Julie C. Brabbs, MBA, was named Cancer Center Chief Administrative Officer at the University of Michigan (U-M) Comprehensive Cancer Center. She will also serve as Associate Director for Administration for the Center’s National Cancer Institute Cancer Center Support Grant. Ms. Brabbs has served for ...
It should not come as a surprise to anyone who has read Dr. Paul Kalanithi’s brilliant—and unforgettable—memoir, When Breath Becomes Air (Random House, 2016), that nearly a year after publication, it remains on The New York Times best-seller list, its popularity only increasing with time. Written...
Next to me sounds the buzzing of my Lympha Press machine, which substitutes for the constant visits of the physiotherapist who performs the lymph drainage. This gives me more freedom, and we have more privacy at home. I can use the machine whenever I need it, and my 5-year-old daughter, Christina, ...
Susan J. Mandel, MD, MPH, Director of Clinical Endocrinology and Diabetes for the University of Pennsylvania Health System, and Professor in the Division of Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolism in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, has been elected President-Elect of the Endocrine Society. Dr. ...
Anne Gross, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN, has been named Senior Vice President for Patient Care Services and Chief Nursing Officer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, effective December 1, 2016. Dr. Gross joined Dana-Farber in 2002 after 12 years at Cambridge Health Alliance as the nursing leader in...
Over the past few years, the term value-based cancer care has become integrated into the vernacular of the oncology community. Value is a subjective term, which is defined largely by its clinical setting. However, value in cancer care is evaluated by the multiple stakeholders involved in the...
A relatively recent study by Areej El-Jawahri, MD, and her colleagues is showing how the use of visual media can empower patients with advanced cancer, as well as other life-threatening illnesses, to make more informed decisions about their end-of-life care.1 The aim of Dr. El-Jawahri’s study was ...
Perry Robins, MD, Founder and President of the Skin Cancer Foundation, was honored at the organization’s Champions for Change Gala, held October 18 at the Mandarin Oriental New York. Dr. Robins was honored at the event as a “Champion for Change” for his lifetime commitment to decreasing the...
In 2016 and 2017, a team from The Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Care (RLCCC) is participating in an ASCO Quality Improvement Grant program, which is supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. The grant program aims to improve the delivery of cancer care in medically underserved communities by...
Dear Friends: Each year, the Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO (CCF) Grants and Awards Ceremony is one of the highlights of the ASCO Annual Meeting. While most of the week in Chicago is packed with meetings, events, and presentations, the Grants and Awards Ceremony is a time for everyone to stop,...
Cancer researcher Dafna Bar-Sagi, PhD, has made fundamental contributions to the understanding of the mechanisms that drive the disease. In recognition of her accomplishments, she has been named a recipient of the Outstanding Investigator Award, an honor presented by the National Cancer Institute...
Molecular biologist Christine Mayr, MD, PhD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Sloan Kettering Institute is among this year’s 12 recipients of the prestigious National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s Pioneer Award. Established in 2004, the annual award recognizes and supports individual...
I’ve always had fibrocystic breasts and was steadfast in performing monthly breast self-exams, so I could become familiar with the terrain of my breasts and spot any subtle changes. So, in November 2002, when I felt something in my left breast that seemed different from my usual lumps, I made a...
With reports about new marijuana dispensaries sprouting up as more states approve the legal use of medical marijuana, and patients and family members questioning how to get it, medical marijuana is a “topic you can’t escape,” noted Judith A. Paice, PhD, RN.1 Dr. Paice is Director of the Cancer...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) will recognize Thalia Papayannopoulou, MD, of the University of Washington, Seattle, with the 2016 Wallace H. Coulter Award for Lifetime Achievement in Hematology. Dr. Papayannopoulou will be honored for her innovative contributions to cutting-edge areas of ...
Let’s Win is an online community for persons with pancreatic cancer (www.letswinpc.org), but it is far more than a typical support group. Let’s Win propels interested users toward cutting-edge research, based on its founders’ commitment that no patient with pancreatic cancer should settle on the...
I still remember the day I met Kensie. It was Valentine’s Day. I had sneaked out of the hospital to get my wife a Valentine’s Day card, taking my place among scores of other husbands and boyfriends in front of the rapidly emptying rack of cards. As I started browsing, my beeper sounded. It was the ...
ASCO is excited to launch two new online-only journals, JCO Precision Oncology (JCO PO) and JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics (JCO CCI). Both journals will be exploring the latest topics in oncology and filling a void for the oncology community. Manuscripts will go through the traditional peer-review ...
The ASCO Research Community Forum held its 2016 Annual Meeting from September 25–26, at ASCO headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. Nearly 100 physician investigators and research staff from all types of research sites across the United States attended the meeting. Each year, the ASCO Research...
In a spirited debate, abounding with citations of clinical trials and other evidence, but not without humor and mutual respect, E. Shelley Hwang, MD, MPH, and Armando E. Giuliano, MD, reviewed the data and their clinical experience managing ductal carcinoma in situ and reached opposite...
The successes observed with various immune oncologic treatment approaches have largely bypassed pancreatic cancer, but this may be about to change, based on emerging insights into how and why these tumors evade attacks by T cells. At the 2nd International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference, two...
A new analysis indicates that many men with prostate cancer obtain second opinions from urologists before starting treatment, but surprisingly, second opinions are not associated with changes in treatment choice or improvements in perceived quality of prostate cancer care. Published by...
When I lost my only sister to breast cancer in 1986, patients like her had devastatingly few choices. Over the intervening decades, sustained commitment to biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and major technologic advances have led to transformative changes in cancer...
Patients with disseminated advanced cancer who undergo surgery are far more likely to endure long hospital stays and readmissions, referrals to extended care facilities, and death, University of California (UC) Davis researchers have found. Their study, published by Bateni et al in PLOS One,...
Earlier this month, ASCO issued a new global guideline on screening for cervical cancer.1 The guideline provides evidence-based recommendations for screening, follow-up of positive screening results, and treatment of women with cervical precancers in countries worldwide. ASCO’s guideline...
In the spring of 2011, I was feeling so fatigued I needed to rest after walking just a few steps to the kitchen and not doing anything more strenuous than making a cup of coffee. Fortunately, I have a wonderful primary care physician who takes me seriously when I have a complaint about my health,...
By the 1930s, the dangers of radiation were well known. American Martyr’s to Science Through the Roentgen Rays, published in 1936, documented the dead heroes of American radiology, from Clarence Daly, Thomas Edison’s associate, to Elizabeth Fleischman, the only woman in the group, who was a U.S....
Two major developments in oncology—the dramatic success of some immunotherapies and targeted drugs and an equally dramatic rise in the cost of care—have created policy issues, more serious than ever, regarding access to care. It is a time “of extraordinary opportunities combined with inequities in ...
Elizabeth Lesser is an award-winning writer and co-founder of the Omega Institute, the largest adult education center in the United States focusing on health, wellness, spirituality, and creativity. She is the author of several acclaimed books including Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help...
Palliative care is slowly but surely being integrated into the treatment of patients with solid tumors, but its role in the hematopoietic stem cell transplant setting is still lagging, speakers said at the 2016 Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium. “There is a huge symptom burden among patients...
Elizabeth Jaffee, MD, Deputy Director of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, commented on the promise of neoantigens during a press briefing at the 2nd International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference. “In addition to the development of new drugs...
Perhaps more than any other book in recent memory, When Breath Becomes Air has struck a chord among readers, both inside the medical community and among the public, desiring an honest and philosophical consideration of death. The autobiographical account of Paul Kalanithi, MD, a physician diagnosed ...
Arti Hurria, MD, a geriatric oncologist at City of Hope in Duarte, California, is the first graduate of ASCO’s Leadership Development Program to be elected to ASCO’s Board of Directors. Within 5 years of completing the program, Dr. Hurria went from learning leadership skills to applying them to...
ASCO is pleased to announce that oncology practices can now complete all of their Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS)1 requirements through the Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI®) platform. All users will be able to use the QOPI system to fulfill the Oncology Measures Group set of 7...
The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network recently announced Precision Promise, the first large-scale precision medicine trial designed to transform outcomes for patients with pancreatic cancer. The organization also announced the 12 initial Precision Promise Clinical Trial Consortium sites selected to...
The treatment of cancer of the larynx has changed dramatically in recent years. With organ preservation now possible in many cases, it is more important than ever for patients to receive guidance from every corner of the field. In a recent article in the Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP),1 a...
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center announced that Nancy E. Davidson, MD, Director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, has accepted the position of Executive Director of the Fred Hutchinson/University of Washington Cancer Consortium—1 of the 47 National Cancer Institute–designated ...
Despite my breast cancer diagnosis 4 years ago, I feel really lucky. My cancer was detected relatively early, stage IIB, during a routine mammogram screening—a test that many of my lesbian friends skip because they don’t want to deal with a medical system steeped in a heterosexual culture that is...
We pass them every day on our way to the hospital, the street dwellers of our town in India. Their home consists of a plastic sheet suspended between four poles on the pavement. One day, two women sat under the plastic sheet in happy conversation. It had rained heavily the previous night, and I...
Susan M. O’Brien, MD, one of the nation’s foremost leukemia experts, told The ASCO Post that she wanted to become a doctor since her earliest memories. “The idea of being able to help sick people always appealed to me,” said Dr. O’Brien, who was born in Manhattan but spent her formative years in...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Distinguished Lecture on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities, funded by Susan G. Komen, honors an investigator whose novel and significant work has had or may have a far-reaching impact on the etiology, detection, diagnosis, treatment, or...
Friends of Cancer Research (Friends) celebrated its 20th anniversary September 21 at a special event in Washington, DC. The event honored Janet Woodcock, MD; Eric Lander, PhD; and Sean Parker. Dr. Woodcock, Director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) at the U.S. Food and Drug...
The Susan G. Komen breast cancer organization gathered philanthropic, civic, medical, and business leaders in Washington, DC, September 14 to formally launch a $27 million, 10-city initiative to reduce breast cancer death rates among African American women. “African American women are almost 40%...
The Endocrine Society selected 14 leaders in the endocrinology field as winners of the organization’s prestigious 2017 Laureate Awards. Established in 1944, the Laureate Awards recognize the highest achievements in the endocrinology field. Three oncology leaders in particular were recognized for...
With checkpoint inhibitors in frequent use, clinicians strive daily to balance the efficacy and toxicity of these treatments. At the 2016 Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium, Lynn M. Schuchter, MD, FASCO, the C. Willard Professor of Hematology-Oncology at the University of Pennsylvania,...
The advent of immunotherapies has created a number of interesting challenges for oncology providers. At the 2016 Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium, specialists in the field tackled these issues. “There is a lot of newness to how we approach patient care with immunotherapies on board,” said...
This past summer, Eric S. Lander, PhD, President of the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, raised a few eyebrows at the Aspen Ideas Festival when he...
The third annual Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium, held on September 9–10, 2016, in San Francisco, California, brought together more than 650 attendees from multiple countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and China. It featured over 250 study...
Clodagh O’Shea, PhD, Associate Professor in the Salk Institute’s Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory, is among the first recipients of a grant from the Faculty Scholars Program, a new partnership of Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Simons...
In August 2016, the Healthcare Delivery Research Program of the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences at the National Cancer Institute convened a group of experts in a variety of fields to identify a research agenda for optimizing employment outcomes among cancer survivors. A core...