Two ASCO guideline updates provide new evidence-based recommendations for the systemic treatment of stage IV non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with and without driver alterations.1,2 Among several other updates, these new guidelines add the ALK and ROS1 inhibitor lorlatinib and the PD-L1 immune...
On June 24, 2022, lisocabtagene maraleucel was approved for adults with large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL) who have (1) refractory disease to first-line chemoimmunotherapy or relapse within 12 months of first-line chemoimmunotherapy; or (2) refractory disease to first-line chemoimmunotherapy or relapse...
Anthony S. Fauci, MD, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), announced his intention to step down from his various roles in December 2022. He issued the following statement on August 22: I am announcing today that I will be stepping down from the positions...
Ultraviolet (UV) protection from the sun and avoiding indoor tanning play important roles in reducing a person’s risk for skin cancer, the most common cancer in the United States and one of the most preventable. A recent article published by Yang et al in the Journal of the American Academy of...
Katrina S. Pedersen, MD, MS, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, said while the results of the phase II -SEQUENCE trial1 are encouraging and the drugs are available to translate into the clinic without delay, phase III validation would be needed...
The 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting was filled with important science, engaging data, and several practice-changing abstracts, many of which have been covered in detail on other pages or in earlier issues of The ASCO Post. There were numerous high-impact studies and attendees, whether present at the...
About 3 years ago, researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute launched PROMISE (Predicting Progression of Developing Myeloma in a High-Risk Screen Population; ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT03689595), a large, ambitious screening study to identify individuals at high risk of developing...
In locally advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), immunotherapy consolidation with the PD-L1 inhibitor durvalumab improved overall survival in the PACIFIC trial,1 thus leading to its use after chemoradiotherapy as a standard of care. Real-world evidence of durvalumab’s effect on overall and...
Researchers from the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine are studying the rare genetic condition called familial adenomatous polyposis, looking for potential ways to prevent colorectal cancer in the general population at an earlier, more...
An article in The New York Times earlier this year crystallized the dilemma facing health-care providers when they are presented with a patient in a life-threatening situation: Should they rely on advance care directives written years prior to the current medical situation to accurately determine...
Exposure to a synthetic chemical found widely in the environment may be linked to the development of nonviral hepatocellular carcinoma, according to a new study published by Goodrich et al in JHEP Reports. The chemical—called perfluorooctane sulfate, or PFOS—is one of a class of man-made chemicals...
In the investigator-initiated, prospective, open-label, single-arm phase II TUXEDO-1 study conducted among patients with newly diagnosed or progressive brain metastases from HER2-positive breast cancer, the antibody-drug conjugate fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) yielded responses according...
The ASCO Post asked Michael Cecchini, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Co-Director of the Colorectal Program in the Center for Gastrointestinal Cancer at Yale School of Medicine and Smilow Cancer Hospital Center, New Haven, to comment on the RATIONALE-306 findings. He said the study...
As reported in The Lancet by Chua et al, the phase III BIG 3-07/TROG 07.01 trial has shown reduced risk of local recurrence with vs without tumor bed boost after conventional or hypofractionated whole-breast irradiation (WBI) in women receiving breast-conserving surgery for non–low-risk ductal...
In a Swedish population-based cohort study reported in JAMA Network Open, Lin et al found that men with type 2 diabetes receiving gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists for prostate cancer were more likely to have an increased risk for developing cardiovascular disease compared with those...
A newly constructed map of the landscape of genetic changes in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) may provide a better understanding of this complex malignancy, which could lead to more accurate prognoses for patients, improved diagnostics, and novel treatments. These research findings were...
Young people with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) who received doses of tisagenlecleucel, a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, at the higher end of the approved dosing range had significantly better survival rates at 1 year compared with those who received lower doses within...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Offersen et al, the phase III Danish Breast Cancer Group Partial Breast Irradiation Trial showed that partial-breast irradiation was noninferior to whole-breast irradiation in terms of the risk for breast induration in women aged ≥ 60 years...
In a population-based retrospective cohort study reported in JAMA Network Open, Sood et al found that longer time to adjuvant endocrine therapy initiation in Medicaid-insured women with breast cancer was associated with a reduced likelihood of short- and long-term adherence to treatment. As stated...
About 7 years ago, I had emergency hernia surgery and soon after began experiencing severe constipation and abdominal bloating. I had started to have minor symptoms leading up to the surgery, but now the pain and exhaustion of trying to have a bowel movement became unbearable. I met with a...
At the 2022 Summit on Cancer Health Disparities in Seattle, leaders from five of the leading professional societies in cancer discussed their respective organizations’ current initiatives toward improving cancer health disparities.1 Representatives from ASCO, the American Society for Clinical...
The use of stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) for patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) can reduce treatment disparities between White and Black patients, according to research presented by Ganesh et al at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) World...
ASCO’s CancerLinQ and Owkin recently announced a new research collaboration to use artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze real-world oncology data with the aim to understand why some cases of metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) are resistant to first-line immunotherapy. Using data from...
In a collaboration announced on June 4, ASCO will work with the World Health Organization (WHO) to measure and improve the quality of cancer care internationally. The goal is to achieve health-related targets of the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals and WHO Global Action Plan on Non-Communicable...
ASCO has released the first comprehensive set of guidelines for the management of metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma (RCC).1 The guidelines are subdivided into six main sections: diagnosis, the role of cytoreductive nephrectomy, first-line systemic treatment, second- or later-line systemic...
ASCO has endorsed the recommendations put forth in a new guideline, developed by the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), on the use of radiation therapy for the management of brain metastases.1,2 Although ASTRO—in conjunction with ASCO and the Society for Neuro-Oncology (SNO)—recently...
To shed some light on the importance of caring for the whole patient and his or her caregiver, as well as the role of cellular aging and oncogenesis, The ASCO Post recently spoke with Kaumudi Bhawe, PhD, a clinical scientist with Cancer Commons in Mountain View, California. Dr. Bhawe has more than ...
Rates of most types of cancer are higher in men than in women for reasons that are unclear. Results from a recent study published online by Jackson et al in the journal Cancer suggest that the cause may be underlying biological sex differences rather than behavioral differences related to smoking,...
The pivotal global phase III FRESCO-2 trial evaluating the investigational use of fruquintinib met its primary endpoint of overall survival in patients with advanced, refractory metastatic colorectal cancer. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Fast Track designation for the...
Investigators have identified genetic signatures that could predict whether tumors in patients with bladder and other cancers will respond to immunotherapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors. Their findings, published by You et al in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, implicate DDR1- and...
When the 21st Century Cures Act went into effect in April 2021, health-care organizations began releasing electronic health information to patients immediately. An aim of the act is to reduce barriers to patients’ timely access to electronic health information, and previous research has shown that...
Despite data showing that cigarette smoking is the number one risk factor for the development of lung cancer,1 and a leading cause of preventable disease, disability, and death in the United States, an estimated 30.8 million American adults continue to smoke cigarettes.2 Globally, the number of...
In less than a decade, immunotherapy has reshaped the treatment landscape of cancer, but some histologies tend to be more responsive to this modality than others. During the Society of Surgical Oncology 2022 International Conference on Surgical Care, Yuman Fong, MD, of the City of Hope Medical...
According to Cancer Research UK, over 52,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year in the UK, and there are more than 12,000 deaths. Over three-quarters (78%) of men diagnosed with the disease survive for over 10 years, but this proportion has barely changed over the past decade in the...
Giving women the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine around the time they have surgery for precancerous cervical lesions might lead to a reduction in the risk of lesions returning as well as other HPV-related diseases, suggests a study published by Kechagias et al in The BMJ. The researchers...
A study looking at the correlation between daily insulin dose and cancer incidence among patients with type 1 diabetes found that higher insulin dose is positively associated with cancer incidence and that the association is stronger among those with insulin resistance. The results were published...
Physicians and researchers from UK HealthCare's Transplant Center and the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center conducted a study of patients over age 70 with hepatocellular carcinoma to examine how the outcomes of ablative treatments compare to liver transplants. The findings were published...
In an individual-level meta-analysis reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Hurwitz et al found that frequent aspirin use was associated with reduced risk of ovarian cancer, including high-grade serous ovarian cancer and among women with multiple risk factors. Study Details The analysis...
Patients seeking to purchase chemotherapy drugs online face a confusing array of websites, over half of which potentially operate unsafely or illegally, according to a study published by Sun et al in JNCCN–Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. A survey of online pharmacies claiming...
The invited discussant of the ATLAS trial, Peter M. Voorhees, MD, Professor of Medicine, Chief of the Plasma Cell Disorders Division, at Levine Cancer Institute and Atrium Health/Wake Forest Baptist in North Carolina, applauded the very good outcomes achieved in the study.1 However, he posed the...
For newly diagnosed patients with multiple myeloma participating in the international phase III ATLAS trial, use of carfilzomib, lenalidomide, and dexamethasone (KRd) as maintenance therapy after induction and autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT) significantly reduced the risk of disease...
Frequent aspirin use may be linked with lower ovarian cancer risk in individuals with multiple risk factors, according to a new study published by Hurwitz et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. “Ovarian cancer is the most fatal gynecologic cancer. Most known risk factors of ovarian cancer—such...
The invited discussant of the CAIRO5 presentation at the 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting was Cathy Eng, MD, FACP, FASCO, Professor of Medicine, Hematology, and Oncology at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, Nashville. Dr. Eng explained the key questions being asked by the investigators. “If you have a...
In the phase III CAIRO5 study, conducted by the Dutch Colorectal Cancer Group, triplet vs doublet chemotherapy plus bevacizumab significantly increased progression-free survival, response rate, and the rate of R0/R1 resections, with and without ablation, in patients with initially unresectable...
Brentuximab vedotin plus doxorubicin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine (a regimen known as A+AVD) significantly reduced the risk of mortality vs standard treatment with doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine (ABVD) in patients with previously untreated stage III or IV classical Hodgkin...
ASCO has issued a new practice guideline update on the use of systemic therapy for HER2-positive breast cancer, just 4 years after the previous practice guideline update was released in 2018.1,2 This latest update reviews results from multiple clinical trials published between 2016 and 2021 that...
ASCO submitted comments to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in response to the fiscal year (FY) 2023 Medicare Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) and Long-Term Care Hospital (LTCH) Prospective Payment System (PPS) proposed rule. ASCO’s comments address...
For some patients aged 55 or older with early-stage, low-risk breast cancer, endocrine therapy following breast-conserving surgery may be sufficient without the need for postoperative radiation therapy, according to the results of the prospective LUMINA trial, reported at the 2022 ASCO Annual...
Even as soaring medical costs strain public and private budgets around the world, patients yearn for therapeutic breakthroughs. Game-changing cancer treatments, emerging antiviral agents, and mRNA vaccines are powerful reminders of medical technology’s potential. But insurance premiums and...
A multitude of presentations were available to attendees at the 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting, including hundreds in the hematologic malignancies tracks. In addition to coverage in The ASCO Post of the major news stories at the meeting, here we offer summaries of additional studies of special interest...