In a UK phase III RAPID trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Radford et al compared no further treatment vs involved-field radiotherapy in patients with early-stage Hodgkin lymphoma who had negative positron emission tomography (PET) findings after 3 cycles of doxorubicin,...
ASCO issued an endorsement of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) evidence-based guideline on external-beam radiotherapy for patients with locally advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The ASCO endorsement was published by Bezjak et al in the Journal of Clinical...
Researchers at the University of California (UC) San Diego School of Medicine conducted the first population-based study that characterizes the association and temporal relationship between gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) and other cancers. The results, published by Murphy et al in Cancer,...
In an analysis of Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) trials reported in JAMA Oncology, Chlebowski et al found differing patterns of breast cancer risk among women receiving menopausal hormone therapy with estrogen plus progestin or estrogen alone. Women receiving estrogen plus progestin had...
A large population-based British study of newly diagnosed patients with lung cancer has found that those who had prolonged use of statins, especially simvastatin, had a 19% reduction in lung cancer deaths. Among all patients, those who used statins in the year before their lung cancer diagnosis had ...
In the phase III KEYNOTE-006 trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Robert et al found that the anti–PD-1 antibody pembrolizumab (Keytruda) increased progression-free and overall survival compared with ipilimumab in patients with advanced melanoma. Study Details In this...
For women with a family history of breast cancer, new multigene panel testing yields greater information about cancer risk while assessing deleterious BRCA1/2 mutations as accurately as BRCA testing alone, according to a study presented at the American Society of Breast Surgeons Annual Meeting....
The number of surgeries performed on terminally ill cancer patients has not dropped in recent years, despite more attention to the importance of less invasive care for these patients to relieve symptoms and improve quality of life. But new research from the University of California, Davis, also...
The PREVAIL trial showed that enzalutamide (Xtandi) improved overall survival and progression-free survival vs placebo in asymptomatic/minimally symptomatic chemotherapy-naive patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. In analyses reported in The Lancet Oncology, Loriot et al...
Survivors of Hodgkin lymphoma treated as adolescents or adults are at increased risk of cardiovascular disease throughout their lives, according to results of a retrospective cohort study of 2,524 Dutch patients followed for a median of 20 years. “Treating physicians and patients should be...
Long-term thyroid hormone replacement was associated with a decreased risk of colorectal cancer, but hyperthyroidism and untreated hypothyroidism were associated with a modestly elevated risk, according to a study using a large population-based medical records database from the United Kingdom. The...
In a phase I/II study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Sequist et al found that rociletinib—an EGFR inhibitor active in the presence and absence of the EGFR T790M mutation known to mediate resistance to available EGFR inhibitors—produced a high response rate in patients...
Annual screening mammography is significantly more cost-effective than bilateral prophylactic mastectomy in managing the care of most women at high risk for breast cancer. Women with a known BRCA gene mutation, which carries an exceptionally high risk, are a notable exception. These were the...
Statin use was not associated with reduced mortality among patients diagnosed with primary colorectal cancer between 2003 and 2009 and followed for a median of 3.4 years in the Darmkrebs: Chancen der Verhütung durch Screening (DACHS) study, an ongoing population-based study of colorectal...
Collaboration between surgeons and medical oncologists specialists “is associated with lower mortality without increased cost among patients with stage III colon cancer,” according to a study by Hussain et al in the Journal of Oncology Practice. An increase from one to five in the...
The American College of Physicians (ACP) released its clinical advice for cervical cancer screening in asymptomatic, average-risk women 21 years or older. Women at average risk are defined as those with no history of a precancerous lesion (cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade 2 or a more severe ...
Today, more than 80% of childhood cancer patients survive because of advances in treatment and care. However, recent studies have shown that some of these more than 420,000 United States childhood cancer survivors face future health-related challenges as they become adults such as a second cancer...
In a phase II study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Postow et al found that dual checkpoint inhibitor therapy with the anti–CTLA-4 antibody ipilimumab (Yervoy) and the anti–PD-1 monoclonal antibody nivolumab (Opdivo) produced greater response rates and prolonged...
A clinical trial of the EGFR inhibitor AZD9291 in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who had disease progression after previous treatment with EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors has found that the drug was highly active—achieving a 95% disease control rate—in...
New evidence suggests that patients with lung cancer who undergo surgery are at higher risk of developing venous thromboembolism, including deep-vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, than previously thought, with elevated risks of complications or death. When thromboemboli occur, they may be...
Initial intensive induction chemotherapy may be of benefit in a subgroup of newly diagnosed elderly patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), according to a study by Ross et al in Oncology Research. However, relapse rates remained high. Elderly patients with AML generally experience worse...
A new surgical approach that removes the fallopian tubes—while sparing the ovaries—may provide premenopausal women at high risk for ovarian cancer, particularly those with BRCA1/2 mutations, with a surgical option that minimizes cancer risk while also reducing some of the negative...
In the phase III COMPLEMENT 1 trial reported in The Lancet, Hillmen et al found that the addition of the anti-CD20 antibody ofatumumab (Arzerra) to chlorambucil (Leukeran) increased progression-free survival among patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) who were not considered candidates...
In a randomized phase II trial (SWOG S0925) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Yu et al found that the addition of cixutumumab to androgen-deprivation therapy did not significantly increase the rate of undetectable prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in patients with newly diagnosed...
In a retrospective single-center study reported in Journal of Clinical Oncology, Rozovski and colleagues found that chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients with disease progression after allogeneic stem cell transplantation had a relatively good prognosis, with apparent benefit of salvage...
A new study from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center found that many women diagnosed with breast cancer are concerned about the genetic risk of developing other cancers themselves, or of a loved one developing cancer. These findings were published by Jagsi et al in the Journal of ...
In a nested case-control study reported in Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Martin et al found that higher HDL cholesterol and apolipoprotein A1 (apoA1) levels and lower non-HDL cholesterol and apolipoprotein B (apoB) levels were associated with increased risk of breast cancer in women...
No approved targeted therapies exist to treat triple-negative breast cancer, but new chemotherapeutic treatment strategies are helping shrink tumors so that less breast tissue needs to be removed during surgery. New research led by Brigham and Women's Hospital finds that breast-conserving therapy...
Research from Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey shows genomic profiling identifies mutations in a gene associated with a rare subset of breast cancer—mutations that cannot otherwise be identified with standard clinical analysis of cells and tissue. The findings, presented at the AACR...
In the phase III LUX-Head & Neck 1 trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Machiels et al found that afatinib (Gilotrif) improved progression-free survival vs methotrexate in patients with recurrent or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck progressing after first-line platinum...
In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Ohri et al found that higher pretreatment metabolic tumor volume on 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) was associated with poorer overall survival and an increased risk of locoregional failure in...
The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has issued its updated draft recommendation statement on mammography screening guidelines. The revised guidelines still recommend that women aged 50 to 74 get mammography screening for breast cancer every 2 years and now states that the decision to...
Long-term, regular aspirin use was associated with a modestly reduced overall risk for cancer, driven primarily by a reduction in the risk for colorectal cancers, according to research presented at the AACR Annual Meeting 2015, held April 18 to 22 in Philadelphia (Abstract 876). “Previous...
Men with metastatic, castration-resistant prostate cancer who had mutations in genes linked to repair of damaged DNA were significantly more likely to respond to treatment with olaparib (Lynparza) compared with patients who had the disease without these mutations. These findings from the first...
The dual mTOR inhibitor AZD2014, when combined with the hormonal therapy fulvestrant (Faslodex), was found to be safe in patients with advanced estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer, and some of them experienced clinical benefit from the drug combination, according to phase I clinical...
Metformin use did not improve survival of patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma in a retrospective cohort study presented at the AACR Annual Meeting 2015, held April 18 to 22 in Philadelphia (Abstract LB-183). “The diabetes drug metformin is being used in some cancer treatment...
A disincentive for hospitals that have invested in expensive technology for robotic surgery may be jeopardizing prostate cancer patients who seek out the procedure, concluded a study published by Sammon et al in BJU International. The study compared complication rates in hospitals with low...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Yurgelun et al identified germline TP53 mutations in multiple patients with early-onset colorectal cancer from the Colon Cancer Family Registry who did not meet clinical criteria for Li-Fraumeni syndrome. Li-Fraumeni syndrome is associated with increased risk...
Vaccination of women aged 18 to 25 with the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine resulted in strong protection against future infection at three anatomic sites among women without prior HPV exposure and may still offer some protection in those with evidence of prior exposure. These findings were...
Combining the immunostimulatory anti-CD40 monoclonal antibody CP-870,893 with the immune checkpoint inhibitor tremelimumab was found to be safe, with clinical evidence of response in patients with advanced melanoma, according to phase I clinical trial data presented at the AACR Annual Meeting 2015, ...
The investigational immunotherapy MPDL3280A was safe, tolerable, and showed early signs of durable clinical activity in patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, according to data from a first-in-human phase I clinical trial presented at the AACR Annual Meeting 2015, held April 18 to...
Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was safe, tolerable, and yielded robust antitumor responses in patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma, according to data from the phase Ib KEYNOTE-028 clinical trial presented at the AACR Annual Meeting 2015, held April 18 to 22 in Philadelphia (Abstract CT103)....
Patients with advanced cancers who received mesothelin-directed chimeric antigen receptor–modified T cells (CART-meso), a type of investigational adoptive immunotherapy, tolerated the treatment well, and there was evidence that the infused immune cells persisted in the patients’ blood...
In a study reported in JAMA Surgery, Luo et al found that microscopic melanoma metastases in sentinel lymph nodes that were not the most radioactive (“hottest”) were still associated with an increased risk of progression and mortality. The study involved data from 475 consecutive...
The immunotherapy pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was found to be safe and yielded durable responses in patients with advanced, non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Those with high levels of the protein PD-L1 in their tumors had better clinical outcomes, according to phase I KEYNOTE-001 clinical...
In the first randomized trial to compare two U.S. Food and Drug Administration–approved immune checkpoint inhibitors as first-line therapy for patients with advanced melanoma, pembrolizumab (Keytruda) yielded significantly better treatment outcomes than ipilimumab (Yervoy) for all endpoints...
In the randomized phase II EMERGE study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Yardley et al found that the anti–glycoprotein NMB (gpNMB) antibody-drug conjugate glembatumumab vedotin may improve response rate over alternative chemotherapy in patients with advanced refractory breast...
In a study reported in JAMA Surgery, Kneuertz et al found that the more frequent stage-specific use of adjuvant chemotherapy in younger patients with colon cancer did not appear to produce commensurate benefit in survival compared with outcomes in older patients. Study Details The study was a...
A subset of lung cancer patients can derive important clinical benefits from drugs that are more commonly used to treat melanoma, the authors of a new academic clinical trial in Europe have reported at the European Lung Cancer Conference (ELCC) in Geneva (Abstract 21PD_PR). Oliver Gautschi, MD, a...
Almost one in four patients (24%) with advanced lung cancer in Europe, Asia, and the United States are not receiving EGFR test results before being started on treatment, researchers reported at the European Lung Cancer Conference (ELCC) in Geneva (Abstract LBA2_PR). This lack of test results may...