As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Karim Fizazi, MD, PhD, of Gustave Roussy Institute, Paris-Saclay University, and colleagues, the phase III TRITON3 trial has shown significantly improved progression-free survival with rucaparib vs physician-selected single-agent therapy in the...
Medical oncologist Monica Chatwal, MD, of Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, Florida, commented on the take-home points from the ARASENS trial. “The ARASENS trial continues to show a survival benefit for a triplet therapy approach in metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer with androgen-deprivation ...
Presented here are summaries of three abstracts from the 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting that are pertinent for patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. The first two focus on men with homologous recombinant repair (HRR) gene alterations, including BRCA1/2. In the first study,...
In a UK study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Moore et al found that increased pathologic lymph node regression after neoadjuvant chemotherapy was associated with better outcomes in esophageal adenocarcinoma. Study Details The study involved patients treated with neoadjuvant...
“Hats off to the investigators for the first comparison of triplet to doublet in advanced renal cell carcinoma. This is also the first results using a contemporary control group. The study met its primary endpoint,” said Sumanta K. Pal, MD, FASCO, Co-Director of the Kidney Cancer Program, City of...
The addition of cabozantinib to nivolumab plus ipilimumab prolonged progression-free survival in untreated intermediate-risk patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC), according to the first results of the phase III COSMIC-313 trial. These findings were presented as a Presidential Symposium ...
The 3-year follow-up of the phase III CheckMate 9ER trial demonstrates superior outcomes with the combination of nivolumab plus cabozantinib vs the former standard-of-care sunitinib as first-line treatment of advanced or metastatic renal cell carcinoma.1 These benefits were achieved with the...
David A. Braun, MD, PhD, of Yale Cancer Center, was the formal discussant of the abstract on the 4-year follow-up of the CLEAR trial. “We have made remarkable progress [in advanced renal cell carcinoma] and are now in the combination era of immunotherapy-based therapy and immunotherapy-based...
At extended follow-up, lenvatinib plus pembrolizumab showed sustained superiority over sunitinib for overall and progression-free survival as first-line treatment for advanced renal cell carcinoma.1 The majority of the benefit was observed in intermediate- and poor-risk subgroups, according to the...
On August 14, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the HEPZATO KIT, a melphalan hepatic delivery system, as a liver-directed treatment for adult patients with metastatic uveal melanoma and unresectable hepatic metastases affecting less than 50% of the liver and no extrahepatic...
On August 14, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to elranatamab-bcmm (Elrexfio), a bispecific B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA)-directed CD3 T-cell engager, for adult patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma who have received at least four prior...
Over the past year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted approval to several novel drugs and new indications for older therapeutic agents used in hematologic oncology. Glofitamab for DLBCL On June 15, 2023, the FDA granted accelerated approval to glofitamab-gxbm (Columvi) for...
Insights on findings from the phase II MonumenTAL-1 trial1 were offered by Ajay K. Nooka, MD, MPH, Professor in the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology, and Medical Director of the Winship Data and Technology Applications Shared Resource, Winship Cancer Institute, Emory University School ...
In the phase I/II MonumenTAL-1 trial, the novel bispecific antibody talquetamab produced responses in more than 70% of heavily pretreated patients with multiple myeloma.1 Of note, the safety profile confirmed results of the phase I portion of the study (recently published in TheNew England Journal...
The promise of bispecific monoclonal antibodies in multiple myeloma continues to heighten as yet another one appears to be active. In a study reported at the 2022 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition,1 almost two-thirds of patients with triple-refractory disease who...
Ciara L. Freeman, MD, PhD, Assistant Member, Department of Blood and Marrow Transplant and Cellular Immunotherapy, Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, Florida, was impressed with the CARTITUDE-4 findings. She said “treaters and patients” will be “watching this space” to see how the results change the...
Compared with the standard of care for relapsed multiple myeloma, a single infusion of ciltacabtagene autoleucel was associated with a significant 74% reduction in the risk of disease progression in patients with lenalidomide-refractory multiple myeloma after one to three relapses, the phase III...
In a phase II trial, treatment with the JAK2 inhibitor ruxolitinib resulted in clinical activity in two-thirds of patients with chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (CMML) with splenomegaly or an otherwise high disease symptom burden. The magnitude of symptomatic benefit was similar to that observed in...
Alexey Danilov, MD, PhD, Co-Director, Toni Stephenson Lymphoma Center and Professor, Division of Lymphoma, Department of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, City of Hope, Duarte, California, commented on the phase III ALPINE trial comparing ibrutinib and zanubrutinib in patients...
The next-generation Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor zanubrutinib demonstrated superior progression-free survival compared with ibrutinib, with an improved cardiac safety profile, in the first head-to-head comparison between these two BTK inhibitors in relapsed or refractory chronic...
The standard of care could be changing for adults with newly diagnosed BCR-ABL–negative B-lineage acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) who achieve measurable residual disease (MRD) negativity after induction chemotherapy. In the phase III E1910 trial by the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group, an...
Catherine S. Diefenbach, MD, Associate Professor at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Director of the Clinical Lymphoma Program, and Director of Hematology Translational Research at Perlmutter Cancer Center, in New York, called the findings from the TRANSFORM trial “very striking.” “This study...
New research has confirmed the superiority of lisocabtagene maraleucel over the standard of care for the second-line treatment of primary refractory or early relapsed large B-cell lymphoma, according to data presented by lead study author Jeremy S. Abramson, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at...
The addition of nivolumab, an immune checkpoint inhibitor, to chemotherapy significantly improved progression-free survival in adults and children with advanced classical Hodgkin lymphoma with reduced toxicity compared with standard-of-care brentuximab vedotin plus chemotherapy, according to the...
Caron Jacobson, MD, shared some comments on ZUMA-7 with The ASCO Post. She called ZUMA-7 “an extremely important study to advance the care of high-risk early relapsing or primary refractory large B-cell lymphoma after front-line chemoimmunotherapy.” Dr. Jacobson is Assistant Professor of Medicine...
In the primary overall survival analysis of ZUMA-7, second-line treatment with axicabtagene ciloleucel significantly improved overall survival compared with high-dose therapy plus autologous stem cell transplantation (auto-HCT) in patients with early relapsed or refractory large B-cell lymphoma....
The past several months have brought significant advances within the field of hematologic oncology. Here we will review some key updates focusing on pivotal clinical trials and new drug approvals. Advances in Lymphoma Presented at the 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting, SWOG S1826 compared nivolumab plus...
Researchers have identified a novel parameter of T cells that may help oncologists anticipate which patients are most likely to develop immunotherapy toxicity. The findings, published by Ostmeyer in the Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, could lead to improved treatments for a variety of ...
In a Chinese study (CCLG-AML 2015) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Li et al found that homoharringtonine (HHT)-based induction therapy was associated with promising outcomes in pediatric acute myeloid leukemia (AML). As stated by the investigators, “HHT is commonly used for the...
On August 11, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the fixed-dose combination of niraparib and abiraterone acetate (Akeega), with prednisone, for adult patients with deleterious or suspected deleterious BRCA-mutated metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, as determined by...
Researchers have found a way to use artificial intelligence (AI) to diagnose sarcopenia in patients with head and neck cancer. The tool may be used to improve treatment and supportive care for patients, according to a report published by Ye et al in JAMA Network Open. “Sarcopenia is an indicator...
In a single-institution study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Kooshesh et al found that adults who had undergone thymectomy may be at an increased risk of death; cancer; and, in certain cases, autoimmune disease. As stated by the investigators: “The function of the thymus in human...
On August 9, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to the bispecific antibody talquetamab-tgvs (Talvey) for adults with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma who have received at least four prior lines of therapy (including a proteasome inhibitor, an...
The members of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) recently elected three new officers to ASTRO’s Board of Directors: Sameer Keole, MD, FASTRO, as President-Elect; Wendy Woodward, MD, PhD, FASTRO, as Science Council Vice Chair; and Vivek S. Kavadi, MD, MBA, FASTRO, as Health Policy...
I knew the moment my fingers found a lump in my left breast, in 2018, that it was cancer, and I wondered if I was going to die. My maternal grandmother had been diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 39, the same age I was when I discovered the mass in my breast. She died 5 years later. Divorced ...
Susan M. Love, MD, MBA, a renowned surgeon, author, researcher, and patient advocate who dedicated her life’s work to breast cancer care, died on July 2, 2023, at her home in Los Angeles. The cause of death was recurrent leukemia. She was 75. Born in Long Branch, New Jersey, on February 9, 1948,...
The ASCO Post is pleased to present Hematology Expert Review, an ongoing feature that quizzes readers on issues in hematology. With this installment, we launch a new series of articles on commercially available chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies. Syed Ali Abutalib, MD, and Jennifer N. ...
A report published by Kwan et al in the journal Cancer provides new information that may help oncologists answer one of the most common questions they hear from breast cancer survivors: Is it safe to drink alcohol? The findings suggest drinking alcohol is not associated with an increased risk of...
Approximately 65% of adults in the United States consume sugar-sweetened beverages daily. Researchers led a study examining the associations among intake of sugar-sweetened or artificially sweetened beverages and the incidence of liver cancer and chronic liver disease mortality in a large cohort of ...
A machine-learning model found that background parenchymal enhancement (BPE) on breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may be an indicator of breast cancer risk in patients with extremely dense breasts, according to a study published by Wang et al in Radiology. Patients with extremely dense...
In the phase III EVEREST trial reported in The Lancet, Christopher W. Ryan, MD, and colleagues found that adjuvant everolimus was not associated with a significant improvement in event-free survival vs placebo in patients at high risk of disease recurrence following surgery for renal cell...
In the phase II RAGNAR study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Shubham Pant, MBBS, and colleagues found that the pan-FGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor erdafitinib showed activity in patients with advanced solid tumors with FGFR alterations. Study Details In the ongoing study, 217 patients aged ≥ 12...
ASCO has been awarded $11 million in research funding by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to study dosing strategies of oral CDK4/6 inhibitors in older adults living with metastatic breast cancer. The study aims to address a critical evidence gap in the treatment of this...
Formal discussant Daniel G. Stover, MD, of The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, said the SONIA and PALMIRA trials raised several questions. Can CDK4/6 inhibitors be personalized and differentiated? Can patients delay treatment with these agents? Should all patients receive a...
Two studies presented at the 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting challenge the use of CDK4/6 inhibitors as part of upfront treatment of advanced hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative breast cancer. The first, the SONIA trial, found that first-line treatment with CDK4/6 inhibitors led to greater toxicity...
Preparing and running a medical conference is usually a complex but rewarding mission. It is a demanding job that is typically done voluntarily by physicians and educators who are dedicated to professional and community service; advancement of research and education; as well as the dissemination of ...
As we detailed in our Special Report “Surviving, but Not Always Thriving, After Cancer,” in the May 25, 2023, issue of The ASCO Post, the combination of advances in more effective therapies to treat cancer, gains in early detection, and sharp declines in tobacco use have led to a staggering 33%...
The probability of obtaining a HER2-low test result increases with the number of biopsies performed, according to a study of more than 500 biopsy samples in patients with triple-negative breast cancer. For patients originally labeled as having no HER2 expression (HER2 0), each successive biopsy...
New research published by Ou et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network evaluated how an important analysis on adjuvant chemotherapy for advanced colon cancer impacted prescribing patterns. The IDEA collaboration included more than 12,000 patients with stage III colon...
Experts have suspected that depression and anxiety may increase cancer risk by affecting a person’s health-related behaviors or by having biological effects on the body that support cancer development. Some research has supported an association among depression, anxiety, and cancer incidence,...