The ASCO Post is pleased to present “Hematology Expert Review,” an occasional feature that includes a case report detailing a particular hematologic condition followed by questions. Answers to each question, along with expert commentary, can be found in the sidebar. In this installment, we present...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Matthew J. Resnick, MD, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and colleagues, ASCO has endorsed the 2014 American Cancer Society Prostate Cancer Survivorship Care Guidelines.1,2 The ASCO endorsement panel was co-chaired by Dr. Resnick and David...
In April 2015, the American College of Physicians (ACP) released its clinical advice guideline, Cervical Cancer Screening in Average-Risk Women: Best Practice Advice From the Clinical Guidelines Committee of the American College of Physicians.1 The guideline aims to reduce the overuse of cervical...
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...
In February 2015, the President’s Cancer Panel reported that human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination uptake among boys and girls was falling drastically short of target rates, posing “a serious but correctable threat to progress against cancer.” In response, the National Cancer Institute (NCI)...
More than 7,200 cases of anal cancer were diagnosed in 2014—approximately 2,600 in men and 4,600 in women—representing an increase of more than 4,000 from 8 years ago. In more than 90% of patients, infection with the human papillomavirus (HPV) is the cause, tagging anal cancer as a largely...
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,...
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...
A new “off-the-shelf” treatment promises to induce remission in rituximab (Rituxan)-refractory Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-associated lymphoproliferative disorder, a potentially fatal complication of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Historically, this complication has been difficult to treat...
Elaine Mardis, PhD, Co-director of The Genome Institute at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, commented on the IMPaCT trial and the constraints of the U.S. health-care system. “The correct clinical trial has not yet been performed to demonstrate the clinical utility of genomic...
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...
PD-L1 is an imperfect biomarker, according to formal discussant of this paper, D. Ross Camidge, MD, PhD, of the University of Colorado Comprehensive Cancer Center, Denver. “The importance of a good predictive assay in this field [of immunotherapy] is so great that it is impossible to ascribe any...
Add lung cancer to the growing list of cancers that may derive benefit from immunotherapy. The KEYNOTE-001 trial found that pembrolizumab (Keytruda) achieved durable responses in a proportion of patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and high levels of expression of the protein PD-L1...
For 2 decades, the NCCN Guidelines® have been recognized as the standard of cancer care in the United States, combining evidence, experience, and choice, so that multidisciplinary cancer treatment teams—including patients—are empowered to make informed decisions about cancer care,” said Robert W....
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...
Another exciting multiple myeloma treatment will be presented at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting,” Philip L. McCarthy, MD, Professor of Oncology and Director of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Center at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, New York, commented in an interview with The ASCO Post....
The ASCO Annual Meeting is our Society’s premier event and without a doubt one that is highly anticipated by the oncology world. The success of the meeting stems from the desire to share with each other our data and the knowledge we have gleaned from those data over the course of the past year. The ...
These latest results of STAMPEDE lend further support to the early use of chemotherapy in men with advanced prostate cancer. They confirm the CHAARTED trial results reported last year by Christopher J. Sweeney, MBBS, which were practice-changing. Men with newly diagnosed metastatic...
At the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting, the phase III E3805 (CHAARTED) trial presented at the Plenary Session showed that the addition of docetaxel to standard hormone therapy extended survival by more than 1 year in men with newly diagnosed, hormone-sensitive prostate cancer.1 The survival benefit of...
Results from the STAMPEDE trial showed that the addition of docetaxel to standard hormone therapy improved overall survival by a median of 10 months over hormone therapy alone in men with newly diagnosed, advanced, hormone therapy–naive prostate cancer.1 The study also showed that zoledronic acid...
Ronald Piana is an independent writer and reporter with more than 20 years of experience in oncology communications and publishing. In addition to the profiles published in this special supplemental issue of The ASCO Post, Ron has written more than 100 news and feature articles, interviews, and...
Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. —Theodore Roosevelt Longevity, in and of itself, is not an accomplishment. Luck and good genes are just human lottery tickets. Most people fortunate enough to live long lives have a productive sweet ...
Robert C. Young, MD, ASCO Past President, longtime leader of Fox Chase Cancer Center, and an internationally recognized expert in lymphoma and ovarian cancer, is a forward-looking doctor who is confident about something not in his future: retirement. “I’ll never quit working; I’m just not wired...
Dear Dr. Wilson: I am writing to express our family’s deepest and heartfelt appreciation for the lifesaving care you and your team provided for our son, Patrick…. I don’t know how widely it is known that you save lives at the National Cancer Institute—offering hope to people like Patrick, who have...
At the end of the day, I’m still a kid from South Philly,” Andrew C. von Eschenbach, MD, former Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), told The ASCO Post. Dr. von Eschenbach is the product of a closely knit yet culturally...
John L. Marshall, MD, a global leader in the research and treatment of gastrointestinal cancers, grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, in a family that put high value on education. As a young boy, science was already on his mind; he enjoyed the explorative nature that chemistry and biology offered....
The Tampa Bay area of Florida is a haven for golfers and fishermen looking to unwind under the warm tropical skies. And the clean highways stretching through the scenic west coast of Florida are also a perfect excuse for weekend motorcycle enthusiasts, such as Alan F. List, MD, the President and...
Due to childhood health issues, Sandra J. Horning, MD, formed an opinion about doctors at a young age: They were good people who helped other people. By her early teens, Dr. Horning began to ponder a career in medicine, which offered the possibility of blending her love of science with a career...
As a young boy growing up in the Bronx, Vincent T. DeVita, Jr, MD, admired the local iceman, a thick-muscled guy known as Nunzi, who used to carry a big block of ice on his shoulder with a set of tongs, and effortlessly slide it into the DeVitas’ icebox. “A friend once asked me what I wanted to be...
At the 2007 ASCO Annual Meeting, Lodovico Balducci, MD, received the inaugural B.J. Kennedy Award and Lecture for Scientific Excellence in Geriatric Oncology. Called the “patriarch of geriatric oncology,” Dr. Balducci is widely known in the oncology community for his warm humor and thick Italian...
In 1985, Carolyn R. “Bo” Aldigé founded the Prevent Cancer Foundation in honor of her father, who had died the previous year of head and neck cancer. She started the Foundation in her kitchen with a typewriter, a sheath of carbon copy paper, and a telephone. “I quickly rented an office because a...
ASCO announced its first-ever clinical trial, which will offer patients with advanced cancer access to molecularly targeted cancer drugs and collect “real-world” data on clinical outcomes, to help learn the best uses of these drugs outside of indications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug...
A population-based cohort study “indicates that more extensive lymph node clearance during surgery for esophageal cancer may not improve survival,” Maartje van der Schaaf, MD, PhD, of the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, and colleagues reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute....
Using imatinib to treat chronic-phase chronic myeloid leukemia (CP-CML) first line, with selective switching to nilotinib (Tasigna) “leads to excellent molecular response and survival” and “may be preferable to universal first-line use of more potent agents, considering efficacy, toxicity, and...
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...
Gene fusions resulting in androgen receptor–modulated ERG gene overexpression can be found in up to 70% of patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. In a study reported in Clinical Cancer Research, Attard and colleagues assessed the effect of ERG rearrangement on outcomes in...
Does the finding that the incidence of fractures is “compellingly higher” after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation mean that physicians counseling patients about transplant should feel compelled to discuss the fracture risks? Huifang Linda Lu, MD, PhD, the corresponding author of the study...
The incidence of fractures is “compellingly higher” after receiving hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, according to a retrospective study of patients receiving transplants for treatment of multiple myeloma, other hematologic malignancies, and some solid tumors (mostly breast and ovarian) as...
My first experience with cancer was when I was just 9 years old, and a lump the size of an egg popped out on the right side of my neck. A biopsy of the tumor found that it was Hodgkin lymphoma, and I was given huge doses of external-beam radiotherapy applied to my neck, chest, and underarm lymph...
Alan C. Sartorelli, PhD, Alfred Gilman Professor of Pharmacology at Yale University School of Medicine, Past President of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), and a Fellow of the AACR Academy, died on April 30, 2015. A pioneer in cancer chemotherapy, Dr. Sartorelli was one of the...
Martin McMahon, PhD, will join Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah in August 2015 as Professor in the Department of Dermatology and HCI Senior Director of Preclinical Translation. Dr. McMahon is currently the Efim Guzik Distinguished Professor of Cancer Biology at the...
Charlene M. Dewey, MD, MEd, FACP, Assistant Dean of Educator Development; Associate Professor of Medical Education and Administration; and Associate Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, offers these suggestions for effectively communicating feedback to...
Providing students and residents with feedback on their medical performance is a key element in their learning and development and ensures that high standards are met, according to Charlene M. Dewey, MD, MEd, FACP, Assistant Dean of Educator Development; Associate Professor of Medical Education and ...
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 ...
The phase III RAISE trial—reported by Tabernero and colleagues in The Lancet Oncology1 and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post—demonstrated that ramucirumab (Cyramza), a fully human IgG1 monoclonal antibody to the vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 (VEGFR2) extracellular domain, in...
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.)...
ASCO appointed Lidia Schapira, MD, FASCO, a medical oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, the new Editor in Chief of its award-winning patient information website, Cancer.Net. Dr. Schapira assumed this role at the...
The past 3 years have witnessed transformative changes in the way that solid tumors and hematologic malignancies are approached, in almost every instance now including consideration of some form of immunomodulation in the first- or later-line therapeutic setting. The greatest success has occurred...
In a phase III trial (CheckMate 037) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Jeffrey S. Weber, MD, PhD, of the Moffitt Cancer Center, and colleagues found that treatment with the PD-1 (programmed cell death protein 1) inhibitor nivolumab (Opdivo) resulted in a significantly greater response rate vs...
ASCO, together with 30 organizations, have sent a letter to President Obama asking for his leadership in giving the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the authority to regulate e-cigarettes and other currently unregulated tobacco products. The 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control ...