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Showing 21401 - 21450International Group Updates Recommendations on Managing Lymphoma
An international multidisciplinary group of experts has updated their recommendations for staging and treatment response assessment in patients with Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphomas. Bruce D. Cheson, MD, Professor of Medicine, Deputy Chief of Hematology-Oncology, and Head of Hematology at the...
Expert Point of View: Richard L. Schilsky, MD
Information on the drivers of cancer care is important in helping to deliver higher-quality and potentially less costly cancer treatments, noted Richard L. Schilsky, MD, ASCO’s Chief Medical Officer, in a commentary accompanying the study by Dotan et al.1 Moreover, practice change can be a complex ...
My Priorities for the Year Ahead
I am honored and privileged to lead ASCO during its 51st year, a year that promises to bring both challenges and opportunities to our members and our patients. As the theme for my Presidential term, I’ve chosen Illumination and Innovation: Transforming Data Into Learning, because we are positioned...
Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy an Effective Option for Early-Stage Lung Cancer Patients
Stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) is safe and effective in early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), as it confers local control in 90% or more patients with T1 disease, according to Roy Decker, MD, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Therapeutic Radiology at Yale Cancer...
John H. Saiki, MD, SWOG Investigator, Dies at 77
John “Jack” Harris Saiki, MD, Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico Department of Medicine, Hematology/Oncology Division, lived the history of modern day oncology with a career spanning 44 years. In the early days of his career, with the support of a grant from the federally funded New ...
How Evolutionary Game Theory Is Offering Clues to Disrupt Cancer Cell Metabolism
Kenneth J. Pienta, MD, and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore are using the principles of evolutionary game theory to learn how cancer cells cooperate within a tumor to gather energy and metastasize. Game theory, the mathematic study of strategic decision-making that is commonly...
Clinical Studies in Psychotherapy Currently Recruiting Participants
These studies are investigating psychosocial and individual meaning-centered psychotherapy interventions for patients with cancer and bereaved parents. They are sponsored by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and are currently recruiting participants. The studies are listed on the...
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Launches Meaning-Centered Psychotherapy Programs for Terminally Ill Patients, Cancer Survivors, and Caregivers
Although most major cancer centers in the United States offer support groups and individual counseling sessions to help patients with cancer cope with their disease and treatment, over the past decade Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York has broadened its psycho-oncology programs to...
Para-Aortic Lymph Node Radiation Raises Risk of Developing Diabetes Mellitus in Hodgkin Lymphoma Survivors
Radiation to the para-aortic lymph nodes, “leading to radiation exposure of the pancreas, is associated with a dose-dependent increased risk” of developing diabetes mellitus among long-term survivors of Hodgkin lymphoma (HL), according to a study by Frederika A. van Nimwegen, MSc, of the...
Allogeneic Conditioning Regimen Reduces Myelosuppression, Graft-vs-Host Disease in Lymphocytic Leukemia/Lymphoma
The combination of bendamustine (Treanda), fludarabine, and rituximab (Rituxan), or BFR, was shown to be safe and effective conditioning for patients with relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia/lymphoma receiving allogeneic stem cell transplantation from related or unrelated donors. “Remarkably,...
No Survival Benefits With Erlotinib and Whole-Brain Radiotherapy for NSCLC With Multiple Brain Metastases
“To exploit the potential radiosensitizing properties, the direct effect on brain metastases, and systemic activity of erlotinib,” researchers from the United Kingdom tested concurrent erlotinib and whole-brain radiotherapy followed by maintenance erlotinib in patients with of non–small cell lung...
Most Women Who Choose Breast Reconstruction Are Satisfied With Decision-Making Process
Most patients who choose to have breast reconstruction following mastectomy are satisfied with the decision-making process. Reasons for not choosing reconstruction vary by race and include the desire to avoid additional surgery and fear of implants. These and other conclusions of an analysis of...
Pro-oxidant Molecule Imexon Shows Clinical Activity in Relapsed/Refractory B-Cell NHL
The pro-oxidant molecule imexon (Amplimexon/NSC-714597) produced an overall response rate of 30% in patients with relapsed/refractory B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) participating in a phase II study. Noting that “lymphoma cells are subject to higher levels of oxidative stress than their normal...
Remarkable Response to Sorafenib in Advanced Lung Adenocarcinoma and Oncogenic ARAF Mutation
As reported in Journal of Clinical Investigation by Imielinski and colleagues, whole-genome and RNA sequencing of tumor and normal tissue in a patient with advanced lung adenocarcinoma who exhibited a remarkable response to sorafenib (Nexavar) revealed a somatic ARAF S214 mutation expressed at high ...
Tissue Microenvironment Affects Activity of PTEN in Leukemia
The tumor suppressor PTEN, which is underexpressed in many cancers, dephosphorylates phosphatidylinositol (3,4,5)-triphosphate and thus inhibits activity of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinases involved in growth factor and survival factor signaling through effectors such as Akt and mTOR. As reported in...
Extracellular Matrix Stiffness Promotes Malignant Progression Via PTEN-Reducing Effect of Micro-RNA
Tissue mechanics are altered in tumor progression, although many of the mechanisms underlying the changes remain unclear. In a study reported in Nature Medicine, Mouw and colleagues found that increased tissue extracellular matrix stiffness modulated microRNA expression to promote tumor progression ...
TRIM44 Amplification in Esophagogastric, Breast Tumors May Be Marker for mTOR Inhibitor Therapy
TRIM44 family overexpression is associated with carcinogenesis, and TRIM44 has been identified as a prognostic gene. In a study reported in Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Ong and colleagues attempted to identify therapeutic strategies for patients with TRIM44 overexpression. Genomic and...
Expect Questions From Patients
Conscientious doctors are unlikely to say yes to a patient’s request for full genome sequencing,” Theodora Ross, MD, PhD, wrote in The New York Times.1 Dr. Ross, Director of the Cancer Genetics Program at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, was writing about the current...
News of Mutations in PALB2 Gene Raising Risk of Breast Cancer Offers Opportunity to Explain Limits of Genetic Testing
The response among patients to news reports about mutations in a gene known as PALB2 raising the risk of breast cancer “has been predictable,” Theodora Ross, MD, PhD, wrote in The New York Times.1 As an example, Dr. Ross, Director of the Cancer Genetics Program at The University of Texas...
The Role of Music Therapy in Cancer Care
Music therapy, an established adjuvant to standard cancer care, is offered in a growing number of cancer centers throughout the United States and internationally. Defined by the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA) as “the evidence-based use of music interventions to accomplish individual...
ASTRO Awards Seven Physicians a Total of $675,000 to Fund Radiation Oncology-Specific Studies
The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) presented seven physicians a total of $675,000 in awards and grants to advance radiation oncology research. The awards will fund studies in radiation and cancer biology, radiation physics, translational research, outcomes/health services research, ...
I Work for You
The following essay by James O. Armitage, MD, is excerpted from The Big Casino: America’s Best Cancer Doctors Share Their Most Powerful Stories, which was co-edited by Stan Winokur, MD, and Vincent Coppola and published in May 2014. The book is available on Amazon.com and at thebigcasino.org. The ...
Cancer Frontier: Bringing the New Sciences to an Old School
Cancer seems to have an endless supply of people who want to write about it. Why not? It’s an intriguing subject of life and death and struggle and hope, one that touches virtually every person of a certain age. However, the bookshelves are filled with cancer survivorship books, so to stand out, an ...
Sequencing Analysis of Tumor DNA: Is It All in the Plasma?
Massively parallel sequencing analyses have demonstrated that most of the common malignancies display relatively complex repertoires of somatic genetic alterations, that the number of highly recurrent mutations is limited, and that a large number of genes is mutated in a small minority of tumors...
Potential of Liquid Biopsies in Detecting Cancer and Establishing Prognosis
Tests in development to detect circulating tumor cells that escape from solid tumors and travel through the blood, spreading cancer to new sites, may serve as an alternative to conventional tissue biopsy for early cancer diagnosis and gene-expression analysis over the next decade. According to...
Delivering Cancer Care in Low-Income Countries
In eealthy industrialized nations like the United States, escalating costs of cancer care have put the term “cost-effective care” on the forefront of health-care policy discussions. However, the cost issues we wrestle with in our $3 trillion health-care system are vague abstractions for much of the ...
Using Electronic Health Records to Improve Communication With Patients
Clinicians may argue that electronic health records (EHRs) interfere with the patient-physician relationship, and patients may complain about “distracted doctors,” too busy with computer screens to make eye contact, but according to Thomas W. LeBlanc, MD, MA, of Duke University School of Medicine...
Gene Therapy Betters Chemotherapy Tolerance, Effectiveness in Small Glioblastoma Study
Using gene therapy and a combination of chemotherapy drugs, researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have been able to enhance the tolerance and effectiveness of medications used in treating glioblastoma while also protecting healthy cells from their toxic effects. The report,...
Ongoing Clinical Trials Actively Recruiting Patients With Intraocular Cancer
The information contained in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting clinical studies of children and adults with intraocular cancers. The studies include pilot, phase 0, phase I, phase II, and observational trials evaluating new combination therapies, vaccines, optical...
UNC Lineberger Secures Three Major NCI Grants to Advance the Nation’s Clinical Trials Program
At the national level, clinical trials are seeing a lot of change. In an effort to increase efficiency and keep up with national changes in the types of clinical trials offered to cancer patients, the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN) is undergoing a major...
Immunotherapy Research of James P. Allison, PhD, Has Led to a Paradigm Shift in the Treatment of Cancer
James P. Allison, PhD, has been bucking the status quo since he was a teenager growing up in the small agricultural town of Alice, Texas, in the 1950s and 1960s. He first butted heads with authority figures when he was in high school and learned that his biology class had omitted the teaching of...
Expert Point of View: Karla Kerlikowske, MD
In an accompanying editorial,1 Karla Kerlikowske, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues point out that while the finding of Killelea et al that digital mammography screening was not associated with downstaging of disease may not be surprising, given the similar accuracy ...
Study Finds Increased Breast Cancer Screening Costs in Medicare Population but No Increase in Cancer Detection
In a study of the use of breast cancer screening modalities in the Medicare population reported in Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Brigid K. Killelea, MD, MPH, FACS, and colleagues at Yale University School of Medicine, Yale Cancer Center, and Yale–New Haven Hospital, New Haven,...
Breast Cancer Screening Using Tomosynthesis in Combination With Digital Mammography
In a study reported in JAMA and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, Friedewald and colleagues1 showed that the addition of tomosynthesis to digital mammography2 resulted in a decrease in the screening recall rate3 and an increase in the cancer detection rate.4,5 This retrospective analysis of...
Adding Tomosynthesis to Digital Mammography Decreased Recall Rate, Increased Cancer Detection Rate in Breast Cancer Screening
In a large multicenter study reported in JAMA, Sarah M. Friedewald, MD, of the Advocate Lutheran General Hospital, Center for Advanced Care, Park Ridge, Illinois, and colleagues found that use of tomosynthesis plus digital mammography reduced the recall rate and increased the cancer detection rate...
National Cancer Institute Launches the National Clinical Trials Network to Expedite Scientific Advances
In March, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) transformed its Cooperative Group Program into the National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN). Spurred by recommendations in the Institute of Medicine (IOM) 2010 report, A National Cancer Clinical Trials System for the 21st Century: Reinvigorating the NCI...
Timing and Meaning of Do-Not-Resuscitate Orders in the Palliative Care Setting
Although a do-not-resuscitate (DNR) order does not mean “do not treat,” that is how it is often interpreted, according to a study examining the level of care oncology inpatients at a tertiary care hospital received.1 The study found that the interpretation of DNR orders among oncology nurses and...
ASCO University’s New Cancer Genetics Program
Over the past decade, ASCO has launched multiple initiatives on cancer genetics that complement the rapid progress in the field. These initiatives have resulted in educational offerings and policy recommendations that have improved both preventive and therapeutic options for patients with cancer...
September Is Conquer Cancer Foundation Challenge Month
At the 50th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Conquer Cancer Foundation Board Member Raj Mantena, RPh, announced that for the coming year he would match individual donations to the Conquer Cancer Foundation up to $1 million, allowing meeting attendees the opportunity to...
ASCO to Participate in 2014 Rally for Medical Research Hill Day
ASCO volunteers will be participating in the Rally for Medical Research Hill Day in Washington, DC, on September 18 to help bring attention to the need for a sustained federal investment in the National Institutes of Health. This will be the second year that ASCO, a gold sponsor of the event and...
ASCO Launches New Publication for Oncology Trainees and Early-Career Professionals
In February 2014, ASCO launched a new member publication, ASCO Connection: Trainee & Early-Career Oncologists. This quarterly magazine-style publication is dedicated to topics of interest to medical students, interns, residents, fellows, and junior faculty. All ASCO Student/Non-Oncology...
CDC’s Breast and Cervical Screening Program Benefits Millions of Underserved Women in the United States
More than 4.3 million women with limited access to health care received breast and cervical cancer screening and diagnostic services in the first 20 years of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. From 1991 to 2011, 56,662...
Complications No Different Between Open and Robot-Assisted Radical Cystectomy When Open Urinary Diversion Performed
We read the letter to the editor in the July 24, 2014, issue of The New England Journal of Medicine entitled, “A Randomized Trial of Robot-Assisted Laparoscopic Radical Cystectomy,” with great interest.1 Provocative Results In the letter, reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, Bochner and...
No Difference in Complication Rates or Hospital Stay With Robot-Assisted vs Open-Surgery Cystectomy in Bladder Cancer
Retrospective analyses indicate that robot-assisted laparoscopic surgery for radical cystectomy in patients with bladder cancer is associated with reduced risk of complications and shorter hospital stay compared with open surgery. In a small single-institution randomized trial reported in a letter...
City of Hope Investigator Receives Grant for Immunotherapy Research
The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has awarded a $450,000 grant to an investigator studying T cells at City of Hope in Duarte. Elizabeth Budde, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Hematology & Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation at City of Hope, Duarte, received The Jake...
PALB2 Study: Researchers and Patients Must 'Pal' for Progress
The recent publication by Antoniou et al on risk of breast cancer in PALB2 carriers,1 reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post (page 47), is a contribution to the interesting history of the PALB2 gene, and an important milestone in the expansion of hereditary cancer susceptibility testing in the...
Patient-Reported Outcomes in Hematology and Oncology Product Development
INSIDE THE BLACK BOX is an occasional column providing insight into the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its policies and procedures. In this installment, Virginia Kwitkowski, MS, RN, ACNP-BC, and Elektra Papadopoulos, MD, MPH, discuss FDA’s current approach to the review of study...
Researchers at University of Michigan Receive $2.3 Million Grant to Promote Safety, Reduce Exposure Risk, at Chemotherapy Infusion Sites
Researchers at the University of Michigan School of Nursing and Comprehensive Cancer Center have received a $2.3 million grant to study oncology nurses’ exposure to hazardous drugs, including identifying ways to reduce exposure. “There are significant acute and long-term side effects from hazardous ...
Lung Cancer Webinar Highlights Brain Metastases and Thoracic Radiotherapy
Postoperative radiation therapy, given after adjuvant chemotherapy, significantly increased overall survival in non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) compared to chemotherapy alone, according to a study reported at ASCO’s 2014 Annual Meeting.1 That study, an analysis of records in the National Cancer...
Angiogenesis in Ovarian Cancer: Are We Missing the Clinical Target?
Production of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is increased during normal ovulation, and can account for much of the reversible toxicity associated with ovarian hyperstimulation.1,2 We also have compelling data from multiple clinical trials to validate the importance of tumor-associated...
