it. The death rate is highest among women who are not screened regularly...
Mantle cell lymphoma is a pernicious, incurable disease. Front-line therapies for this disease are not currently standardized; however, novel therapies for relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma can ideally be translated into beneficial treatments for newly diagnosed patients, as clearly...
Terence S. Dermody, MD, has been named the Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Physician-in-Chief and Scientific Director at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). Dr. Dermody will officially...
A seismic shift is underway in screening and treatment approaches for breast cancer. These changes are being fueled by studies showing that mammography in younger women may do more harm than good and that advances in genomic testing and a better understanding of the biology of breast cancers may...
In a genome-wide association study reported in Journal of Clinical Oncology, Hervé Ghesquieres, MD, PhD, of Centre Léon Bérard, Lyon, France, and colleagues identified two inherited genetic variants that were associated with poorer event-free and overall survival in patients with diffuse large...
About 7 in 10 middle and high school students—more than 18 million young people—see e-cigarette advertising in stores, online, in newspapers and magazines, or on television and in movies, according to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Vital Signs report. E-cigarette ads use...
Surveys conducted between 1950 and 1970 show that most physicians considered it inhumane to give patients with a poor cancer prognosis the bad news.1,2 Since then, it has been well established that open communication between physician and patient is an essential part of effective cancer care and...
Since the initial discovery of ALK rearrangement in non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in 2007,1 small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitors of ALK have transformed the course of disease for those patients with ALK-rearranged (ie, ALK-positive) NSCLC. Crizotinib (Xalkori), a multitargeted tyrosine...
ASCO University has created a new multidisciplinary immunology program that provides a broad overview of immunobiology, as well as an in-depth focus on topics relevant to the practicing clinician, such as treatment, efficacy, monitoring, and management of immunobiologic agents. ASCO University’s...
On December 15, ASCO submitted comments to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on the agency’s Electronic Health Record (EHR) Stage 3 of Meaningful Use and Modifications in 2015 through 2017. The Society’s comments provided recommendations to CMS regarding the implementation of...
The International Innovation Grant, funded by the Conquer Cancer Foundation (CCF) of ASCO, provides research funding in support of novel and innovative projects that can have a significant impact on cancer control in low- and middle-income countries. The grant is intended to support research that...
Investigators are looking at biomarkers to predict the probability of cytokine-release syndrome [in patients receiving chimeric antigen receptor–modified T-cell (CAR-T) therapy] so that they can intervene early. This study [from the University of Pennsylvania] identified two biomarkers that appear...
Dramatic advances have been made in using genetically engineered chimeric antigen receptor–modified T cells (CAR-T) with anti-CD19 specificity to treat highly refractory hematologic malignancies. The highest complete remission rates have been achieved in patients with relapsed or refractory acute...
Responding to the assertion that bortezomib (Velcade)/lenalidomide (Revlimid)/low-dose dexamethasone induction followed by continuous lenalidomide/dexamethasone is potentially a new standard of care in newly diagnosed multiple myeloma, Sagar Lonial, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Winship Cancer...
Triplets should be the standard of care in most newly diagnosed multiple myeloma patients, according to a study that validated a practice that has become common in the United States, though not necessarily elsewhere. The use of three drugs led to significant reductions in disease progression and...
At age 73, I’m no shrinking violet and I don’t run to the doctor at the first sign of a problem. I practice naturopathy and can usually ward off potential health issues by maintaining a healthy diet and lifestyle. When I began experiencing some mild discomfort in my rectum 2½ years ago, I was...
It is estimated that nearly half of adults over age 80 living in the community are frail despite apparent functional well-being.1 Frailty is recognized as a clinical syndrome in which three or more of the following criteria are present: unintentional weight loss, self-reported exhaustion, weakness, ...
Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, Director of the Breast Oncology Program at the Taussig Cancer Institute of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, said he believes neratinib is “an extremely active drug, once we learn how best to give it.” Dr. Abraham has been involved in some of the studies of neratinib. “In this...
An exploratory analysis of the ExteNET study of neratinib in early HER2-positive breast cancer after treatment with trastuzumab (Herceptin) upheld the findings previously reported for the 2-year analysis, according to the study’s principal investigator Arlene Chan, MD, of the Breast Cancer...
George Sledge, MD, Professor, and Chief, Division of Oncology, Stanford University Medical Center, told The ASCO Post that he found the data from the pooled analysis “very exciting.” “One of the big questions in triple-negative breast cancer is how to select which drugs work best for which...
The homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) score may be a predictive biomarker of response to neoadjuvant platinum-based therapy in patients with triple-negative breast cancer, according to studies presented at the 2015 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. “We found, in our adjusted analysis,...
Pancreatic cancer tumors are ripe for analysis with a liquid biopsy, according to researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. In a proof-of-principle study published recently in Annals of Oncology,1 the investigators reported on research in which they conducted whole-genome,...
The formal discussant for the CALGB 40603 and GeparSixto studies at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium was Angela DeMichele, MD, Professor of Medicine and Miller Chair in Breast Cancer Excellence at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennyslvania. “The key questions raised by these ...
Studies presented at the 2015 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium built upon an increasing body of data in support of the neoadjuvant use of carboplatin in patients with triple-negative breast cancer. Overall, however, the studies fell short of establishing carboplatin’s role in this malignancy and ...
Immunotherapy is at the forefront of exciting new approaches to cancer, with excellent and long-lasting responses in metastatic melanoma and non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and several immunotherapy agents now approved for those malignancies by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The...
For the most part, the cardiotoxicity with trastuzumab appears to be largely reversible, unlike anthracyclines, which cause permanent cardiac damage,” said Lisa Carey, MD, Distinguished Professor at the UNC Lineberger Breast Center, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. “In this small study, they saw no...
Sally Vernon, PhD, Chair of the Department of Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) School of Public Health, has been appointed to the Board of Scientific Counselors for Clinical Sciences and Epidemiology at the National...
This study confirms that what is important is a negative margin, not the margin size,” said Kevin S. Hughes, MD, a breast surgeon who is Co-Director of the Avon Comprehensive Breast Evaluation Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. “This is a confirmatory study of the consensus...
The width of the surgical margin doesn’t matter, as long as the margin is negative, according to a large study of breast-conserving surgery in patients with invasive breast cancer. The risk of ipsilateral breast tumor recurrence was similar for wide negative margins (2–4 mm) or narrow negative...
Carlos L. Arteaga, MD, the Donna S. Hall Chair in Breast Cancer Research and Director of the Center for Cancer Targeted Therapies at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, commented on the BELLE-2 trial for The ASCO Post. “We have learned that there is a subgroup of patients, who are...
Addition of the oral investigational pan-PI3K inhibitor buparlisib to the endocrine agent fulvestrant (Faslodex) improved progression-free survival among postmenopausal women with advanced hormone receptor–positive/HER2-negative advanced breast cancer. “We are happy to announce that the phase III...
A randomized trial from the Bone and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network was halted early after concluding that allogeneic stem cell transplantation after a reduced-intensity conditioning regimen resulted in higher relapse rates compared to myeloablative conditioning. The phase III randomized ...
Commenting on the AALL03N1 study, press conference moderator Mark Crowther, MD, of McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, said: “This study is extremely important. We have many presentations on new and novel therapies that are expensive, complex, and revolutionary. But if patients don’t...
Press briefing moderator George Daley, MD, PhD, of Boston Children’s Hospital, was enthusiastic about these results, despite the small number of patients treated in studies of CAR-T cells thus far. Most of the results have been in a positive direction, he noted. “It is remarkably exciting to see...
The approach of using genetically engineered chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cells has received much attention for treating leukemias, where it has achieved spectacular long-lasting complete remissions in some patients with no other treatment options. CAR-T cells are also being studied in...
In a separate interview, Kanti Rai, MD, of the Northwell Health System in New Hyde Park, New York, noted that venetoclax is one of several “exciting recent developments in this disease.” There is the Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitor ibrutinib (Imbruvica), the PI3K inhibitor idelalisib (Zydelig),...
Venetoclax, the latest entry into the field of treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), is a powerful investigational therapy that promises to fill an important niche: treatment of high-risk relapsed/refractory patients with deletions of 17p. Nearly 80% of patients with relapsed/refractory...
Hematologists and patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) are excited about new drugs that have dramatically improved outcomes. But all drugs have side effects, and it is important to be aware of potential consequences. Hepatotoxicity turns out to be a major concern in younger CLL patients ...
Clearly idelalisib improved overall survival when added to bendamustine (Bendetta/Treanda)/rituximab (Rituxan). These results are similar to those from the HELIOS trial reported at last year’s ASCO meeting,” said Susan O’Brien, MD, Associate Director for Clinical Science for the Chao Family...
Idelalisib (Zydelig) combined with bendamustine (Bendeka, Treanda) plus rituximab (Rituxan) was superior to chemotherapy with bendamustine/rituximab plus placebo, reducing the risk of progressive disease and death while improving progression-free survival and overall survival in patients with...
Robert Hromas, MD, of the University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, who moderated a press briefing, commented that the finding of benefit with rituximab “resolves a long-standing controversy” with this cancer. “These results are exciting for those of us who treat leukemia,” he...
The addition of rituximab (Rituxan) to the pediatric-inspired chemotherapy protocol for B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) significantly improved event-free survival in a large European study presented at the 2015 ASH Annual Meeting.1 The GRAALL-R 2005 phase III study is the first...