The importance of achieving complete response after intensive therapy in older adults with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) was confirmed in a follow-up analysis of the E2906 North American Intergroup trial.1 Patients in complete response had superior survival in this landmark analysis. This finding...
Richard Gorlick, MD, an expert in pediatric oncology and hematology, has joined The University of Texas MD Anderson Children’s Cancer Hospital as the Division Head and Department Chair of Pediatrics. A pediatric cancer survivor himself, Dr. Gorlick committed his life’s work to helping young...
Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), a national network of five cancer hospitals, announced that Nancy G. Hesse, MSN, RN, has been named President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of its Eastern Regional Medical Center (Eastern) in Philadelphia. Ms. Hesse previously served as Interim...
In his practice, Mikkael Sekeres, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, has not initiated dose reductions of tyrosine kinase inhibitors, but “anecdotally, my patients tell me that they have reduced the dose. Many of them cannot afford to continue treatment indefinitely, and some have side...
Tyrosine kinase inhibitors, such as imatinib, nilotinib (Tasigna), and dasatinib (Sprycel), have revolutionized the treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). A substantial percentage of patients achieve deep and meaningful remissions on these agents. More recently, partly driven by patients’ and ...
Stephen P. Hunger, MD, Chief of the Division of Pediatric Oncology and Director of the Center for Childhood Cancer Research at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and the Jeffrey E. Perelman Distinguished Chair in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia,...
Children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) considered at standard risk for relapse should continue to receive standard-intensity regimens, according to findings from the international randomized AIEOP-BFM ALL 2000 trial.1 A reduced-intensity treatment for children with ALL considered to have ...
The diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer have long been a source of controversy among the oncology community, the political sector, and patient advocacy groups. Most notably, the decision to biopsy a man’s prostate gland rests largely on his prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test numbers, the...
Although a cure for cancer remains elusive, there are many promising ideas to eradicate this disease, including the Cancer Moonshot Initiative and an ever-increasing body of cancer research that continually drives innovative treatments in an effort to improve survival and, ultimately, find a...
Michael Gnant, MD, Professor of Surgery at the Medical University of Vienna in Austria and President of the Austrian Breast & Colorectal Cancer Study Group, was the invited discussant of the three studies of extended endocrine therapy. “The trials did not reach the necessary statistical levels ...
Extended endocrine therapy with an aromatase inhibitor did not improve disease-free survival in patients with hormone receptor–positive breast cancer enrolled in three studies presented at the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. The results stand in contrast to the phase III National Cancer...
In a retrospective analysis of the phase III CLEOPATRA trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Luen et al found that higher baseline tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte levels were associated with improved overall survival among patients with advanced HER2-positive breast cancer receiving trastuzumab...
In a phase II trial reported in The Lancet, Balar et al found that first-line atezolizumab (Tecentriq) produced durable responses in cisplatin-ineligible patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma. In the study, 119 patients from 47 sites in North America and Europe who were ...
A routine blood test may predict how long patients with cancer in palliative care will survive, researchers reported at the ESMO Asia 2016 Congress in Singapore. “Cancer patients in palliative care want honest and accurate prognostic information but this information needs to be shared...
A brain-boosting protein plays an important role in how well people respond to chemotherapy, researchers reported at the ESMO Asia 2016 Congress in Singapore. A study (Abstract 497O_PR) found that patients with cancer suffering from depression have decreased amounts of brain-derived neurotrophic...
In the phase III OAK trial reported in The Lancet by Rittmeyer et al, treatment with the anti–programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) antibody atezolizumab (Tecentriq) improved overall survival vs docetaxel in previously treated non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Results of the trial...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today granted accelerated approval to rucaparib (Rubraca) to treat women with advanced ovarian cancer who have been treated with two or more chemotherapies and whose tumors have a specific gene mutation (deleterious BRCA) as identified by an FDA-approved...
The first data on rare sarcomas in Asian patients were presented in three studies at the ESMO Asia 2016 Congress in Singapore. Just half of patients with advanced angiosarcoma received chemotherapy, although it improved overall survival. CIC-rearranged sarcomas were associated with a much worse...
In a case report in The New England Journal of Medicine, Tran et al at the National Cancer Institute describe response to adoptive transfer of ex vivo expanded tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes containing T cells targeting personalized cancer neoepitopes in a patient with lung metastases from...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Gary H. Lyman, MD, of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and colleagues, an ASCO clinical practice guideline update panel made no changes to the 2014 recommendations for sentinel lymph node biopsy in women with early-stage breast cancer. The...
Asian patients with head and neck cancer live longer with pembrolizumab (Keytruda) immunotherapy than the overall population, according to a subanalysis of the KEYNOTE-012 trial presented at the ESMO Asia 2016 Congress in Singapore. “Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma is the seventh most...
Translational research in pancreatic adenocarcinoma has been limited by the difficulty of obtaining sufficient quality and quantity tumor tissue from patients. A study by Pietrasz et al assessing the feasibility and prognostic value of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in pancreatic adenocarcinoma has...
Regorafenib (Stivarga) improved overall survival vs placebo in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma who had experienced disease progression on sorafenib (Nexavar) treatment, according to the phase III RESORCE trial reported by Bruix et al in The Lancet. Study Details In this double-blind trial, ...
Around 20% of patients with breast cancer in Sweden do not complete endocrine therapy, according to research that will be reported at the ESMO Asia 2016 Congress (Abstract 62O_PR), to be held December 16–19 in Singapore.The study in over 5,500 women found that younger patients and those who...
Studies suggest that approximately 30% to 40% of women with breast cancer report persistent hot flashes. Nocturnal hot flashes are among the most problematic because they can contribute to poor sleep. A new study published by Garland et al in Menopause shows that electroacupuncture may be effective ...
In an individual patient-data meta-analysis reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Ribassin-Majed et al in the Meta-analysis of Chemotherapy in Nasopharyngeal Collaborative Group found that the addition of adjuvant chemotherapy to chemoradiotherapy was associated with the greatest overall...
Integrating palliative care into the treatment of patients undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for cancers like leukemia and lymphoma can improve their quality of life, relieve symptoms associated with the procedure, and reduce depression and anxiety, not only during the 3- to 4-week ...
Monica M. Bertagnolli, MD, a long-time ASCO member and volunteer, has been elected to serve as the President of ASCO for the term beginning in June 2018. She will take office as President-Elect during the ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago in June 2017. Additionally, three new members were elected to...
Patients whose lung cancer spreads to their brain typically have only 4 to 6 months left to live, but research presented by Chinese doctors suggests that using icotinib increases progression-free survival in these patients compared to whole-brain irradiation and chemotherapy combined. Yi-Long Wu,...
Patients who received first-line ceritinib experienced a 45% risk reduction for advanced anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)–positive on–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) compared to a control group that received chemotherapy, according to research presented at the IASLC 17th World...
A revised tumor classification based on more than 70,000 non–small cell lung cancer patients and 6,100 small cell lung cancer patients is now available to lung cancer specialists around the world in the form of the 8th edition of the tumor, node, and metastasis (TNM) classification. The...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Saro H. Armenian, DO, MPH, of City of Hope, and colleagues, ASCO has released a clinical practice guideline on prevention and monitoring of cardiac dysfunction in survivors of adult cancers. Recommendations were developed by an expert panel using a ...
Patients in Chandigarh, India, waited an average of 4 months before seeking a cancer diagnosis, according to a recent study. Some patients waited less than a week before seeing a doctor—while others waited 3 years. The researchers will report their findings at the ESMO Asia 2016 Congress ...
The LUME-Meso phase II trial in patients with unresectable malignant pleural mesothelioma met its primary endpoint of progression-free survival. The data, presented at the 17th IASLC World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC) in Vienna (Abstract 4191 #OA22.02), showed nintedanib (Ofev) plus...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Hellman et al, the combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) showed promising activity as first-line treatment in patients in the non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cohort of the phase I CheckMate 012 study. Study Details In the...
In the phase III AURA3 trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicineby Mok et al, osimertinib (Tagrisso) significantly improved progression-free survival (PFS) vs platinum/pemetrexed (Alimta) among patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) T790M–positive non–small...
On Tuesday, December 13, President Obama signed into law the 21st Century Cures Act, landmark legislation designed to improve and accelerate the pace of biomedical research in the United States. ASCO Chief Executive Officer Clifford Hudis, MD, FACP, FASCO, attended the White House signing ceremony...
In part 1 of the phase II ARIEL2 trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Swisher et al found that the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor rucaparib was associated with prolonged progression-free survival among patients with relapsed platinum-sensitive high-grade ovarian carcinoma who had...
In the international phase III FALCON trial reported in The Lancet, Robertson et al found that progression-free survival was improved with intramuscular fulvestrant (Faslodex) vs oral anastrozole in endocrine therapy–naive women with hormone receptor–positive locally advanced or...
The artificial-intelligence platform Watson for Oncology (WFO) achieved a high degree of concordance with the recommendations of a panel of oncologists in a double-blinded validation study, according to results presented at the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held December 6 to 10...
Postmenopausal women with breast cancer who took aromatase inhibitors demonstrated endothelial dysfunction, a predictor of cardiovascular disease, according to study results presented at the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held December 6 to 10 (Abstract s5-07). Aromatase inhibitors are...
Monica Morrow, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, recognized at this year’s meeting for scientific distinction in clinical research, summarizes her Brinker Award lecture on modifying local therapy to decrease the burden of cancer treatment.
S.P. Somashekhar, MBBS, MCh(Onco), of the Manipal Comprehensive Cancer Centre, discusses a study to assess the performance of IBM's artificial intelligence platform in comparison to a multidisciplinary tumor board (Abstract S6-07).
Patricia A. Ganz, MD, of the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, summarizes two studies on using duloxetine for aromatase inhibitor–associated musculoskeletal symptoms, and aromatase inhibitors’ effect on endothelial function and heart disease (Abstracts S5-06 and S5-07).
Lisa A. Carey, MD, and Maki Tanioka, MD, both of the University of North Carolina, discuss study findings on weekly paclitaxel and trastuzumab with or without lapatinib for HER2-positive breast cancer (Abstract S3-05).
Nikhil Wagle, MD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses the genomic sequencing of ER-positive metastatic breast cancer that has become resistant to therapies and the implications for the choice of next therapy, clinical trial eligibility, and novel drug targets (Abstract S1-01).
Jame Abraham, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic, discusses findings of the Scalp Cooling Alopecia Prevention trial for patients with early-stage breast cancer (Abstract S5-02).
Until 1957, the prevailing thought was that since cancers develop in normal patients, they are not recognized as foreign by the immune system. That changed when Richmond T. Prehn, MD, and his laboratory assistant, Joan Main, showed that tumors induced by chemical carcinogens in mice could...
The investigational immunotherapeutic IMC-20D7S was found to be well tolerated and somewhat active in patients with advanced melanoma, including one complete response, according to the results of a phase I/Ib trial reported by Danny N. Khalil, MD, PhD, and colleagues in Clinical Cancer Research....
Although adjuvant chemotherapy decreases the risk of breast cancer recurrence, it is associated with distressing side effects, including hair loss. A prospective randomized trial evaluating the safety and efficacy of the Orbis Paxman Hair Loss Prevention System (OPHLPS), a scalp-cooling device that ...