The concept of “chemobrain” is underrecognized, noted Serena Wong, MD, co-investigator of a clinical trial examining the effects of chemotherapy and hormonal therapy on the brain. Dr. Wong is a medical oncologist at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey and Assistant Professor of Medicine at...
The novelty of our approach is that we are going to be using multiple modalities” to study the effects of chemotherapy and hormonal therapy on the brain, looking for structural changes within the brain and how these changes might affect psychomotor function, particularly upper-extremity movements...
In the fall of 2010, I developed a sore throat and tonsillitis while on a hike in North Carolina. Although it was not uncommon for me to have sore throats accompanied by some swelling on my tonsils, this time much of the inflammation and swelling were centered on just my left tonsil. After 7 days...
Friends of Cancer Research, in conjunction with the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at Brookings, recently held the seventh annual Conference on Clinical Cancer Research in Washington, DC. The panels that comprised the daylong meeting discussed a future that has already begun. The most...
Forum participants agreed that: Defining quality in cancer care is challenging. Each stakeholder group—practitioners, payers, patients—has its own definition of quality. Given the growing number of accrediting/quality improvement organizations/standards and reporting requirements, some...
In an oncology health-care system that is increasingly changing its delivery and payment models, how do busy oncologists successfully bridge the transition from a volume- to value-based, patient-centric model? This, and other topics on value fueled a robust discussion at the Association of...
Nearly 5,000 scientific abstracts were presented at the 2014 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exhibition in San Francisco. Along with our targeted coverage of the meeting’s key newsmakers, The ASCO Post provides you with these brief reports of other interesting...
Researchers from Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida have participated in a global effort that has identified six new regions of the genome that increase risk of epithelial ovarian cancer, according to a news release from Moffitt. The collaborative study was published recently in Nature...
Matthew J. Ellis, MB, BChir, PhD, Director of the Lester and Sue Smith Breast Center at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, commented on endocrine resistance and the potential of the four-gene panel for assessing resistance for The ASCO Post. Endocrine response and resistance is a research focus...
At the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, a research team led by Michael Dixon, MD, of Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, shed light on the development of endocrine resistance and presented a four-gene messenger RNA (mRNA) profile that can predict response to letrozole with a high degree ...
In just a year’s time, four new therapies have been approved for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), treatments that are highly effective and far easier for patients to tolerate. These therapies are a major step forward, bringing renewed hope to nearly 120,000 people living with CLL...
The Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO has announced the five recipients of the 2015 International Innovation Grant. This grant supports novel and innovative projects that may improve diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of cancer in low- and middle-income countries. For 2015, the 1-year grants of...
Frank M. Muller, Jr, the newest member of the Conquer Cancer Foundation (CCF) Cornerstone Planned Giving Society, has a 40-year history of successfully leading investment and high-tech corporations. He served 8 years on active duty in tours to Vietnam. It is rare for him to experience a challenge...
As reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Anirban P. Mitra, MD, PhD, of the University of Southern California, and colleagues identified a novel genome-based signature that improves prediction of postcystectomy recurrence in patients with high-risk bladder cancer.1 Use of the...
Treatment of advanced bladder cancer continues to prove challenging, and therapies that offer long-term survival remain elusive. The ASCO Post recently spoke with Derek Raghavan, MD, PhD, FACP, FRACP, FASCO, President of the Levine Cancer Center, Charlotte, North Carolina, about the current state...
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 December 4, 2014, ruxolitinib (Jakafi) was approved for the...
Surgeons at the cutting edge are offering minimally invasive resection to patients with small gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) deemed to be low-risk, according to panelists at a session of the American College of Surgeons 2014 Clinical Congress in San Francisco. “We are seeing more small...
Inotuzumab ozogamicin combined with a low-intensity chemotherapy called mini-hyper-CVD achieved highly encouraging results in older patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in a phase II study reported at the 56th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology.1 After the...
As more experience is gained with the use of genetically engineered chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells in patients with leukemia, the data continue to be highly encouraging. Three different groups using slightly different modifications of CAR T cells reported positive experiences in treating...
An investigational class of agents in multiple myeloma, the anti-CD38 monoclonal antibodies, could be the next blockbusters in this malignancy, myeloma experts predicted at the 56th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition. Anti-CD38 antibodies target multiple myeloma...
Highlighted here are summaries of four abstracts presented at the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium: They focus on the EPO-ANE-3010 clinical trial of epoetin alfa (Epogen, Procrit) in anemic patients with metastatic breast cancer, a New York Cancer Consortium trial of fulvestrant (Faslodex)...
It is not enough for Mary-Claire King, PhD, to have identified the germline BRCA1 mutation associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancers. Her clinically applicable discovery is one of the world’s greatest in genetics and one for which she has been highly lauded. But not one to rest on her...
Ann H. Partridge, MD, MPH, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, commented on this study to The ASCO Post: With taxanes after doxorubicin/cyclophosphamide (AC), it’s “dealer’s choice.” However, she noted that most oncologists do not give every-3-week paclitaxel now. “Many have...
An update of clinical trial E1199 showed that weekly paclitaxel and every-3-week docetaxel were both more effective than every-3-week paclitaxel in preventing deaths and tumor recurrences, according to Joseph Sparano, MD, Professor of Medicine and Women’s Health at the Albert Einstein College of...
The poster presented by Traina et al attracted great interest at the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. One viewer who was impressed was Ramesh Narayanan, PhD, of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis. He noted that the clinical benefit rate of 24% at 24 weeks in the...
The androgen receptor inhibitor enzalutamide (Xtandi) showed encouraging activity as a single agent in advanced triple-negative breast cancer patients expressing the androgen receptor, according to an international study presented at the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.1 Enzalutamide...
A less intensive regimen of nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane) plus gemcitabine appears to be as efficacious as the standard regimen in first-line treatment for metastatic pancreatic cancer, but less toxic and far less expensive, according to a study that earned a Merit Award at the 2015 Gastrointestinal...
At the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, The ASCO Post sat down with geneticist Mary-Claire King, PhD, for some personal musings about her career and how she might guide young researchers who want to follow in her footsteps. Dr. King is known for a variety of accomplishments in genetics,...
George J. Chang, MD, Chief of Colon and Rectal Surgery and Director of Clinical Operations, Minimally Invasive and New Technologies in Oncologic Surgery Program at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, shared his insights on the study by Dr. Smith and colleagues with The ASCO...
Some patients with rectal cancer who achieve a complete response to neoadjuvant chemoradiation therapy can be monitored for tumor recurrence and may never need surgery, according to a retrospective review from patients at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, presented at the 2015...
Howard A. Fine, MD, has been appointed to lead the newly established neuro-oncology program at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, effective February 2. He will serve as Director of the Brain Tumor Center and Associate Director for Translational Research in the Sandra and...
I am writing in regard to the recent installment to “Clinical Trials” on Glioblastoma published in The ASCO Post (February 10, 2015, pages 69-71). As a principal investigator, I’d also like to call attention to the following glioblastoma trial, which remains open. PHASE II Study Type: Phase...
I am writing in regard to the report and commentary in this issue on the RAISE Trial. To begin, a discussion of this phase III clinical trial presented at the 2015 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium (RAISE study) may not be the most appropriate forum to air legitimate views on finances and...
A special report in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded that atypical hyperplasia of the breast “confers an absolute risk of later breast cancer of 30% at 25 years of follow-up.1” This is higher than previously recognized, and the report’s authors urged “more intensive screening and...
Atypical hyperplasia of the breast has “special importance as a predictor of future breast cancer,” according to a special report in The New England Journal of Medicine.1 That special importance is based on the high incidence of atypical hyperplasia—found in around 10% of the 1 million breast...
Crizotinib (Xalkori) treatment “was superior to pemetrexed-plus-platinum chemotherapy with respect to progression-free survival, objective response rate, reduction in lung-cancer symptoms, and improvement in quality of life” in patients with previously untreated advanced anaplastic lymphoma kinase...
In 1995, I was diagnosed with advanced colorectal cancer and given little chance to live. The dire diagnosis came years after being assured by several physicians that the problem I was having with rectal bleeding and anemia was nothing more than the result of an internal hemorrhoid. Busy raising...
Few issues in health-care debates are more contentious and polarizing than population screening for the early detection of cancer. After a decades-long battle, lung cancer screening advocates have just received what they have long sought: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has...
Scientific name: 8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide Brand names: Zostrix cream 0.025% or 0.075%, Salonpas Gel-Patch Hot, Sinus Buster (homeopathic intranasal spray). The use of dietary supplements by patients with cancer has increased significantly over the past 20 years despite insufficient evidence ...
The first poly ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitor was developed in the early 1990s. Since then, the activity of PARP inhibitors has been explored in a variety of settings, including and perhaps most enthusiastically in the treatment of cancer. The greater dependence of several cancers on PARP,...
In a phase III trial reported in Journal of Clinical Oncology, Joyce O’Shaughnessy, MD, of Baylor Charles A. Sammons Cancer Center, Dallas, and colleagues found that the addition of iniparib to gemcitabine and carboplatin did not improve overall survival or progression-free survival in patients...
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 January 29, 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)...
INSIDE THE BLACK BOX is an occasional column offering insight into the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its policies and procedures. In this installment, former clinical pharmacology team leader Julie Bullock, PharmD, and current team leader Nitin Mehrotra, PhD, discuss how...
Case 1: Prerequisites for classification of myeloid neoplasm Question 1: Which statement is the one best explanation for the discrepancy observed between the blast percentage by bone marrow aspirate visual inspection and the flow-cytometry study? Correct Answer: C. Flow-cytometry study may not be...
The ASCO Post is pleased to introduce “Hematology Expert Review,” a new feature including a case report detailing a particular hematologic condition followed by questions. Answers to each question appear with expert commentary. In this first installment, we present two cases of older men with...
ASCO and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) released a joint statement in January to guide policymakers as they work to minimize the potential negative consequences of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) and other electronic nicotine delivery systems. Tobacco use, according to the ...
Two years ago, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), the nonprofit organization that evaluates and accredits more than 9,000 medical residency programs in the United States, began phasing in implementation of its Next Accreditation System for graduate medical education,...
In a recent issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology,1 and as reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, an ASCO expert endorsement panel reviewed and endorsed, with minor qualifications, the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) clinical practice guidelines for management of familial/genetic ...
Approximately 5% to 6% of cases of colorectal cancer are associated with germline mutations conferring an inherited predisposition for disease. As reported by Stoffel and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Oncology,1 ASCO has endorsed, with qualifying statements, the European Society for Medical ...
Male breast cancer represents less than 1% of all breast cancers, which partially explains why so little is known about the disease. Two presentations at the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium focused on the characteristics of male breast cancer drawn from a large international registry and...