On August 13, 2021, belzutifan, a hypoxia-inducible factor inhibitor, was approved for treatment of adults with von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease who require therapy for associated renal cell carcinoma, central nervous system (CNS) hemangioblastomas, or pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors but do not...
Despite the ongoing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the practice-changing studies presented at the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting clarified the continuing momentum in the oncology community to improve the lives of our patients. Immunotherapy demonstrated efficacy in cancers where it had not been...
I read with great interest the results from the phase II ZUMA-12 study of axicabtagene ciloleucel, presented during the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition.1 But the results raised several questions for me. Axicabtagene ciloleucel, an autologous anti-CD19...
A cross-sectional survey of patients, caregivers, and physicians on the diagnosis and treatment of brain metastases, conducted by the American Brain Tumor Association (ABTA) as part of its Metastatic Brain Tumor Initiative, revealed disparities in practice patterns and communication around...
In a letter to the editor published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Bagchi et al describe the course of treatment in a 3-year-old child with an intracranial tumor and his response to therapy with the kinase inhibitor lorlatinib. Key Points Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the head in a...
A new study found that incidence rates for malignant brain and other central nervous system (CNS) tumors declined by 0.8% annually during 2008 through 2017 in the United States for all ages combined. The decline was driven by trends in adults, whereas rates have slightly increased by 0.5% to 0.7%...
Sonali M. Smith, MD, of the University of Chicago, discusses the many uncertainties in preventing secondary high-grade B-cell lymphomas, which have a poor prognosis; how to discern the patients at highest risk; and whether prophylaxis with monoclonal antibodies such as rituximab can mitigate the...
On August 13, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved belzutifan (Welireg), a hypoxia-inducible factor inhibitor, for adult patients with von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease who require therapy for associated renal cell carcinoma (RCC), central nervous system (CNS) hemangioblastomas, or...
In a phase II New Approaches to Neuroblastoma Therapy (NANT) consortium study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, DuBois et al found that combining the radiotherapeutic I-131 metaiodobenzylguanidine (MIBG) with vorinostat produced a higher response rate in relapsed or refractory...
To complement The ASCO Post’s continued comprehensive coverage of the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, here are several abstracts selected from the meeting proceedings focusing on novel gene therapies for resistant non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHL), including...
In a Children’s Oncology Group (COG) phase III trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Leary et al found that the addition of carboplatin to radiotherapy in pediatric patients with newly diagnosed high-risk medulloblastoma improved event-free survival in the group 3 molecular subgroup but not in others....
On March 3, 2021, lorlatinib was granted regular approval for treatment of patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with ALK-positive tumors as detected by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved test.1,2 The FDA simultaneously approved the Ventana ALK (D5F3) CDx Assay ...
Invited study discussant Jaishri O. Blakeley, MD, Director of the Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Neurofibromatosis Center, Baltimore, changed the title of her talk to “Finding Needles in Haystacks,” “because this is what we do with CNS [central nervous system] tumors,” she told listeners. “ALK...
Locoregional delivery of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells has resulted in objective responses in adults with glioblastoma, but the approach has not been evaluated in pediatric patients with brain and central nervous system tumors. The innovative, ongoing phase I BrainChild-01 trial is...
More research into the efficacy of a modified ketogenic diet may be beneficial for people with brain tumors, according to a new study published by Schreck et al in the journal Neurology. The diet, which is high in fat and low in carbohydrates, led to changes in the metabolism in the body and the...
In a first-in-human phase I trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Fares et al found that neural stem cell delivery of an oncolytic adenovirus (NSC-CRAd-S-pk7) was safe and feasible in patients with newly diagnosed malignant glioma, with immunologic and histopathologic findings supporting continued ...
In an analysis from the European Neuroblastoma Study Group (SIOPEN) HR-NBL1 high-risk neuroblastoma trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Bellini et al found that ALK amplification and clonal mutation were associated with poorer outcomes in pediatric patients with high-risk...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Jeff M. Michalski, MBA, MD, and colleagues, the Children’s Oncology Group noninferiority phase III ACNS0331 trial has shown no decrease in event-free survival with reduced radiation boost volume in patients with newly diagnosed, average-risk...
New research has uncovered substantial differences in the rates of childhood cancers when considering a single year of age rather than grouping several years together. The study, published by Marcotte et al in the journal Cancer, also found that minority children seem to have different risks than...
In the second interim analysis of the phase III CATNON trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Martin J. van den Bent, MD, PhD, and colleagues found that adjuvant temozolomide—but not temozolomide concurrent with radiotherapy—was associated with an overall survival benefit in patients with newly...
In a prospective longitudinal trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Ali et al found that infants treated for central nervous system (CNS) malignancies had baseline intellectual quotient (IQ) and parent-reported working memory and adaptive functioning worse than normative expectations; ...
“This study is interesting, and the results were a little surprising,” said Patrick Y. Wen, MD, Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Center for Neuro-Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. “The prognosis of these tumors in children and adolescents is so terrible...
The combination of dabrafenib plus trametinib led to encouraging and durable responses in patients with low- and high-grade gliomas harboring BRAF V600E mutations, according to the results of the phase II basket study known as ROAR. Results were presented during the virtual edition of the American...
In the phase II PATRICIA trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Nancy U. Lin, MD, and colleagues found that pertuzumab plus high-dose trastuzumab produced central nervous system (CNS) objective responses and clinical benefit in 68% of patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Durno et al in the International Replication Repair Deficiency Consortium (IRRDC), use of an IRRDC surveillance protocol was associated with improved overall survival among patients with constitutional mismatch repair deficiency syndrome (CMMRD)....
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies sometimes used by patients with cancer. In this article, Nirupa Raghunathan, MD, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, focus on the increasing use...
Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey has appointed Michael E. Salacz, MD, as Director of its Neuro-Oncology Program. The Associate Professor of Medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School joins Rutgers Cancer Institute from the University of Kansas Medical Center, where he served as...
Yale School of Medicine recently announced a gift to establish the Chênevert Family Brain Tumor Center at Yale Cancer Center. The Center will be a leading institution in worldwide neuro-oncology research, bringing groundbreaking solutions and hope to patients with brain tumors. The gift will...
A report published by Kotecha et al in JNCCN–Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network suggests that baseline brain imaging should be considered in most patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Researchers found incidental brain metastases occur in a clinically significant...
In a phase I trial reported at the virtual American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2021 (Abstract CT018) and simultaneously published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Friedman et al found that oncolytic virotherapy with genetically engineered herpes simplex virus-1...
Starting chemotherapy several days before the first lumbar puncture for diagnosis and treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) may reduce the risk of central nervous system (CNS) relapse in children, according to a study published by Tang et al in the journal Blood. The research focused on...
With three new HER2-targeted therapies approved in the past 15 months alone, the treatment landscape for patients with metastatic breast cancer has become increasingly crowded. In the third-line setting and beyond, there are now at least eight HER2-targeted agents approved by the U.S. Food and Drug ...
In a Dutch study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, van Schaik et al found that significant weight gain and being overweight and/or obese are common in childhood brain tumor survivors and may be associated with hypothalamic-pituitary dysfunction. Study Details The study involved data...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Rafal Dziadziuszko, MD, and colleagues, an updated integrated analysis of three phase I or II trials of entrectinib in patients with advanced ROS1-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) indicated that treatment continues to be associated with...
To complement The ASCO Post’s continued comprehensive coverage of the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, here are several abstracts selected from the meeting proceedings focusing on the assessment and treatment of patients with B-cell and T-cell non-Hodgkin...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Alice T. Shaw, MD, PhD, Global Head of Translational Clinical Oncology at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research,* and colleagues, an interim analysis of the phase III CROWN trial has shown that first-line lorlatinib significantly improved...
As reported by Olszewski et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, members of The Burkitt Lymphoma International Prognostic Index Consortium have developed an index—the Burkitt Lymphoma International Prognostic Index (BL-IPI)—that provides “robust discrimination of survival” among adult patients...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Kumar et al identified outcomes and patterns of relapse in pediatric patients with medulloblastoma. The investigators found that time to relapse and postrelapse survival was associated with subgroup and that the majority of relapses involve...
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) has announced the publication of new, free informational resources on health and wellness for cancer survivors. These two new NCCN Guidelines for Patients® are focused on healthy living and managing late and long-term side effects, and they include...
Five Innovation Discovery Grants (IDG) have been awarded to faculty from Mass General Brigham for scientific advancements, as the highly competitive IDG program exceeds $3.5 million in grants since inception. Each of the five potential patient health and health-care delivery breakthroughs for 2020...
In an analysis from the international phase III SJMB03 trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Gajjar et al identified lower- and higher-risk groups of pediatric patients with medulloblastoma based on molecular and clinical risk factors. Study Details SJMB03 is a phase III trial of...
A new study has found that patients with recurrent glioblastoma and a very low tumor mutation burden are more responsive to immunotherapies than similar tumors with an abundance of mutations. These findings, published by Gromeier et al in Nature Communications, could serve as a predictive biomarker ...
A new study published by Hodge et al in the International Journal of Cancer suggests a link between Toxoplasma gondii infection and the risk of glioma in adults. The report found that people who have glioma are more likely to have antibodies to T gondii than a similar group that was cancer-free....
Immune checkpoint inhibitors may prove to be effective in treating patients with two rare cancer types—leptomeningeal metastases and angiosarcoma, according to early-phase clinical trials reported at the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC), which was held virtually ...
Among patients with glioblastoma receiving an immune checkpoint inhibitor, those who received the corticosteroid dexamethasone at baseline for cerebral edema had significantly worse overall survival, according to results of a study published by Iorgulescu et al in Clinical Cancer Research....
In an analysis from the phase III ExteNET trial reported in Clinical Breast Cancer, Arlene Chan, MD, of the Breast Cancer Research Centre of Western Australia and Curtin University, Perth, and colleagues, found significant improvements in efficacy outcomes with administration of neratinib vs...
The European Intergroup for Childhood Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma/Children’s Oncology Group (EICNHL/COG) recently reported a significant improvement in event-free survival among children and adolescents (aged 6 months to 18 years) with high-risk mature B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (B-NHL) following the...
In a European Intergroup for Childhood Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma/Children’s Oncology Group phase III trial, reported in TheNew England Journal of Medicine, -Véronique Minard-Colin, MD, PhD, of Gustave Roussy, Université Paris-Saclay, Villejuif, France, and colleagues found that the addition of rituximab ...
The Advanced Practitioner Society for Hematology and Oncology (APSHO) presented the third annual Mary Pazdur Award for Excellence in Advanced Practice in Oncology to Christina Cone, DNP, APRN, ANP-BC, AOCNP, of Duke Cancer Institute, at this year’s JADPRO Live Virtual conference, an annual...
Jeff M. Michalski, MD, MBA, of the Washington University School of Medicine, discusses a Children’s Oncology Group study that confirmed data previously reported: Involved-field radiotherapy is noninferior to posterior fossa radiotherapy in patients with average risk-medulloblastoma. However,...