Development of autologous genetically engineered anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-expressing T cells holds promise in the treatment of hematologic malignancies. CAR T cells are being studied in adult and pediatric acute lymphocytic leukemias and in chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and...
T-cell–depleted HLA-haploidentical hematopoietic stem cell transplantation can be made more efficacious and safer through the removal of alpha/beta-positive T cells and CD19-positive B cells from the graft, an approach pioneered by Italian investigators who reported results at the 55th...
A new class of drugs reduced the risk of patients contracting a serious and often deadly side effect of bone marrow transplant treatments, according to a study by Choi et al published in The Lancet Oncology. The study, the first to test this treatment in humans, combined the drug vorinostat...
Patients receiving crizotinib (Xalkori) for the treatment of anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive non?small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) had reductions in their estimated glomerular filtration rate, according to the findings of a study by Brosnan et al published in the journal Cancer. In the...
A study by researchers from Harvard School of Public Health, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital has found that overweight or obese men with prostate cancer whose tumors were positive for the TMPRSS2:ERG genetic mutation had more than a 50% increased risk of dying...
In a brief communication published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Akbari et al reported finding a higher frequency of PPM1D mutations in circulating white blood cells from women with ovarian cancer vs controls, higher mortality associated with the mutation in women with ovarian...
In a study reported in JAMA Otolaryngology Head & Neck Surgery, George et al evaluated radiation treatment characteristics and outcomes among head and neck squamous cell carcinoma patients receiving adjuvant external-beam radiation therapy at an academic center vs other institutions....
Compared to traditional mammography, three-dimensional (3D) mammography—known as digital breast tomosynthesis—found 22% more breast cancers and led to fewer call-backs in a large screening study at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, researchers reported today at the 99th...
In a study reported in JAMA Otolaryngology Head & Neck Surgery, Hutcheson et al assessed the effects of maintained oral intake and adherence to swallowing exercises during radiation therapy or chemoradiation therapy for pharyngeal cancer. They found that both practices contributed independently ...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Wagner et al assessed whether a nurse navigator intervention improved quality of life or patient experience with care in patients who recently received a diagnosis of breast, colorectal, or lung cancer. Although no differences in...
Available data indicate that lymph node involvement predicts failure at primary and distant sites after chemoradiation for head and neck cancer. In a study reported in JAMA Otolaryngology Head & Neck Surgery, Ranck et al assessed the impact of postradiotherapy neck dissection on local and...
A phase II trial to evaluate the combination of bendamustine (Treanda) with bortezomib (Velcade) and dexamethasone in patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma “showed a remarkable response rate of 60.9%, and, when minor responses were included in 75.9% of patients,”...
The results from the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)-led Global Opioid Policy Initiative (GOPI) project show that due to a lack of access to essential opioids, more than 4 billion people—over half the world’s population—live in countries where regulatory barriers,...
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) today released its final recommendation statement on screening for oral cancer in adults without signs or symptoms of oral cancer who are seen by primary care providers. This recommendation focuses on primary care professionals and is not a...
In a post hoc analysis reported in the journal Cancer Prevention Research, Galet et al analyzed the effects of diet on men with prostate cancer. They found that men who were on a low-fat diet and fish oil supplementation had lower cell-cycle progression scores, which are associated with less...
In a study reported in JAMA Internal Medicine, Smith-Bindman et al evaluated the ability of ultrasound imaging characteristics to determine risk of thyroid cancer associated with thyroid nodules. They found that a strategy of using two abnormal nodule characteristics as an indication for biopsy...
A new study has found that several months after surgery for esophageal cancer, different symptoms cluster together in different types of patients. In addition, patients with certain symptom clusters have an increased risk of dying from their disease. The findings by Wikman et al were published...
ASCO has policy and procedures for endorsing clinical practice guidelines developed by other professional organizations. As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Meyerhardt et al of the ASCO Clinical Practice Guidelines Committee, ASCO has endorsed the Cancer Care Ontario (CCO)...
Interim phase I/II clinical trial data for VAL-083—a bifunctional DNA alkylator that crosses the blood-brain barrier with preferential accumulation in brain tumor tissue—in patients with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme were presented by Shih et al at the 4th Quadrennial Meeting of the ...
In a study reported in JAMA Internal Medicine, Wernli et al evaluated use of breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the community setting from 2005 to 2009. They found that although recommended use of MRI for screening of high-risk women is increasing, considerable progress is needed in...
In a study reported in JAMA Internal Medicine, Stout et al assessed use of breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the community setting from 2000 to 2011. They found a steep increase in use in screening and surveillance, with most women not meeting American Cancer Society (ACS) criteria for...
In a study reported in the journal PLoS One, Allison Jones, MD, of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Institute for Women’s Health, University College London, and colleagues analyzed the functional role of epigenetic factors in endometrial cancer development. They found that HAND2 methylation...
A team of researchers looking into the interplay of the immune system and cancer have found a link between a history of airborne allergies—in particular to plants, grass, and trees—with risk of blood cancers in women. The same association was not found in men, suggesting a possible...
In a study reported in Journal of Clinical Oncology, Greg Yothers, PhD, of the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP) Biostatistical Center and the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, and colleagues assessed performance of the 12-gene colon cancer...
Survivors of nasopharyngeal carcinoma who are former or current smokers are more likely to have their disease progress, relapse, or spread, and are more likely to die of their disease, compared with survivors of nasopharyngeal carcinoma who have never smoked, according to a study published in...
Two studies using whole-exome sequencing of treatment-resistant BRAF-mutated melanomas have identified multiple gene alterations, mostly affecting the MAPK pathway. Molecularly profiling BRAF-mutated melanoma patients at the time of resistance may improve their care by tailoring combinations of...
An investigational prostate cancer treatment slows the disease’s progression and may increase survival, especially among men whose cancer has spread to the bones, according an analysis led by the Duke Cancer Institute. The study, published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, adds...
Combining gemtuzumab ozogamicin (Mylotarg) with conventional chemotherapy may improve the outcome of bone marrow transplantation for some children battling high-risk acute myeloid leukemia (AML), according to a study led by St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The results appear in the...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Dale Han, MD, of Moffitt Cancer Center, and colleagues in the Sentinel Lymph Node Working Group attempted to identify factors predictive of sentinel lymph node metastasis in thin melanomas. They found that Breslow thickness ≥ 0.75 mm, ...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Xin Huang, PhD, of the National Clinical Research Center of Cancer in Tianjin, and colleagues investigated whether STAT3 activation can identify patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma treated with R-CHOP (rituximab [Rituxan] plus...
In the phase III Z1041 trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Aman U. Buzdar, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and colleagues compared neoadjuvant therapy with FEC-75 (fluorouracil [5-FU], epirubicin, and cyclophosphamide) followed by paclitaxel plus trastuzumab (Herceptin) ...
In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Susan Halabi, MD, of Duke University Medical Center, and colleagues developed and validated a prognostic model predicting prostate cancer survival in patients receiving second-line chemotherapy for castration-resistant...
Results from a University of Colorado Cancer Center study indicated that bevacizumab (Avastin) resistance in patients with colorectal cancer may be due to increases in growth factors other than the targeted VEGF-A. The study, led by Christopher Lieu, MD, and published in the journal PLoS One,...
The choice and timing of therapeutic interventions may significantly affect the quality of life of young breast cancer survivors in the short term, although other quality-of-life domains such as family relationships may not be negatively impacted after treatment. These findings were reported by...
In a phase III trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Edward S. Kim, MD, of Levine Cancer Institute, Carolinas HealthCare System, and colleagues investigated whether the addition of cetuximab (Erbitux) to pemetrexed (Alimta) improved progression-free survival in patients with recurrent or...
In a study reported in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Physics, Emma C. Fields, MD, of the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and colleagues analyzed the stage-specific management of male breast cancer with surgery and radiation therapy and related them to outcomes...
A single session of intraoperative radiotherapy with electrons permits delivery of a radiotherapy dose equivalent to that of conventional postoperative whole-breast irradiation. In the ELIOT trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Umberto Veronesi, MD, of the European Institute of Oncology, and...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Boris Böll, MD, of University Hospital Cologne, and colleagues analyzed second-line treatment and survival in older patients with relapsed/refractory Hodgkin lymphoma in German Hodgkin Study Group first-line studies. Use of a...
Results of a Johns Hopkins study may explain why cyclophosphamide prevents graft-vs-host disease in people who receive bone marrow transplants. The experiments point to an immune system cell that evades the toxic effects of cyclophosphamide and protects patients from a lethal form of graft-vs-host...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved ibrutinib (Imbruvica) for the treatment of patients with mantle cell lymphoma, an aggressive B-cell lymphoma that represents about 6% of all non-Hodgkin lymphoma cases in the United States. The drug, a Bruton’s tyrosine kinase inhibitor, is ...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Kevin R. Krill, PhD, and colleagues from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital assessed neurocognitive function in adult survivors of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). They found pervasive significant impairment across...
Researchers seeking to determine why breast cancers are more deadly in young women found that although only a minority of young women experience long delays between the time they detect a breast abnormality and the time they receive a diagnosis, delays in seeking care are more common in women with...
In a study reported in JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, Okechukwu R. Linton, MD, MBA, of Indiana University School of Medicine, and colleagues assessed the prognostic significance of head and neck basaloid squamous cell carcinoma, which is considered a more aggressive form of squamous...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Oriana Yu, MD, of Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, and colleagues assessed the association of statin use with prostate cancer mortality and all-cause mortality in men with nonmetastatic prostate cancer. They found that postdiagnostic ...
The Group for Research in Adult Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (GRAALL) recently reported significantly better outcome in T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) harboring NOTCH1 or FBXW7 (N/F) mutations, although relapse was still observed in one-third of patients with N/F-mutated T-cell ALL. In a ...
Available data suggest that risk of febrile neutropenia is greatest during the first two cycles of chemotherapy in patients with breast cancer. In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Maureen J. Aarts of Maastricht University Medical Centre in the Netherlands, and colleagues...
Use of a minimally invasive endoscopic procedure to remove superficial, early-stage esophageal cancer is as effective as surgery that takes out and rebuilds the esophagus, according to a study by researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida. The research, published in Clinical Gastroenterology and...
On October 31, 2013, Ariad Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer of ponatinib, agreed to an FDA request to suspend marketing and sales of the drug due to the risk of life-threatening blood clots and severe narrowing of blood vessels. The FDA states that it will continue to evaluate ponatinib to further ...
Several novel agents targeting the HER2, C-MET, and VEGF receptors have achieved encouraging results in gastric cancer, which is the second leading cause of cancer death worldwide. Charles Fuchs, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, reviewed these new approaches in a presentation at the...
Most patients with estrogen receptor–positive metastatic breast cancer who initially respond to endocrine treatments will eventually develop resistance to the therapies. A study by Ido Wolf, MD, Head of the Oncology Department at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center in Israel, and colleagues...