Bookmark Title: Pandora’s DNA: Tracing the Breast Cancer Genes Through History, Science, and One Family TreeAuthor: Lizzie StarkPublisher: Chicago Review PressPublication date: October 2014Price: $26.95; hardcover, 336 pages If we wish to learn more about cancer, we must concentrate on the cellular ...
The phase III CRYSTAL trial showed that the addition of cetuximab (Erbitux) to first-line FOLFIRI (fluorouracil, leucovorin, and irinotecan) significantly improved overall survival, progression-free survival, and objective response rates in patients with KRAS codon 12/13 (exon 2) wild-type...
In January, ASCO released its report, Clinical Cancer Advances 2015: An Annual Report on Progress Against Cancer,1 which details research advances over the past decade that have led to longer survival and better quality of life for the more than half-a-million people diagnosed with cancer each...
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 March 10, 2015, the chimeric monoclonal antibody dinutuximab...
The role of next-generation sequencing (high-throughput technologies that allow DNA and RNA to be analyzed more quickly and inexpensively than earlier techniques) in breast cancer remains unclear and at present is primarily a research tool. Therefore, clinicians should be cautious in using genetic...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Breakthrough Therapy designation to Clovis Oncology’s investigational agent rucaparib as monotherapy treatment of advanced ovarian cancer in patients who have received at least two lines of prior platinum-containing therapy, with BRCA-mutated ...
Treatment of childhood cancer is remarkably successful, but still, 2,000 children die of it each year, and for some forms of the disease, no progress has been made at all, said Otis Brawley, MD, Chief Medical Officer, American Cancer Society (ACS). “At least half of all pediatric cancer survivors...
Stand Up To Cancer , Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, and National Ovarian Cancer Coalition, along with the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), announced the formation of a “Dream Team” devoted to ovarian cancer research at the AACR Annual Meeting 2015....
“Immunosignatures” may be well suited to enable the detection of ovarian cancer, researchers reported at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) 20th Annual Conference.1 “We developed a new concept for disease detection based on immunosignatures. From a drop of blood, HealthTell’s...
Can metastatic breast cancer ever be cured? This issue was debated at the 32nd Annual Miami Breast Cancer Conference by two experts in the field: George W. Sledge, Jr, MD, Professor of Medicine at Stanford University Medical Center, Palo Alto, California, and Clifford A. Hudis, MD, Chief of the...
BOOKMARKTitle: p53: The Gene That Cracked the Cancer CodeAuthor: Sue ArmstrongPublisher: Bloomsbury PublishingPublication date: November 20, 2014Price: $19.98; hardcover, 288 pages Completed in April 2003, the Human Genome Project was one of the greatest feats of scientific exploration, an inward ...
Using a novel polymerase chain reaction assay “to efficiently assess” epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations in circulating free DNA (cfDNA) from blood samples of patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the Spanish Lung Cancer Group has “shown that the EGFR L858R...
Geriatrics for the Oncologist is guest edited by Stuart Lichtman, MD, FACP, FASCO, and developed in collaboration with the International Society of Geriatric Oncology (SIOG). Visit SIOG.org for more on geriatric oncology. The Task Forces of the International Society of Geriatric Oncology (SIOG) are ...
Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors are one of the most exciting new classes of agents in development for the treatment of ovarian cancer. Olaparib (Lynparza), the lead oral PARP inhibitor, received accelerated approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of...
PARP inhibitors offer a promising alternative for targeted therapy in ovarian cancer” and have “clear benefit in BRCA-mutation carriers,” but questions remain about when is the best time to use them and the cost-effectiveness of maintenance therapy, Elizabeth M. Swisher, MD, of the University of...
Since 1990, we have seen an approximate 35% reduction in breast cancer mortality among women in the United States. Three protagonists can share this clinical success story: prevention, early detection, and better therapies. To shed light on the current state of breast cancer research and therapy,...
The PARP enzyme functions in aiding cells as they repair DNA. Olaparib hits the target. The question is how best to use it,” said William Nelson, MD, Director of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Dr. Nelson moderated a press conference where these data were...
Olaparib (Lynparza) achieved encouraging response rates in men with metastatic prostate cancer, particularly those with mutations in genes involved in DNA repair (BRCA2 and ATM, most commonly).1 If validated, these results of the TOPARP-A trial will usher in the first drug targeted to somatic or...
The ability to do genomic analysis of patients’ tumors holds great promise for revolutionizing cancer treatment, and genomics has already made some great strides. However, the Individualized Molecular Pancreatic Cancer Therapy (IMPaCT) trial is a cautionary tale about the hurdles involved in...
Isaac Brownell, MD, PhD, Investigator with the Dermatology Branch of the National Cancer Institute, commented on the findings of the Australian ONTRAC trial for The ASCO Post. “This is an interesting finding, and it expands on prior work showing reductions in [ultraviolet]-induced DNA damage and...
Two daily doses of nicotinamide, a form of vitamin B3, significantly reduced the occurrence of nonmelanoma skin cancers by 23% in individuals considered at high risk for these lesions in an Australian study. Results of the phase III ONTRAC trial, which will be presented at the 2015 ASCO Annual...
Eddie Reed, MD, was a pioneer in the molecular pharmacology of DNA-damaging anticancer agents and the clinical development of paclitaxel for ovarian cancer. He graduated from Yale University School of Medicine in 1979, completed his internship and residency at Stanford University in 1981, and was...
In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Church and colleagues assessed whether proofreading mutations in POLE (which encodes the DNA polymerase epsilon catalytic subunit) were associated with prognosis in endometrial cancer. Such mutations have been reported in...
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute announced 26 of the nation’s top biomedical researchers as investigators for the Institute. These scientists will receive the flexible support necessary to move their research in creative new directions. The initiative represents an investment in basic biomedical ...
On April 1, 2015, Douglas R. Lowy, MD, became Acting Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), succeeding Harold Varmus, MD, who left NCI to join the faculty of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York. (See “The Next Step in a Storied Career,” in the May 25, 2015 issue of The ASCO Post.)...
A genetic marker to predict response to anti–PD-1 (anti-programmed cell death protein 1) antibodies may have emerged in colorectal cancer, a tumor type that is a newcomer to the anti–PD-1 ballgame. In a phase II study of colorectal cancer patients treated with pembrolizumab (Keytruda), the presence ...
In advanced melanoma, combination treatment with nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) more than doubled the median progression-free survival time over ipilimumab alone in the CheckMate 067 trial. That said, single-agent nivolumab proved almost as powerful in patients expressing the programmed ...
The ability to interrogate cancer cells at the genomic, proteomic, immunologic, and metabolomic levels will transform oncology care from one that relies mainly on trial-and-error treatment strategies based on the anatomy of the tumor to one that is more precisely based on the tumor’s molecular...
In 2014, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York opened the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Center for Molecular Oncology with the sole purpose of expediting the translation of novel molecular discoveries into clinical innovations to turn the goal of precision oncology care into...
Precision cancer medicine entails treating patients based upon the molecular characteristics of their tumor. One could argue that we have been tailoring therapeutic regimens based upon tumor characteristics for years, whether it be treating patients based upon disease subtypes determined by...
Six young scientists at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Rockefeller University, and Weill Cornell Medical College have been named the inaugural winners of a new prize established to recognize postdoctoral investigators in the life sciences. The Tri-Institutional Breakout Awards for Junior...
INSIDE THE BLACK BOX is an occasional column providing insight into the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its policies and procedures. In this installment, FDA supervisory toxicologist Todd Palmby, PhD, and pharmacologist Eias Zahalka, PhD, MBA, discuss the approach taken in the Office of ...
Laura van’t Veer, PhD, Co-leader of the University of California San Francisco Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center (HDFCCC) Breast Oncology Program, and her team at the Netherlands Cancer Institute were awarded the European Inventor Award for the invention of a gene-based tissue test,...
Refinements in the classification and risk stratification for leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes were reported by three different investigators at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting. The first study showed that leukemia stem cell phenotypes are associated with outcomes in acute myeloid leukemia...
We’ve seen how dramatically patients’ lives can change when they are matched with the right treatment at the right time in their disease course. Although this is still an exception and not the rule, we believe collaborative research approaches will make this kind of precision medicine a reality for ...
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital has named Charles W.M. Roberts, MD, PhD, Executive Vice President and Director of the St. Jude Comprehensive Cancer Center in Memphis, the first and only National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children. Dr....
Genomic applications are now an accepted part of oncologic science and practice. Differences in gene expression have been used to understand and predict tumor behaviors and response to treatment. And now it seems likely that genomics may also play a pivotal role in guiding treatment preferences by...
Checkpoint inhibitors were major attention grabbers at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting, but studies suggested there are other encouraging means of harnessing the immune system in the treatment of glioblastoma. EGFRvIII-Targeted Vaccine David A. Reardon, MD, Clinical Director of the Center for...
The information contained in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting clinical studies for patients with genitourinary cancers—prostate, bladder, uterine, and testicular. The trials are investigating genetic biomarkers of cancer; proton beam therapy; allogeneic bone marrow...
The Basser Center for BRCA at Penn’s Abramson Cancer Center has announced the recipient of its third annual Basser Global Prize: molecular cancer expert David Livingston, MD, Emil Frei Professor of Genetics and Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Deputy Director of the Dana-Farber/Harvard...
Two studies reported in The New England Journal of Medicine identified new molecular classifications of glioma that capture biologic and prognostic differences. The Cancer Genome Atlas Research Network identified three prognostically significant subtypes of lower-grade glioma that were identified...
Through the Lens of Oncology History: A Century of Progress The text and photographs on this page are excerpted from a four-volume series of books titled Oncology Tumors & Treatment: A Photographic History, by Stanley B. Burns, MD, FACS. The photos below are from the volume titled “The...
Emerging laboratory technology will be “moving the bar forward” in terms of molecular markers, genomics, and gene-expression profiling, with the potential for huge payoffs to oncologists and patients, according to Mark Pegram, MD, the Susy Yuan-Huey Hung Professor of Medicine at Stanford School of...
For breast cancer patients with robust family histories, medical oncologists should be testing not only for BRCA1/2 mutations, but also for large duplications and deletions as well as for PALB2 mutations. “These [findings] have proven utility in testing breast cancer patients,” said Louise E....
Detectable oral HPV16 DNA in oral rinses post treatment for oropharyngeal cancer appears to be a harbinger of poor prognosis and can predict recurrence. Oral HPV16 DNA rinses are a potential tool for long-term tumor surveillance, according to a study selected for the Best of ASCO® 2015.1 “The goal ...
The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) has selected seven leading physician-researchers to receive a total of $675,000 in awards and grants to advance radiation oncology research. Together, the grants will support studies in cancer biology, radiation physics, translational research,...
Male breast cancer is an uncommon disease, although the incidence has increased over the past couple of decades. As with many other “orphan” diseases, male breast cancer is understudied, especially in randomized controlled trials. Although it shares similarities with female breast cancer, some...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved trifluridine/tipiracil (Lonsurf) for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer who have been previously treated with chemotherapy and biologic therapy and are no longer responding to treatment. Mechanism of Action The new oral agent is a...
The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) announced that the MMRF CoMMpass StudySM, the most comprehensive long-term genomic study ever conducted in myeloma, has reached full enrollment, with 1,000 patients now participating. The global study is mapping the genomic profile of each enrolled...
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 September 22, 2015, trifluridine/tipiracil (Lonsurf) was...