“This was a very nice analysis using a well-validated group of instruments with high compliance. And this is something that is one of the bugbears of quality-of-life analyses—compliance to completion of the instruments,” commented invited discussant, Michael Boyer, MBBS, PhD, Chief Clinical Officer ...
When used as first-line therapy for advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), pembrolizumab (Keytruda) yields better health-related quality of life than platinum-based chemotherapy, suggest new data from the randomized phase III KEYNOTE-024 trial.1 After 15 weeks of treatment, changes in scores...
“There are several possible ways to move first-line immunotherapy for non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) forward, according to invited discussant Edward B. Garon, MD, Director of Thoracic Oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We could expand...
Philip B. Paty, MD, a surgical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, commented on the findings for The ASCO Post. Dr. Paty is leading studies of surveillance at his own institution, which is not part of the International Watch & Wait Database. Consistency of Outcomes...
A “watch-and-wait” approach to treating rectal cancer patients with complete responses to chemoradiotherapy resulted in a 3-year survival rate of 91%, which is similar to historic survival rates after surgical resection, according to an analysis of the International Watch & Wait Database.1 For ...
In 2016, the KEYNOTE-024 trial set the bar for first-line immunotherapy in non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Trial results showed that pembrolizumab (Keytruda), an antibody to programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1), reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 50% and the risk of death by...
In 1959, my 5-year-old cousin, Kim, was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL). As an 8-year-old, I didn’t really understand what was happening to him, except that he had to go to the Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis, Indiana, for treatment. The haunting vision of his looking...
“Immunotherapy for lung cancer is a paradigm shift. I would never have thought when I started my career taking care of lung cancer patients in the mid 1990s that we’d now be substituting chemotherapy with an antibody immunotherapy in 2017. It’s incredible,” commented Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, Chief...
Lung cancer is the second most commonly diagnosed cancer and the leading cause of cancer-related mortality in the United States, with an estimated 224,390 new cases and 158,080 deaths from the disease in 2016.1 Despite improving survival rates in recent decades, only about 18% of patients are...
The problem of pain management facing clinicians today is twofold: how to ensure safe and effective treatment for patients with cancer in chronic pain, while avoiding the overuse of opioid medications and the potential for substance use disorder and diversion. According to the American Cancer...
Frank Sinicrope, MD, Professor of Medicine and Oncology at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, told The ASCO Post that anti–programmed cell death protein 1 (anti–PD-1) agents “have already changed the landscape” of metastatic colorectal cancer. “We are currently treating microsatellite...
With 6 additional months of follow-up since the initial presentation of results, in the phase II CheckMate 142 trial, 74% of heavily pretreated patients with metastatic colorectal microsatellite instability–high (MSI-H) cancers are alive after single-agent treatment with nivolumab (Opdivo).1...
After an infection with the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), the virus persists in the body throughout a person's lifetime, usually without causing any symptoms. About one-third of infected teenagers and young adults nevertheless develop infectious mononucleosis, which usually wears off after a few weeks. ...
Researchers at Mount Sinai Health System have discovered a way to predict whether patients with blood cancer who received a bone marrow transplant will develop graft-vs-host disease, according to a study published by Hartwell et al in JCI (The Journal of Clinical...
An interim analysis of the SCALP trial, reported in JAMA by Nangia et al, showed that use of a scalp-cooling device significantly reduced hair loss in women receiving chemotherapy for stage I or II breast cancer compared with no scalp cooling. The study was stopped early on the basis of efficacy....
In a study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Lindsley et al found that a number of mutations present in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) were associated with poorer clinical outcome after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). Study Details The study ...
In a retrospective study in three U.S. institutions reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Pelosof et al found that never smokers accounted for an increasing proportion of cases of non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) during the period from 1990 to 2013. The study used data...
In an individual patient data meta-analysis reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Lee et al found no difference in overall survival for first-line treatment with the first-generation epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitors gefitinib (Iressa) or...
Two investigational agents, the aurora A kinase inhibitor alisertib and a virus derived from HSV-1 (HSV1716), have shown antitumor efficacy in early clinical trials as monotherapies. A new study published by Currier et al in Oncotarget, however, demonstrates that the combined usage...
Recurrences of early-stage (stage II) melanoma are more often detected by patients and their physicians than by routine imaging tests, according to study results published by Berger et al in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. “We are most concerned about patients who have stage ...
In a phase II trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Dréno et al found that two long-term intermittent vismodegib (Erivedge) dosing regimens provided a similar reduction in the number of clinically significant basal cell carcinomas among patients with multiple lesions. Study Details In the ...
In a study reported in the Journal of Oncology Practice, Goodman et al described a management practice for low-risk neutropenic fever in cancer patients that has reduced in-patient stay with intravenous antibiotic use at Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute. Study Details In the study,...
In the UK Medical Research Council ST03 phase II/III trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Cunningham et al found that adding bevacizumab (Avastin) to perioperative chemotherapy did not improve survival in patients with operable esophagogastric cancer and may have been associated with impaired...
In a population-based study reported in a research letter in JAMA, Kurian et al found that genetic testing and genetic counseling are suboptimal among women with newly diagnosed breast cancer. Study Details The study involved 2,451 women aged 20 through 79 years diagnosed with stage 0 to II...
A new retrospective analysis suggests that immunotherapy may be less effective in patients who receive antibiotics less than a month before starting treatment. In the study, cancer worsened more quickly in such patients than in those who did not receive antibiotics (with median progression-free...
Early findings from a new study appear to challenge the current standard practice for immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy—continuing treatment until cancer worsens. Among patients with advanced kidney cancer who stopped programmed cell death protein 1/programmed cell death ligand 1...
Analysis of free-floating cancer DNA from blood samples has yielded leads for new prostate cancer treatment targets. Using a commercially available “liquid biopsy” test in patients with advanced prostate cancer, researchers found a number of genetic changes in cell-free, circulating...
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine scientists and doctors are embarking on the first clinical trial to determine if a genetic test they pioneered could successfully spare patients with nonaggressive thyroid cancer from complete removal of their thyroid. Thyroid-preserving surgery minimizes ...
Patients with breast cancer with dense breast tissue have almost a twofold increased risk of developing disease in the contralateral breast, according to new research from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The study, published by Brewster et al in the journal Cancer, is among the...
In the FIRES prospective cohort study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Rossi et al found that sentinel lymph node mapping was highly accurate in detecting metastases compared with complete lymphadenectomy in women with endometrial cancer. Study Details The study included women with clinical stage ...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Antonia Sepulveda, MD, PhD, of Columbia University, and colleagues, a joint guideline on the use of molecular biomarkers for evaluation of colorectal cancer has been developed by an expert panel from the American Society for Clinical Pathology...
In a population-based cohort study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Chang et al found that overweight and obesity were associated with an increased risk of transformation of monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance to multiple myeloma. Black race was also...
In the phase II BERIL-1 trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Soulières et al found that adding the pan-PI3K (phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase) inhibitor buparlisib to paclitaxel improved outcomes in patients with platinum-pretreated recurrent metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and ...
In the phase III OPTIMIZE-2 trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Hortobagyi et al found that an every-12-week schedule of zoledronic acid was noninferior to an every-4-week schedule in terms of skeletal-related event rate in women with bone metastases from breast cancer who were currently receiving...
A new method has been found for identifying therapeutic targets in cancers lacking specific key tumor suppressor genes. The process, which located a genetic site for the most common form of prostate cancer, has potential for developing precision therapy for other cancers, such as breast, brain, and ...
In the largest study of its kind to date, researchers from Fox Chase Cancer Center and the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University confirmed that oral antibiotics combined with mechanical bowel preparation were more effective at preventing surgical site infections...
Researchers from the School of Health Sciences at the University of Surrey have completed the first-ever systematic review of cancer survivors’ experience of online and telephone telehealth interventions in cancer care, a new study by Cox et al in the Journal of Medical Internet...
New research suggests that young patients with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) and their parents are likely to report to their physician that they took more of their anticancer medication than they actually did. The study, published by Landier et al in Blood, found that 84% of patients with ALL...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Symmans et al found that residual cancer burden (RCB) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy was significantly prognostic for long-term outcome across breast cancer subtypes. Study Details The study included 5 patient cohorts from The University of ...
In an Italian phase III trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Tiseo et al found that adding first-line bevacizumab (Avastin) to cisplatin/etoposide did not prolong overall survival in patients with extensive-disease small cell lung cancer. Study Details In the open-label trial, 204...
As reported by Zelenetz et al in The Lancet Oncology, an interim analysis of a phase III trial has shown the superiority of adding the phosphoinositide-3-kinase δ inhibitor idelalisib (Zydelig) to bendamustine/rituximab (Rituxan) in patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic...
A new, evidenced-based clinical practice guideline on molecular biomarker testing for patients with colorectal cancer identifies opportunities for improving patient outcomes. The American Society for Clinical Pathology (ASCP), the College of American Pathologists (CAP), the Association for...
Albert H. Owens, Jr, MD, a Johns Hopkins oncologist who played a leadership role in developing oncology as a scientific discipline and clinical specialty—and who also served as President of The Johns Hopkins Hospital—died January 13 at the age of 90. In the 1960s, oncology was not a word that...
Peter Nowell, MD, was a pathologist at the University of Pennsylvania studying leukemia cells under a microscope when he happened to wash his slides with tap water instead of laboratory solution. Viewing the newly cleaned slides under a microscope, he saw that the water had caused the cell’s...
The ability to artificially alter DNA opens the door to new scientific understanding and treatments for various diseases. Oliver Smithies, PhD, made the crucial discovery that a disease-causing gene could be modified. For that and other groundbreaking work, he, along with two other scientists, was ...
Justin F. Klamerus, MD, MMM, has been appointed President of the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Hospital, the clinical operation of Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit. The appointment was effective as of January 2017. Dr. Klamerus will report directly to Gerold Bepler, MD, PhD, President and Chief...
Although alcohol consumption is associated with increasing the risk of many cancers, including liver, pancreatic, colon, rectal, and breast, the link between alcohol and higher risk of melanoma is equivocal. Now, a large prospective study by Andrew Rivera, MD, of Harvard Medical School, Boston, and ...
In the Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium (TBCRC) 005 prospective biomarker study, reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Kala Visvanathan, MBBS, MHS, of Johns Hopkins University, and colleagues, a cumulative methylation index was found to be predictive of progression-free...
In an analysis of a French trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Balsat et al found that postinduction minimal residual disease was predictive of outcome and benefit from allogeneic stem cell transplantation (ASCT) in patients with NPM1-mutant acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Nicolas...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Platzbecker et al, the final results of the Italian-German phase III APL0406 trial indicate that the combination of all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) and arsenic trioxide (ATO [Trisenox]) is associated with better outcomes than standard ATRA plus...