Over 10 years ago, we welcomed a new approach to cancer surgery when the 2004 COST trial demonstrated the benefits of laparoscopic compared with open surgery for colon cancer. This randomized trial of 872 patients showed improved perioperative recovery with laparoscopic colectomy without...
A new template published by the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) standardizes and streamlines the creation of patient-focused plans for long-term cancer survivor care following radiation therapy. As the number of cancer patients and survivors in the United States continues to...
V. Craig Jordan, OBE, PhD, DSc, FMedSci, a breast cancer research pioneer known for his development of the therapeutic drug tamoxifen, has been named a recipient of the Sir James Black Award from the British Pharmacological Society. Dr. Jordan, Professor in the Department of Breast Medical...
Launched by ASCO in 2005 to provide oncologists with original research on the delivery of high-quality cancer care, the Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP) enters its 11th year with a new look and feel. Beginning in January 2016, JOP will be copublished by ASCO and Harborside Press, the publisher of ...
Patients who have been treated for breast cancer may overestimate the value of follow-up testing and may expect—or even ask for—more testing than recommended, Harold J. Burstein, MD, PhD, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, Boston, told participants at the Lynn Sage...
Partnering endocrine therapy with new targeted agents for women with estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer “changes the nature of endocrine therapy from something easily tolerated, with not a lot that you have to do as physicians to monitor it,” William J. Gradishar, MD, of the Robert H. Lurie...
City of Hope recently announced the following new staff additions. Bart O. Roep, PhD Internationally recognized immunologist Bart O. Roep, PhD, has joined City of Hope as Chair of the Department of Diabetes Immunology within the Diabetes & Metabolism Research Institute. An expert in the...
Carlos Rodriguez-Galindo, MD, an international leader in pediatric solid tumor research, is joining St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to head the International Outreach Program. Dr. Rodriguez-Galindo will serve as International Outreach Program Director and an executive vice president. He will...
A new guidance statement from ASCO and the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) could potentially lead to more standardized primary palliative care delivery across oncology settings, according to Kathleen E. Bickel, MD, MPhil, who presented the study findings at the 2015...
Emory University announced that Jonathan S. Lewin, MD, has been appointed Executive Vice President for Health Affairs. Dr. Lewin also will serve as Executive Director for Emory’s Woodruff Health Sciences Center, President and CEO of Emory Healthcare and Chair of the Board of Directors of Emory...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) recognized investigators with the highest-scoring abstracts in the categories of undergraduate student, medical student, graduate student, resident physician, and postdoctoral fellow at the 57th ASH Annual Meeting and Exhibition, December 5–8 in Orlando,...
Treatment with capecitabine increased disease-free and overall survival in breast cancer patients with residual disease after neoadjuvant chemotherapy, according to a study reported by researchers from Japan and Korea at the 2015 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.1 “It has been unclear whether...
As health-care providers, we have an obligation and a responsibility not only to care for our patients, but also to educate them—and the general public—about their cancer risk and ways to reduce or prevent it. We are living in the golden era of cancer prevention and treatment, made possible by...
At an educational session at the 2015 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition, Sagar Lonial, MD, of Emory University, Atlanta, elaborated upon this topic. The pooled analysis of daratumumab (Darzalex) monotherapy, he said, “demonstrated significant activity and, not only this,...
Breast cancer afflicts 1 in 8 women in their lifetime, and 1 in 25 die from this disease. Although a number of randomized trials have demonstrated the clear benefits of mammography screening in women up to age 74 on reducing mortality, data are sparse in women over age 74, especially among...
The American Psychosocial Oncology Society (APOS) has endorsed the “Psychosocial Standards of Care for Children with Cancer and Their Families” published in a December 2015 special supplement to Pediatric Blood and Cancer. The scientific, evidence-based psychosocial standards...
The requirement for tumor tissue specimens and associated analyses in order to participate in clinical trials appears to be a significant barrier to clinical trial enrollment and may delay treatment. Potential solutions to reducing or eliminating these barriers include routine tissue banking at...
Rapidly dividing cells rely on an enzyme called Dicer to help them repair the DNA damage that occurs as they make mistakes in copying their genetic material over and over for new cells. Researchers have built on the discovery of Dicer’s role in fixing DNA damage to uncover a new potential...
A gene that is known to suppress the growth and spread of many types of cancer has the opposite effect in some forms of colorectal cancer, University of Missouri (MU) School of Medicine researchers have found. It is a finding that may lay the foundation for new colorectal cancer treatments. Results ...
Long travel distances continue to be a significant obstacle to breast reconstruction after mastectomy for breast cancer, according to a study published by Abornoz et al in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. “While greater patient awareness and insurance coverage have contributed to greater...
An analysis published by Tarazi et al in the Journal of Cancer Survivorship found that even in the health-care landscape before the Affordable Care Act, cancer survivors in states that had already expanded Medicaid coverage prior to passage of the Act had more access to health care than cancer...
A new analysis indicated that many patients continue working after being diagnosed with metastatic cancer, but a heavy burden of symptoms may prevent them from doing so. Published by Tevaarwerk et al in Cancer, the study illustrates the need to treat difficult symptoms so that patients can maintain ...
More patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) could benefit from pembrolizumab (Keytruda), said Roy Herbst, MD, PhD, Chief of Medical Oncology at Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven. Dr. Herbst presented promising results from the pivotal phase...
Five percent of cancer patients and their families were pushed into poverty in Southeast Asia between March 2012 and September 2013 because of high disease-related costs, a study (Abstract 52O) by Bhoo-Pathy et al at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Asia 2015 Congress in Singapore...
Novel strategies are being explored for difficult-to-treat and advanced head and neck cancer—the most heterogeneous group of malignancies that are generally associated with poor survival—and encouraging results have been presented in two trials at the first European Society for Medical...
Patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-activating mutations in advanced lung cancer seem to benefit more from afatinib (Gilotrif) than gefitinib (Iressa) as first-line treatment, Park et al reported in a study (Abstract LBA2) presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology...
On December 18, 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expanded the pembrolizumab (Keytruda) label to include approval of the drug for the treatment of patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma. This expansion now includes the initial treatment of patients with unresectable or...
Follow-up times of abnormal screening exams were shorter for breast cancer than they were for colorectal and cervical cancers, according to a recent study involving more than 1 million individuals who underwent these screenings. Recently published by Tosteson et al in the Journal of General...
A patient's mental health prior to surgery can influence postoperative outcomes. Removal of the bladder, or radical cystectomy, is an effective treatment for locally advanced bladder cancer, but complications occur in as many as 66% of patients. In a study published by Sharma et al in The Journal...
A recent study at Houston Methodist Hospital proved that multiple small doses of highly focused radiation therapy is safer and more effective than a single larger dose of radiation at destroying pituitary gland tumors. The findings on the use of fractionated stereotactic radiotherapy were published ...
Each year, about 1.38 million women worldwide are diagnosed with breast cancer. Advances in treatment have facilitated a 90% 5-year survival rate among those treated. Given the increased rate and length of survival following breast cancer, more and more survivors are facing a lifetime risk of...
Unlike a number of other cancers in which young age at diagnosis is understood to represent distinct disease biology, the genomics and clinical characteristics of non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in young patients are poorly understood. A study by Sacher et al investigating the relationship ...
Bruce E. Johnson, MD, FASCO, has been elected President of ASCO for the term beginning in June 2017. He will take office as President-Elect during the ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago in June 2016. Additionally, four new members were elected to the ASCO Board of Directors, as well as three new...
A new study led by Johns Hopkins researchers shows wide racial and economic disparities in access to minimally invasive hysterectomies for early uterine cancer in the United States. This is despite years of accumulating evidence that the procedures to remove the uterus are linked to fewer...
Using information gleaned from more than 20,000 men, researchers at Johns Hopkins have affirmed the value of their alternative system for assessing the likelihood of growth and spread of prostate cancer. The new grading system, they said, is not only easier to use and understand, but also more...
Thyroid cancer survivors report poor quality of life after diagnosis and treatment compared with other patients who are diagnosed with more lethal cancers, according to new research from the University of Chicago Medicine. The findings, published by Aschebrook-Kilfoy et al in the journal Thyroid,...
Among patients undergoing major cancer operations, the preoperative use of blood-thinning drugs such as heparin does not increase rates of major bleeding or transfusions, and is associated with a decreased risk of blood clots, according to new study results published by Selby et al in the Journal...
A class of drugs used increasingly to help fight cancer may have the additional benefit of protecting the kidneys when packaged with the powerful chemotherapy agent cisplatin. These findings were published by Ranganathan et al in Kidney International. The nearly 40-year-old cisplatin can be a...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cleared the first cooling cap to reduce hair loss in female breast cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy for marketing in the United States. Hair loss is a common side effect of certain types of chemotherapy, commonly associated with the treatment of...
In the first study of its kind, University of Southern California (USC) researchers have found that colorectal cancer risk in Californian Latinos varies widely depending on the country of origin. Their study was published by Stern et al in Cancer Causes & Control. “Hispanics are a very...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today granted accelerated approval to alectinib (Alecensa) for the treatment of patients with anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who have had disease progression on or are intolerant to crizotinib (Xalkori). ...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today approved uridine triacetate (Vistogard) for the emergency treatment of adults and children who receive an overdose of the cancer treatment fluorouracil (5-FU) or capecitabine, or who develop certain severe or life-threatening toxicities within...
Among women with locally advanced or metastatic hormone receptor–positive breast cancer that was resistant to hormone therapy, those who had mutated PIK3CA detected in their blood benefited from a combination of the investigational PI3K inhibitor buparlisib and fulvestrant (Faslodex),...
Responses to tamoxifen were significantly prolonged by reducing levels of the enzyme APOBEC3B in preclinical models of estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer and significantly shortened by increasing levels of APOBEC3B, suggesting that APOBEC3B drives resistance to tamoxifen, according to...
Among patients with HER2-positive, metastatic breast cancer that had progressed despite treatment with two or more forms of HER2-targeted therapy (trastuzumab [Herceptin] and lapatinib [Tykerb]), median overall survival was increased for those treated with ado-trastuzumab emtansine (aka T-DM1...
Postmenopausal women with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) had similar outcomes with disease recurrence whether they took tamoxifen or the aromatase inhibitor anastrozole for 5 years after surgery, but women in the two groups had different side effects, according to results from the phase III...
For more than 20 years, the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test has been used to help screen for prostate cancer. However, in recent years, some task forces have called for this blood test to be abandoned because it leads to many unnecessary biopsies. Now, a new study from The Ottawa Hospital and...
Analysis of patient-reported outcomes, a secondary endpoint of the phase III NSABP B-35 clinical trial, in which anastrozole and tamoxifen were compared in postmenopausal women with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) who underwent lumpectomy plus radiotherapy, found that there were no differences in...
Patients with stage II or stage III triple-negative breast cancer who had a pathologic complete response (pCR) after presurgery chemotherapy had increased event-free and overall survival compared with those who had more than minimal residual invasive disease at surgery following presurgery...
Among the various guideline-concordant local therapy options available for women with early-stage breast cancer in the United States, mastectomy plus reconstruction had the highest complication rates and complication-related costs for both younger women with private insurance and older women on...