Healthy women who carry a breast cancer–causing mutation in the BRCA1 gene not only reduce their risk of developing the disease but also their chances of dying from it if they have both breasts removed, according to new research presented at the 11th European Breast Cancer Conference...
On March 26, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Breakthrough Therapy designation to enfortumab vedotin, an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC), for patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial cancer who were previously treated with checkpoint inhibitors. Breakthrough Therapy ...
Parents are less likely to vaccinate adolescent boys than girls with the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, and they are twice as likely to report their main reason as a lack of provider recommendation, according to a study presented at the 2018 Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) Annual Meeting ...
A team of researchers led by Naruihiko Ikoma, MD, MS, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, analyzed outcomes in 316 patients with gastric cancer to determine whether patients who had clinically positive nodal disease before preoperative therapy have...
In a study reported in the Journal of Oncology Practice, Hoverman et al found that a Texas Oncology–Aetna Medicare Advantage collaboration resulted in cost savings, good adherence to treatment pathways, and high patient satisfaction over 3 years. Study Details The collaborative...
In a UK-based study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Fallon et al found that adding a clinician-delivered bedside pain assessment and management tool (Edinburgh Pain Assessment and Management Tool [EPAT]) to usual care improved some pain outcomes in cancer center inpatients. Study...
On March 23, the multiple-receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor lenvatinib mesylate (Lenvima) was approved in Japan for unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). This is the first approval worldwide of lenvatinib mesylate for the indication of unresectable HCC and the first new systemic therapy to...
Patients with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) are less likely to have recurrent disease if they are postmenopausal or if their tumor is estrogen receptor (ER)-positive, according to research presented at the 11th European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC-11) (Abstract 215). DCIS accounts for about...
Immunotherapy has transformed the treatment of metastatic melanoma, with 3-year survival rates surpassing 50% for appropriate patients. However, many of these patients still require surgery, but very little research has been done on this group of patients to determine whether surgery after...
Patients with ovarian cancer with genetic amplification in the PARP-7 protein survived longer than those without the mutation, according to a presentation at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology’s (SGO) 2018 Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer. These results call for researchers to further...
On March 20, Genentech announced that the phase III IMpower131 study met its coprimary endpoint of progression-free survival (PFS) and demonstrated that the combination of atezolizumab (Tecentriq) plus chemotherapy (carboplatin and nanopartical albumin-bound [nab]-paclitaxel [Abraxane])...
The risk of a second breast cancer in patients with high-risk BRCA gene mutations can be more precisely predicted by testing for several other genetic variants, each of which are known to have a small impact on breast cancer risk, according to new research presented at the 11th European Breast...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Rathkopf et al, sensitivity analyses of radiographic progression-free survival in the PREVAIL trial comparing enzalutamide vs placebo in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer support use of the measure as a clinically meaningful endpoint in trials in this...
In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Depuydt et al identified two genomic copy number aberrations associated with risk of extremely poor survival in patients with high-risk neuroblastoma. Study Details The international collaborative study included normalized...
Bijal D. Shah, MD, of the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, discusses key studies of CAR T-cell therapy in relapsed B-cell ALL and the adverse events that this treatment may cause.
Anne M. Covey, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the latest recommendations for screening and diagnosing hepatocellular carcinoma, an aggressive tumor marked by increasing incidence in the United States and a poor 5-year survival rate.
Anthony D. Elias, MD, of the University of Colorado Cancer Center, reviews promising experimental treatments, as well as PARP inhibitor therapy in TNBC, including the implications of newly approved olaparib for gBRCA-mutant breast cancer.
William J. Gradishar, MD, of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University, discusses recent evidence on the efficacy, safety, and utility of HER2-targeted treatments in the adjuvant setting for early-stage and advanced breast cancers.
Lee N. Newcomer, MD, who recently retired as Senior Vice President for Oncology and Genetics at UnitedHealth Group, discusses lessons learned during his long career in managed care, where we are, and where we need to go.
In a phase II trial reported in JAMA Oncology by Debra L. Richardson, MD, of Stephenson Cancer Center, Oklahoma University Health Science Center, and colleagues, the addition of pazopanib (Votrient) to paclitaxel did not improve progression-free survival among women with persistent or recurrent...
An interim analysis of a phase II trial reported by Jones et al in The Lancet Oncology indicates that venetoclax (Venclexta) produces a response in a high proportion of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) progressing on or after ibrutinib (Imbruvica) treatment. John C. Byrd, MD, of The ...
A phase II study (ACE-LY-004) reported in The Lancet by Michael Wang, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and colleagues showed durable responses with the Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitor acalabrutinib (Calquence) in patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma....
When I was 15, and just 6 weeks into my sophomore year in high school, I heard a loud sound similar to a gunshot in my head and minutes later I was engulfed in a grand mal seizure, now called tonic-clonic seizure, and rushed to the hospital. A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan found a small...
RESEARCHERS AT Baylor College of Medicine have received more than $3 million from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) to fund three new grants focused on tobacco control, cancer screening, and novel treatments for cancer in children and adults. CPRIT was launched in 2009...
In 2017, more than 63,000 women in the United States were diagnosed with in situ breast cancer. The overwhelming majority of those women, about 83%, were diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), a condition characterized by the presence of abnormal cells confined to the breast milk ducts;...
April K.S. Salama, MD, of Duke Cancer Institute, talks about how to select systemic therapy for a patient with previously treated metastatic melanoma.
“At Microphone 1” is an occasional column written by Steven E. Vogl, MD, of the Bronx, New York. When he is not in his clinic, he can generally be found at major oncology meetings and often at the microphone, where he stands ready with critical questions for presenters of new data. The opinions...
“THE GOOD NEWS is cancer survivors are living longer. The bad news is they’re living long enough to experience the late consequences of curative treatment,” said Julia Rowland, PhD, formerly of the National Cancer Institute and now with Smith Center for Healing and the Arts, Washington, DC, at the ...
COMPARED TO the general population, the risk of cardiovascular disease among colorectal cancer survivors was significantly increased more than 10 years after their cancer diagnosis, according to research presented by David Baraghoshi, MSTAT candidate, of the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the...
CANCERCARE has announced the publication of a new white paper highlighting perspectives from oncology providers on the importance and utility of including patient priorities in treatment decisions. “Decision Making at the Point of Care: Voices of Oncology Providers” was developed as part of...
Prevention in Oncology is guest edited by Jennifer Ligibel, MD, Chair of ASCO’s Energy Balance Working Group and a member of ASCO’s Cancer Survivorship and Cancer Prevention Committees. Dr. Ligibel is Director of the Leonard P. Zakim Center for Integrative Therapies at Dana-Farber Cancer...
OLDER WOMEN residing in U.S. territories are less likely to receive recommended or timely care for breast cancer compared with similar women residing in the continental United States, according to Yale researchers, whose findings were published in Health Affairs.1 “Inferior breast cancer care in...
AT A PREMEETING webinar, American Society of Hematology then President Kenneth C. Anderson, MD, Director of the Lebow Institute for Myeloma Therapeutics and Jerome Lipper Myeloma Center at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, commented: “This study demonstrates this new treatment has good...
CD19-DIRECTED chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of leukemia (tisagenlecleucel [Kymriah]) and lymphoma (axicabtagene ciloleucel [Yescarta]), but another type of CAR T-cell therapy is generating interest as a...
James L. Mohler, MD, of Roswell Park Cancer Institute, discusses personalized medicine, molecular risk stratification, and better androgen-deprivation therapy for men with prostate cancer.
Alan P. Venook, MD, of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses which biomarkers to order and when, the role of checkpoint inhibitors, and chemotherapy choices.
In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Unger et al linked data from the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial (PCPT) with Medicare claims and found that finasteride treatment was associated with a maintained reduction in prostate cancer risk after discontinuation of the...
In the phase III COLUMBUS trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Dummer et al found that the combination of the BRAF inhibitor encorafenib and the MEK inhibitor binimetinib improved progression-free survival vs vemurafenib (Zelboraf) in patients with advanced BRAF V600–mutant melanoma....
The population of bacteria in the pancreas increases more than a thousandfold in patients with pancreatic cancer and becomes dominated by species that prevent the immune system from attacking tumor cells. These are the findings of an early study conducted on pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma,...
On March 21, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued updated information about its understanding of breast implant–associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL). The agency is providing an updated number of medical device reports (ie, adverse event reports) and medical...
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expanded the indication for nilotinib (Tasigna) to include treatment of first- and second-line pediatric patients 1 year of age or older with Philadelphia chromosome–positive chronic myeloid leukemia in the chronic phase. In the United...
Ellin Berman, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the effects of TKI therapy on fetal development, its impact on pregnancy outcomes, and how to develop an effective treatment plan.
In an Australia-New Zealand phase III trial (Trans Tasman Radiation Oncology Group 05.01) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Porceddu et al found no benefit of adding carboplatin to postoperative radiation therapy in patients with high-risk cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma of the head...
In a Chinese phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Lu et al found that the VEGFR-1,-2, and-3 kinase inhibitor fruquintinib was active in patients with advanced nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who progressed after two prior chemotherapy regimens. Study Details ...
A large international study has shown that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can reduce the number of invasive prostate biopsies by up to 28%. The PRECISION trial showed that using MRI to target prostate biopsies leads to more harmful and fewer harmless prostate cancers being diagnosed. The results...
A major international survey has found that around a quarter of patients with penile cancer are not receiving the recommended treatment, and that these patients had half the survival rate of those who were treated according to guidelines. The study, presented at the European Association of Urology...
A major UK survey has shown that patients with urologic cancer—such as prostate, bladder, or kidney cancer—are five times more likely to commit suicide than people without cancer. The analysis also shows that patients with cancer generally are around three times more likely to commit...
In the UK-based CAP trial reported in JAMA, Martin et al found that a single prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening was not associated with better 10-year prostate cancer-specific survival vs the standard practice of no screening. Screening was associated with greater detection of prostate...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Katz et al found that less than half of patients with clinical indications received formal genetic counseling after breast cancer diagnosis. Study Details The study involved surveys of 5,080 patients aged 20 to 79 years diagnosed with early ...
In a phase III trial (SUMIT) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Carvajal et al found that the addition of the oral MEK1/2 inhibitor selumetinib to dacarbazine did not significantly improve progression-free survival in patients with metastatic uveal melanoma. Study Details In the...