JANUARY 2017 2017 Oncologic Emergency Medicine ConferenceJanuary 12-13 • Houston, Texas For more information: www.mdanderson.org/education-training/professional-education/cme-conference-management/conferences/oncologic-emergency-medicine-conference.html 2017 Highlights of ASH in North...
Extended endocrine therapy with an aromatase inhibitor did not improve disease-free survival in patients with hormone receptor–positive breast cancer enrolled in three studies presented at the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. The results stand in contrast to the phase III National Cancer...
In a phase II trial reported in The Lancet, Balar et al found that first-line atezolizumab (Tecentriq) produced durable responses in cisplatin-ineligible patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma. In the study, 119 patients from 47 sites in North America and Europe who were ...
The investigational immunotherapeutic IMC-20D7S was found to be well tolerated and somewhat active in patients with advanced melanoma, including one complete response, according to the results of a phase I/Ib trial reported by Danny N. Khalil, MD, PhD, and colleagues in Clinical Cancer Research....
Scientific Names: Valeriana officinalis, Valeriana radix Common Names: Garden valerian, Indian valerian, Pacific valerian, garden heliotrope Overview A perennial flowering plant prevalent in Europe, Asia, and North America, valerian has a long medicinal history as a relaxant. Its potential as a...
JANUARY 2017 2017 Oncologic Emergency Medicine ConferenceJanuary 12-13 • Houston, Texas For more information: www.mdanderson.org/education-training/professional-education/cme-conference-management/conferences/oncologic-emergency-medicine-conference.html Advances in Medical and Surgical Management...
A few years ago, I had the good fortune to join a research team that intended to create a device to help dying children express their wants and needs despite communication challenges. The brain tumor team at SickKids [also known as The Hospital for Sick Children] had cared for several children...
Tina’s Wish, a nonprofit organization dedicated exclusively to funding scientific research for the early detection of ovarian cancer, recently announced its eight 2017–2018 individual grant recipients after soliciting proposals nationally for the first time. Researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer...
On March 10, 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted regular approval to dinutuximab (formerly known as chimeric 14.18 antibody; Unituxin) for use in combination with granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), interleukin-2 (IL-2), and 13-cis-retinoic acid...
It is uniformly fatal and impossible to undo. When the chemotherapy drug vincristine is placed in a syringe and injected intrathecally—into the spinal fluid—the patient always dies. And despite safety guidelines and labels, deaths continue to occur. Now the National Comprehensive Cancer Network®...
Two studies presented at the 28th EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Munich focused on the inhibition of mutations in the KIT and PDGFRα oncogenes. These genes encode receptor tyrosine kinases, and when they are mutated, cell signaling malfunctions, leading to...
On November 21, 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved daratumumab (Darzalex) in combination with lenalidomide (Revlimid) and dexamethasone or bortezomib (Velcade) and dexamethasone for the treatment of patients with multiple myeloma who have received at least one prior...
Positive studies about brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) in cutaneous T-cell lymphoma1 and rituximab (Rituxan) maintenance therapy in mantle cell lymphoma (MCL)2 were reported at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Hematology (ASH). “These abstracts each focus on approved agents and...
The combined use of genetic markers and minimal residual disease assessment (MRD) has made it easier to identify chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients likely to have a poor outcome after receiving frontline chemoimmunotherapy. Interim results from the phase III German CLL M1 study presented...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Chow et al found that hematopoietic cell transplantation survivors had higher rates of morbidity and mortality compared with a matched population of patients with cancer not undergoing hematopoietic cell transplantation. The study involved...
Two studies at the 28th EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Munich, Germany focused on the inhibition of mutations in the KIT and PDGFRα oncogenes. These genes provide instructions for making proteins that are part of a family of proteins called receptor...
Launched in 2012 by Harborside Press, publisher of the Journal of the Advanced Practitioner in Oncology (JADPRO) and The ASCO Post, this year’s JADPRO Live at APSHO conference topped previous attendance records with nearly 1,100 attendees. APSHO, the Advanced Practitioner Society in Hematology and...
DECEMBER 58th ASH Annual Meeting & ExpositionDecember 3-6 • San Diego, California For more information: www.hematology.org/Annual-Meeting/ 17th World Conference on Lung CancerDecember 4-7 • Vienna, Austria For more information: www.iaslc.org/events/17th-iaslc-world-conference-lung-cancer 14th...
Impaired sleep quality is a concerning problem for many patients with cancer, and pharmacologic treatments come with many negative effects. Several small studies indicate that yoga improves persistent fatigue, sleep disturbance, anxiety, and quality of life, in addition to reducing the need for ...
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, ...
In the phase III S-TRAC trial reported at the recent European Society for Medical Oncology meeting and in The New England Journal of Medicine by Alain Ravaud, MD, PhD, of Bordeaux University Hospital, and colleagues, adjuvant sunitinib (Sutent) significantly prolonged disease-free survival vs...
In studies presented at the 2016 European Society for Surgical Oncology (ESMO) Congress, two different neoadjuvant treatment approaches improved the outcomes of patients with esophageal cancer. Investigators from the Australasian Gastro-Intestinal Trials Group (AGITG) reported that the addition of...
The 2016 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress was jam-packed with studies of the anti–programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) antibodies in non–small cell lung cancer and melanoma, where they have clearly changed the treatment paradigm. Here is a roundup of some of those trials,...
Although there are no androgen receptor antagonists currently approved for the treatment of breast cancer, clinical trials indicate that these agents benefit some patients with triple-negative breast cancer, Tiffany A. Traina, MD, told participants at the 18th Annual Lynn Sage Breast Cancer...
More than 650 attendees gathered in San Francisco on September 9 and 10 for the 2016 Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium, focusing on the theme of “Patient-Centered Care Across the Cancer Continuum.” Research presented during the Symposium demonstrated how integrating palliative care into cancer...
High-throughput sequencing of T-cell receptors may be a solution to some of the challenges confronting oncologists who treat cutaneous T-cell lymphomas. According to experts who presented talks on high-throughput sequencing of T-cell receptors at the 3rd World Congress of Cutaneous Lymphoma...
The current plethora of drugs in development for oncology is leading to the testing of novel agents in common as well as rare diseases. Targeted therapies have been a focus of great interest in soft-tissue sarcomas, with testing of a variety of oral tyrosine kinase inhibitors leading to the...
For the first time, a randomized trial has provided good evidence to support the use of neoadjuvant chemotherapy for treatment of high-risk soft-tissue sarcoma of the extremities or trunk wall.1 But the findings of the study were surprising, because neoadjuvant chemotherapy with one-size-fits-all...
In the phase III IMPRINT trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Brian I. Rini, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute, and colleagues found no overall survival benefit of adding the multipeptide cancer vaccine IMA901 to sunitinib (Sutent) in the first-line treatment of locally...
November is National Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, the impetus for this article. Pancreatic cancer is a huge health challenge. It's the eighth most common cancer in the United States and the fourth most common cause of cancer deaths but is expected to become the second most common cause of...
Here is a brief look at the study findings and clinical implications of several recent and important clinical trials in neoplastic hematology. Attention is focused on myelodysplastic syndromes, multiple myeloma, and chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Myelodysplastic Syndromes Clinical Trial:...
Combination immunotherapy is producing response rates ranging from 26% to 38% among patients with metastatic bladder cancer in the early stages of a three-arm clinical trial presented at the 2016 Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Annual Meeting in National Harbor, Maryland. “Until...
As part of its mission to improve the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of cancer care so that patients can live better lives, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) has announced the launch of Just Bag It: The NCCN Campaign for Safe Vincristine...
NOVEMBER 21st Annual Perspectives in Thoracic OncologyNovember 18-19 • New York, New YorkFor more information:http://imedex.com/perspectives-thoracic-oncology-conference/index.asp Mayo Clinic Angiogenesis and Tumor Microenvironment Symposium: From Translational Research to Clinical Practice...
Seattle Genetics, Inc, and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited have announced completion of patient enrollment in the ECHELON-2 clinical trial. ECHELON-2 is a global phase III randomized trial evaluating brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) as part of a front-line combination chemotherapy regimen in...
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 ...
Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy is a common side effect of cancer treatment—the incidence is reported to be as high as 70% in the first month of chemotherapy1—and can cause significant disability in patients. The extent of the neurotoxicity incurred by patients varies depending on 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 ...
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...
Pancreatic cancer has been notably unresponsive to immunotherapeutic approaches, but a Stand Up 2 Cancer Dream Team believes their research can change that. Team co-leader Elizabeth Jaffee, MD, Deputy Director of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, ...
The injectable oncolytic immunotherapy talimogene laherparepvec (also known as T-VEC, Imlygic) may become a valuable component of combination immunotherapy approaches in melanoma, a strategy believed to help overcome resistance of tumors to single-agent immunotherapies. “[Talimogene laherparepvec] ...
Checkpoint inhibitors have revolutionized the treatment of advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), but evidence of their benefit was restricted to the second-line setting. However, early-phase trials with both pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and nivolumab (Opdivo) demonstrated favorable results in...
The programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) inhibitor atezolizumab (Tecentriq) significantly improved overall survival, compared to docetaxel, in previously treated, advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to preliminary results of the phase III OAK study. The findings are the first...
The most comprehensive study of its kind to date found that older women enjoy the same benefits from breast reconstruction following mastectomy for breast cancer as younger women, without a significant increase in the risk for complications. As with patients across all age groups, the benefits of...
Mir et al found that regorafenib (Stivarga) was active in patients with advanced nonadipocytic soft-tissue sarcoma previously treated with an anthracycline, according to a French-Austrian phase II trial reported in The Lancet Oncology. Regorafenib should be evaluated further in this setting, the...
African American cancer survivors are more likely than whites to experience lasting debt or forgo necessary medical care as they struggle with the financial burden of cancer, whereas white cancer survivors are somewhat more likely to use existing assets to pay for their cancer care, according to a...
Implementation of the Affordable Care Act may have led to a significant increase in the number of Hispanic breast cancer patients treated in California at a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated cancer center. Further, there was also an increase reported in the number of Hispanic women who...
OCTOBER 16th Biennial Meeting of the International Gynecologic Cancer SocietyOctober 29-31 • Lisbon, PortugalFor more information:http://igcs2016.com NOVEMBER 2016 Oncofertility Conference: Expanding Access to Emerging and Existing Oncofertility ServicesNovember 1-3 • Chicago, Illinois For more...
A quality improvement project conducted within the OhioHealth system showed that oncologists can change their behavior and refer patients earlier to hospice care. After a relatively minor intervention, 18 medical oncologists in private practice doubled the mean length of stay in hospice care for...
Question 1: Which statement about donor selection for allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplant is correct? Correct Answer: C. If a donor is available, the genotypic identity between the patient and his brother should be established by typing the patient’s parents; if this is not possible, the...