Case Study A 70-year-old man is referred to your clinic for a consultation. Recently, a diagnosis of IgG monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) was established. Medical history is significant for essential hypertension, type II diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidemia, and atrial...
The Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania, The Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University Medical Center, the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, and The Tisch Cancer Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have...
Fentanyl (Lazanda) nasal spray, a schedule II narcotic, is now available at a 300-μg dose to treat breakthrough cancer pain, offering physicians another titration option for dosing flexibility. The new strength can help physicians more easily and accurately target the appropriate dose for...
A new study has identified a gene signature that predicts poor survival from ovarian cancer. The study also identified genes which help the cancer develop resistance to chemotherapy—offering a new route to help tackle the disease. The study, published by Kelly et al in the International...
Recent studies on a small number of patients with leukemia treated with bone marrow transplantation have suggested that the presence of the common cytomegalovirus (CMV) in patients or their donors may protect against relapse or even death after the transplant. A large international study published...
Prophylactic radiotherapy after surgery and large-bore pleural procedures did not result in significant reduction in the incidence of procedure-tract metastases in malignant pleural mesothelioma, according to the UK phase III SMART trial reported by Clive et al in The Lancet Oncology. Study...
In a study reported by Yuan et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, higher prediagnostic plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels were found to be associated with prolonged overall survival in patients with pancreatic cancer. Study Details The study involved data from 493 patients from 5...
In a phase III trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Johnson et al found similar efficacy with continued ABVD (doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine, dacarbazine) chemotherapy vs omission of bleomycin (AVD) after negative interim PET-CT (positron-emission tomography–computed...
The Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO (CCF) is currently accepting applications for the 2017 Young Investigator Award (YIA) and Career Development Award (CDA). Young Investigator Award (YIA) A 1-year grant totaling $50,000, the YIA provides research funding to promising physicians to support the...
The new ASCO Answers Guide to non–small cell lung cancer replaces the previous guide to general lung cancer. It is designed just for patients newly diagnosed with non–small cell lung cancer to help them better understand the disease and their treatment options. It includes information on treatment, ...
ASCO is committed to providing all oncologists with opportunities for professional development that will maximize their career success. In response to the recognized career gender gap for women in oncology, ASCO included a number of initiatives in the 2016 Annual Meeting program. In its 2nd year,...
On June 1, 2016, ASCO announced that the Contemporary Oncology Team of Athens, Greece, as part of the new international pilot project, is the first international practice to receive Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI®) certification through QOPI Certification Program, LLC (QCP). What is...
At the end of June, Allen S. Lichter, MD, FASCO, retired after serving as ASCO’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for 10 years. To honor his commitment and contributions to ASCO and recognize his lasting impact on the field of oncology, the Society has created a new Special Award, the Allen S. Lichter ...
Philip A. Pancari, MD, has joined the Department of Hematology/Oncology at Fox Chase Cancer Center, providing additional physician support for the Fox Chase Cancer Center–Temple University Hospital Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT) Program. “Having worked at Fox Chase for the past 3 years as a...
The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF), a leader in precision medicine, has announced that its founder Kathy Giusti has been appointed Faculty Co-Chair of the Kraft Precision Medicine Accelerator at Harvard Business School (HBS). Ms. Giusti will lead the Harvard Business School Kraft...
Observational Study Title: Assessment for Long-Term Cardiovascular Impairment Associated With Trastuzumab Cardiotoxicity in HER2-Positive Breast Cancer Survivors Study Type: Observational Study Sponsor and Collaborators: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Purpose: To study whether strain and...
Like most pediatric hematologists/oncologists, my career has been a journey, hoping to discover ways to improve the outcomes for children and adolescents with cancer. I have been blessed to work with outstanding colleagues in the United States and throughout the world. And of equal importance, I...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) congratulates the four recipients of the inaugural NextGen Grants for Transformative Cancer Research. The recipients were honored at the AACR Annual Meeting 2016, held April 16–20 in New Orleans. “The AACR is very proud to announce the first...
ASCO recently announced the appointment of James M. Ford, MD, as Editor-in-Chief of the Society’s new journal, JCO Precision Oncology. Dr. Ford will set the scope and vision for the online-only journal, which will publish scientific and educational content that provides a deeper understanding of...
The study statistics are alarming—and perplexing. According to an analysis of data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) colorectal cancer registry, colon cancer incidence among young adults aged 20 to 34 is expected to increase 90% by 2030, and the incidence of rectosigmoid...
Researchers at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) presented a molecular imaging methodology that allows the increase of the radiotherapy dose to the tumor while protecting vulnerable vital organs.1 The delicate balance of administering the...
Patients with cancer often experience significant fluctuations in weight and lean body mass. Neglecting to account for these changes can prevent clinicians from obtaining precise data from molecular imaging, but a new method of measuring lean body mass takes changes in individual body composition...
With surgical removal at the front line of defense against prostate cancer, oncologists are considering prostate-specific molecular imaging at the point of initial biopsy and preoperative planning to root out the full extent of disease, researchers showed at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Society...
Researchers at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) presented study findings on a means of evaluating an immunotherapy for non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).1 Due to NSCLC’s relative insensitivity to chemotherapy, the use of immunotherapies,...
“These are important data. It is safe to envision a future where atezolizumab [Tecentriq] can be used first-line. These were cisplatin-ineligible patients, and many patients fall into this category, especially the elderly. Platinum-ineligibility is a big problem due to comorbidities,” explained...
Atezolizumab (Tecentriq), an anti–programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) inhibitor, achieved durable responses as first-line treatment in cisplatin-ineligible patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma in a primary analysis of a phase II trial. These data represent an unmet need, because...
National Brain Tumor Society (NBTS) has announced the appointment of W.K. Alfred Yung, MD, as Special Advisor to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Dr. Yung, the outgoing Chair of the Neuro-Oncology Department at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, will play an important role in...
“Adjuvant temozolomide does represent a new standard of care for 1p/19q-intact anaplastic glioma patients,” according to David Reardon, MD, Clinical Director at the Dana-Farber Center for Neuro-Oncology and the study’s formal discussant at the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting. “We see a significant...
Adjuvant temozolomide, after radiotherapy, improves overall survival in patients with grade 3 anaplastic glioma without 1p/19q codeletion, according to a phase III EORTC (European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer) study presented at the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 “We were...
Formal discussant of these trials Steven M. Devine, MD, of The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbus, was not able to attend the ASCO Meeting, but his slides were presented to the audience. “CAR T-cell therapy was first thought of in the 1980s, but it is only recently that we ...
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has been effective in adults and children with advanced acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), but along with efficacy, the treatment can stimulate cytokine-release syndrome, which can be deadly if it goes unrecognized and untreated. Adjusting the dose...
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Robert Califf, MD, issued the following statement June 29, 2016, regarding the appointment of Richard Pazdur, MD, as the Acting Director of the FDA Oncology Center of Excellence. Dr. Pazdur is currently Director of the Office of Oncology...
The discussant of these studies was Elizabeth Mittendorf, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Breast Surgical Oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston. Dr. Mittendorf noted that approximately 3% of U.S. breast cancer patients present with de novo stage IV disease. For...
For de novo stage IV breast cancer, does resection of the primary tumor improve outcomes? Two studies presented at the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting reached different conclusions. A prospective randomized study conducted in Turkey concluded there is a survival benefit at 5 years,1 whereas a U.S....
Stephen K.L. Chia, MD, of the British Columbia Cancer Agency, Vancouver, discussed two of these neoadjuvant breast cancer studies at the ASCO Annual Meeting. In the current landscape for neoadjuvant therapy in HER2-positive disease, said Dr. Chia, the NeoSphere, TRYPHAENA, KRISTINE, and I-SPY 2...
In patients with HER2-positive early breast cancer, pathologic complete response rates after neoadjuvant therapy were higher with docetaxel plus carboplatin plus trastuzumab (Herceptin) plus pertuzumab (Perjeta), or TCH+P, than with ado-trastuzumab emtansine (Kadcyla) plus pertuzumab, or T-DM1+P,...
Daniel F. Hayes, MD, ASCO President, issued the following statement on June 29, 2016: “ASCO commends FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf for his selection of Dr. Richard Pazdur to lead the agency’s new Oncology Center of Excellence. In his nearly 20 years with the FDA, Dr. Pazdur has worked...
In a study report published by Bhatt et al in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center explained how a type of herpesvirus uses mimicry to trick the host cell to produce proteins the virus needs and...
Nancy E. Davidson, MD, the Hillman Professor of Oncology and Director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute in Philadelphia, was the Early Breast Cancer Trialists’ Collaborative Group (EBCTCG) study’s formal discussant. With this analysis, she noted, the EBCTCG has “reinforced the long...
The risk of recurrence in estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer is known to continue after 5 years, but just how much is that risk once endocrine therapy is stopped? The Early Breast Cancer Trialists’ Collaborative Group (EBCTCG) has concluded it is “appreciable,” with distant recurrences...
When a brain tumor is suspected, its presence is usually confirmed by anatomic imaging such as computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). But through imaging, not much about the tumor molecularly can be learned. Surgery and a biopsy are necessary to get a glimpse of the cancer...
Every longstanding culture has ages: The Minoans were followed by the Mycenaeans and, later, the Hellenistic peoples. And so it is with hematology/oncology. A descriptive age dominated predominately by histopathologists was followed by an age of experimentalists. Development of the atomic bombs...
Significant progress has been made in the past 2 decades in the care of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Recently, the therapeutic armamentarium has expanded for such patients with the introduction of new targeted agents. CLL is predominantly a disease of the elderly, with a...
The addition of prostate external-beam radiation therapy to androgen-deprivation therapy was associated with prolonged overall survival in men with newly diagnosed metastatic prostate cancer, according to a National Cancer Database analysis reported by Rusthoven et al in the Journal of Clinical...
In an analysis of the linked Southwest Oncology Group–Medicare databases reported by Hershman et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, an increased risk of peripheral neuropathy in older patients receiving taxane therapy was associated with increasing age and a history of diabetes in...
The multikinase inhibitor regorafenib (Stivarga) prolonged progression-free survival vs placebo in patients with previously treated advanced gastric carcinoma, in a phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Pavlakis et al. A regional difference in treatment effect was observed. ...
“These are outstanding results,” commented formal discussant of this trial David R. Spigel, MD, of the Sarah Cannon Research Institute, Nashville, Tennessee. In melanoma, the combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) plus ipilimumab (Yervoy) vs nivolumab alone vs ipilimumab alone found superior...
How best to combine new immunotherapies is a burning question in oncology. A new study in the CheckMate series suggests that nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) can be safely and effectively combined as first-line treatment of advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC),1 but further study...
In a study of older women with newly diagnosed stage I to III breast cancer, approximately 1 in 5 lost the ability to complete some of the basic tasks necessary for independent living within 1 year of initiating treatment. The study also found that a simple survey can help identify which women are...
People who visit their primary care physicians are more likely to get potentially life-saving colon cancer screenings and follow-up on abnormal stool blood test results—even in health systems that heavily promote mail-in home stool blood tests that don’t require a doctor visit, a study...