“This study of 2,759 patients with ductal carcinoma in situ provides data for women who are considering their surgical options,” said Julie Margenthaler, MD, a breast surgeon at Washington University of Medicine, St. Louis, and Communications Chair of the American Society of Breast Surgeons...
After phase I results of Seattle Children’s Pediatric Leukemia Adoptive Therapy (PLAT-02) trial, published by Gardner et al in Blood,1 showed T-cell immunotherapy to be effective in sending 93% of patients with relapsed or refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) into complete initial...
An increasing number of women with ductal carcinoma in situ are undergoing contralateral mastectomy, but the 5-year risk of cancer in the opposite breast is only about 3%, a study from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center recently found.1 Investigators hope these numbers will dissuade women from ...
“Inflammatory breast cancer represents the aggressive end of the spectrum of breast cancer at presentation. It is encouraging It to see the high 5-year breast cancer–specific survival rates reported in this cohort of 114 women,” said Judy C. Boughey, MD, a breast surgeon at the Mayo Clinic,...
In 2005, Stupp and colleagues published their landmark paper demonstrating in a randomized phase III trial that the addition of temozolomide to radiation increased overall survival in patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma. Notably, patients over age 70 years were excluded from this study.1...
In a phase III trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, James R. Perry, MD, of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, and colleagues found that adding temozolomide to short-course radiotherapy improved overall survival in patients aged at least 65 years with newly diagnosed...
Stand Up to Cancer (SU2C) announced the formation of a “Dream Team” of top researchers to take on one of the toughest challenges in cancer research and treatment: colorectal cancer, which is expected to claim the lives of more than 50,000 Americans this year. The announcement was made at a special...
On April 28, 2017, the European Commission approved nivolumab (Opdivo) as monotherapy for the treatment of squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN) in adults with disease progression on or after platinum-based therapy. Nivolumab is the first and only immuno-oncology treatment that has...
As reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, a recent issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology featured an ASCO Clinical Practice Guideline on the management of small renal masses reported by Finelli and colleagues.1 This comprehensive guideline is written by a group of well-regarded and...
Contemporary triple-modality therapy achieves excellent locoregional tumor control of inflammatory breast cancer, with only 4 locoregional recurrences out of 114 patients treated at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston. The investigators described their approach at the...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Antonio Finelli, MD, of Princess Margaret Cancer Center, Toronto, and colleagues, ASCO has released a clinical practice guideline on management of small renal masses.1 The guideline was derived from an expert panel literature search for and...
A consensus statement from a National Cancer Institute–sponsored clinical trials planning meeting, reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Park et al, presents revisions to the International Neuroblastoma Response Criteria (INRC) for assessing treatment response in patients with...
In an analysis reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Landsburg et al found no significant benefit of consolidative autologous stem cell transplantation in patients with double-hit lymphoma after first complete remission. They also found evidence of poorer outcome with front-line R-CHOP...
In patients with stage III/IV melanoma, immunologically “cold” tumors were rendered immunologically active through intratumoral injections of plasmid interleukin-12 (IL-12) combined with pembrolizumab (Keytruda).1 Describing the approach at the 2017 ASCO-SITC Clinical Immuno-Oncology Symposium,...
On April 25, ASCO issued a provisional clinical opinion on the use of second-line hormonal therapy for men with castration-resistant prostate cancer who have not yet received chemotherapy. The recommendations of this provisional clinical opinion were informed by evidence from a systematic review of ...
The American Society of Preventive Oncology (ASPO) has named Kurt Ribisl, PhD, the recipient of the 2017 Joseph W. Cullen Memorial Award. ASPO presented the honor at its Annual Meeting in Seattle. In addition to receiving the award, Dr. Ribisl presented a talk on finding a solution for...
The Texas Medical Center (TMC) has announced that its Board of Directors has appointed William F. McKeon as President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and member of the Board of Directors. Mr. McKeon previously held the position of Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy and Operating Officer....
Denise A. Galloway, PhD, Associate Director, Human Biology Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, whose research focus is human papillomavirus (HPV), told The ASCO Post that these findings provide new data for the field. “I can’t think of a large study of oral HPV infection in...
As the U.S. population ages,1 the number of older women with breast cancer will increase,2 as well as the number of patients with frailty and other comorbid medical conditions. These patients are at increased risk for toxicity and functional decline during their breast cancer treatment course....
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Allison W. Kurian, MD, of Stanford University School of Medicine, and colleagues, surveys in a population-based sample of patients recently diagnosed with breast cancer indicate that many undergo genetic risk testing without seeing a genetics...
CancerLinQ LLC, a wholly owned nonprofit subsidiary of ASCO, has announced that Wendy S. Rubinstein, MD, PhD, FACMG, FACP, will be its first Division Director, Clinical Data Management and Curation. Dr. Rubinstein will oversee the team working to securely process and analyze the CancerLinQ®...
Vaccination against the human papillomavirus (HPV) reduced the risk of acquiring oral HPV infections by 88%, in one of the first large studies to explore vaccination’s impact in the oropharynx. The study will be presented at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting, and the findings were released in advance of ...
A prognostic model proved able to accurately predict long-term outcomes for patients with stage I to III renal cell carcinoma, the developers of the instrument reported at the 2017 National Comprehensive Cancer Network Annual Conference.1 The model was derived from molecular tissue analysis and...
Genetic testing for inherited cancer susceptibility is increasingly part of the care of cancer patients and their relatives. Early clinical guidelines recommended BRCA1/2 testing for women diagnosed with breast or ovarian cancer if they also have a significant family cancer history or Ashkenazi...
NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines®): 2017 Guidelines In 1996, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) published its first set of Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology®, covering 8 tumor types. Guidelines are now published for more than 60 tumor types and...
In a population-based study reported in a research letter in JAMA, Allison W. Kurian, MD, of Stanford University School of Medicine, and colleagues found that genetic testing and genetic counseling are suboptimal among women with newly diagnosed breast cancer.1 Study Details The study involved...
The Skin Cancer Foundation recently announced a partnership with Amazon. The relationship is designed to demonstrate a shared commitment to raising awareness of the world’s most common cancer, now occurring at epidemic levels. Throughout 2017, The Skin Cancer Foundation and Amazon will work...
Robert L. Comis, MD, FASCO, Co-Chair of the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group, succumbed to a sudden illness at his home and died on May 10, 2017, at the age of 71. A giant in national and international clinical research since 1977, Dr. Comis is known as a champion of patient access to cancer...
Few pediatric oncology patients or their parents expressed negative attitudes toward early integration of palliative care during cancer treatment, in a study by Deena R. Levine, MD, of the Division of Quality of Life and Palliative Care, St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and colleagues reported ...
About one in five cancer diagnoses in the United States is a rare cancer, according to new research from the American Cancer Society. The report, published by DeSantis et al in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, found rare cancers account for more than two in three cancers occurring in children...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Signe Borgquist, MD, PhD, of Lund University, Sweden, and colleagues found that use of cholesterol-lowering medication during adjuvant endocrine therapy was associated with a reduced risk of breast cancer recurrence in hormone...
The FDA Drug Information Soundcast in Clinical Oncology (DISCO) is a new podcast series from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Oncology Center of Excellence (OCE), covering new product approvals, emerging safety information for cancer treatments, and other current topics in cancer ...
A Danish study reported in the European Journal of Cancer by Marco Donia, MD, PhD, of the Center for Cancer Immune Therapy, Herlev Hospital, Denmark, and colleagues indicates that more than half of patients with metastatic melanoma do not satisfy requirements for enrollment in phase III trials of...
Robert Vonderheide, MD, DPhil, has been named the new Director of the Abramson Cancer Center (ACC) of the University of Pennsylvania. He is the Hanna Wise Professor in Cancer Research at the Perelman School of Medicine and currently serves as the ACC’s Associate Director for Translational Research ...
June 27, 2017, marks the 1-year anniversary since Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP, FASCO, began his tenure as Chief Executive Officer of ASCO. With the launch of the national Cancer Moonshot and the changes in the White House and Congress, it has been a year of tremendous activity drawing on all of...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies commonly used by patients with cancer. In this installment, authors Shelly Latte-Naor, MD, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, present the case...
A study reported in Science found that more than two-thirds of human cancers are caused by random mutations made during DNA replication.1 “The main message we would like to convey is that even for many patients who follow all of the guidelines from the advisory bodies—they don’t smoke, exercise...
Random mistakes made during DNA replication are responsible for about two-thirds of the mutations that cause human cancers, according to a study reported in Science.1 Recognizing the role of these replication errors “does not diminish the importance of primary prevention but emphasizes that not all ...
Commenting on the BILCAP study, Lipika Goyal, MD, an oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, said: “These results are very intriguing. There is no current standard of care for adjuvant therapy of biliary tract cancer. Our high-risk patients [ie, patients with node-positive disease,...
There is no standard adjuvant therapy for patients with resectable biliary tract cancer, but that may be about to change based on results of the phase III BILCAP trial.1 Adjuvant capecitabine significantly improved overall survival in the BILCAP trial, and this is the first study to show a benefit...
The Wistar Institute has announced the appointment of Daniel W. Kulp, PhD, as Associate Professor in the Vaccine Center and the Translational Tumor Immunology Program. Dr. Kulp’s research centers on how best to rationally engineer protective immune responses against emerging and harmful infectious ...
EACH YEAR, the ASCO President chooses a theme for his or her term, which is not a trivial pursuit. Trying to think up something novel and catchy, yet not schmaltzy, is quite a challenge. However, in my year as Chair of the Scientific Program Committee for the 2010 ASCO Annual Meeting, then during...
The following essay by Paul A. Bunn, Jr, MD, is adapted from The Big Casino: America’s Best Cancer Doctors Share Their Most Powerful Stories, which was coedited by Stan Winokur, MD, and Vincent Coppola and published in May 2014. The book is available on Amazon.com and thebigcasino.org. I grew up in ...
Mark looked at me shyly through his oversized Elvis Costello–style glasses. Was he feeling embarrassed by his own reply or just waiting for my reaction? He was sitting between his mom and dad, wearing a t-shirt with a huge Minion print. His braces showed when he smiled, something he does often in...
In the April 25 issue of The ASCO Post, we reported on a study of atezolizumab -(Tecentriq) and bevacizumab (Avastin) in metastatic kidney cancer, which had been presented at the 2017 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium. Unfortunately, we misattributed that presentation to Prof. Trevor Powles of Barts ...
Spanish-speaking patients with cancer have new tools to help them understand treatment options for their disease. The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) has released a series of Spanish-language patient videos on radiation therapy for cancer, including breast, prostate, lung, brain,...
It is well documented that physical activity benefits patients with cancer, both during and after treatment. Exercise helps patients combat both the physical and psychological impacts of cancer treatment, giving them a sense of well-being, control, stress reduction, and empowerment. However,...
Sarcomas come in dozens of subtypes. Clinical trial results have been mixed when treating these diverse tumors with immunotherapy, a targeted therapeutic strategy that has success in other cancers. However, a study published by Pollack et al in the journal Cancer suggests how both existing and ...
There is a higher prevalence of chronic health conditions among cancer survivors vs people without a history of cancer, and the presence of chronic conditions is associated with greater annual medical expenditures compared with the absence of such conditions in cancer survivors. These findings were ...
New criteria for evaluating response in lymphoma clinical trials—RECIL 2017—have been developed by an International Working Group with the aim of harmonizing criteria with the Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST). The new criteria were reported by Younes et al in Annals ...