As reported by Hwang et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, subsequent molecular profiling of histologically diagnosed central nervous system supratentorial primitive neuroectodermal tumors (CNS-PNET) in patients showed molecular and clinical heterogeneity that strongly affected prognosis. The ...
A study of 112 patients with metastatic solid tumors found that the use of an artificial intelligence (AI)-based smartphone app reduced both the severity of patients’ reported pain and hospital admissions. After an 8-week period, patients who used the AI-powered app to monitor and address...
In December, The University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School will launch an innovative cancer care model called the CaLM (cancer life re-imagined) Clinic as part of its new cancer center, the Livestrong Cancer Institutes. The goal of the Livestrong Cancer Institutes and the CaLM Clinic is to...
IN ORDER TO rein in the untenable rise in costs while delivering high-value cancer care, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation developed a new payment system—the Oncology Care Model. At the 2018 ASCO Quality Care Symposium, Cardinale B. Smith, MD, PhD, shed light on the system’s...
A NUMBER OF STUDIES from the palliative care literature have shown that nonbeneficial health-care interventions actually may harm patients’ quality of life, increase patient and caregiver distress, and drive costs. Yet, according to the National Cancer Institute, about 30% of all cancer spending...
THE INTERNATIONAL Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) 19th World Conference on Lung Cancer was the largest in its history. One of the key themes of the meeting was to focus on the patient. Here are highlights of presentations from this conference that demonstrate the role of the...
THE ANTI–PROGRAMMED cell death protein 1 (anti–PD-1) checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was found to have antitumor activity in patients with high-risk non–muscle invasive bladder cancer who were nonresponsive to bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), according to the preliminary results of the ...
MEN WITH newly diagnosed metastatic prostate cancer do not typically receive treatment to the primary tumor with radiation or surgery. A new analysis of the STAMPEDE trial found that radiation administered to the prostate can improve overall survival in men with newly diagnosed metastatic prostate...
TWO-YEAR MAINTENANCE therapy with olaparib (Lynparza), a poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitor, achieved a significant improvement in progression-free survival in patients with newly diagnosed advanced ovarian cancer and a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation, according to results of the phase III SOLO-1...
AS AN INTERNIST, I strived to give patients hope by prescribing therapies that increased their chance—their hope—of the best outcome and by encouraging them with hopeful words. My own hope was to care for patients until I was old. Just weeks after celebrating my 36th birthday, I was diagnosed with ...
IMMUNOTHERAPY APPEARS to be the new upfront standard of care for patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, based on a late-breaking presentation at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2018 Congress1 and simultaneously published in The New England Journal of Medicine.2 In ...
The extreme fatigue I experienced during the winter of my fourth year in medical school, in 2003, was easily attributable to the rigors of my medical training and the lack of sleep that comes from trying to keep up with an intensely busy schedule. I was looking forward to resting and recuperating...
BOOKMARK Title: The Trail to Tincup: Love Stories at Life’s EndEditors: Joyce Lynnette HockerPublisher: She Writes PressPublication date: May 2018Price: $23.95, hardcover, 288 pages Human mortality is embedded in the day-to-day challenges of clinical oncology; a cancer diagnosis is a reality...
A health-care system is evaluated by various metrics: one is how it cares for its most vulnerable patients. The United States spends far more on health care than any nation in the world, yet access to high-quality oncology services remains elusive to certain minority populations—none more so than...
ASCO recently submitted two comment letters from ASCO President Monica M. Bertagnolli, MD, FACS, FASCO, to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, related to the modernization of clinical trials. The first letter provided the FDA with comments on...
Nearly 4 in 10 Americans believe cancer can be cured solely through alternative therapies, according to ASCO's second annual National Cancer Opinion Survey. This is despite research showing that patients who use alternative therapies instead of standard cancer treatments have much higher...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) will recognize Victor Hoffbrand, DM, FRCP, FMed Sci, of the University College London, with the 2018 Wallace H. Coulter Award for Lifetime Achievement in Hematology, the Society’s highest honor. Dr. Hoffbrand will be recognized for his contributions to...
On October 30, 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in combination with carboplatin and either paclitaxel or nanoparticle albumin-bound (nab)-paclitaxel (Abraxane) as first-line treatment of metastatic squamous non–small cell lung...
The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) recently issued a statement on lung cancer screening with low-dose computed tomography (CT) based on the results of the Dutch-Belgian NELSON lung cancer screening trial presented at the IASLC 19th World Conference on Lung Cancer...
A highly sensitive blood test that detects minute traces of cancer-specific DNA has been shown to accurately determine whether patients with human papillomavirus (HPV)-related oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC) are free from cancer following radiation therapy. Findings were presented by...
A subset of patients with low-risk breast cancer is highly unlikely to see cancer return following breast conservation surgery, but can lower that risk even further with radiation therapy, finds a new long-term clinical trial report. These 12-year follow-up data from the only prospective,...
A new analysis of genetic data from a large prospective registry and clinical data from several randomized trials indicates that African American patients may have comparatively higher cure rates when treated with radiation therapy than Caucasian patients. The study, which is the first report...
Radiation therapy for early-stage follicular lymphoma “is underused,” Joanna C. Yang, MD, MPH, and Joachim Yahalom, MD, declared in a recent editorial in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.1 This underuse of radiation therapy can result in overtreatment with systemic therapies or overconfidence in...
To gain further insight into, among other things, optimizing big data and the latest on hormonal breast cancer treatment, The ASCO Post recently spoke with pioneering oncologist Christopher C. Benz, MD, a breast cancer specialist and Director of the Cancer & Developmental Therapeutics Program, ...
Recently, the term “personalized medicine” in oncology care has been overtaken by the more contemporary concept of “precision medicine.” According to the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, the newer terminology shifts the focus to improving...
A pair of studies showcased the potentially devastating long-term health and financial consequences cancer has on adult survivors of childhood cancer compared with other adults, as well as survival disparities based on health insurance status.1,2 Despite increasing survival rates among the more...
When Frederick B. Sontag’s wife, Susan, was diagnosed in 1994 with grade III astrocytoma, the couple was understandably overwhelmed to hear that her expected survival was 3 years. At that time, there were few organizations providing resources to patients with brain tumors and their families. While...
“I realized I just couldn’t wait for a new treatment option,” a determined Breelyn Wilky, MD, says, staring into the camera. “I had to find one.” If you missed the debut of the “Breakthroughs Save Lives” video during the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, look for it on television and the Internet as part...
Novel agents such as ibrutinib (Imbruvica), idelalisib (Zydelig), and venetoclax (Venclexta) have transformed the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and are increasingly used to treat the disease. The optimal sequencing of these agents is not clear in relapsed or refractory disease,...
Several lung cancer trials have shown prolonged progression-free survival with checkpoint inhibitor therapy. For the first time, the phase III PACIFIC trial has found an overall survival benefit for the selective programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) checkpoint inhibitor durvalumab (Imfinzi) vs...
Even before James P. Allison, PhD, made an appearance at the Fourth International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference: Translating Science Into Survival in New York City, the excitement among attendees was palpable. Earlier that day, October 1, 2018, Dr. Allison and Tasuku Honjo, MD, PhD, of Kyoto...
Formal discussant, Hossein Borghaei, MS, DO, of Fox Chase Cancer Center, was guardedly optimistic about the IMpower132 trial results. “The study met its primary endpoint, and investigator-assessed progression-free survival was superior in the investigational arm. Overall survival was not mature,...
Some European countries take more than twice as long as others to reach health technology assessment (HTA) decisions to reimburse new cancer treatments following their approval by the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The average decision time is longer than 1 year in some countries, according to a...
Twitter is a place where many patients with cancer go to share and discuss their experiences of the disease, according to a recent exploratory study to be presented by Sánchez-Bayona et al at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2018 Congress (360P_PR). The...
Nearly 1 in 4 patients with advanced cancer treated at a community practice cancer network in the United States received innovative drugs matched to DNA mutations in their tumors. These results, to be reported by Alvarez et al at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2018 Congress...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the Art of Oncology as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
There is a lot of breast cancer in my family history. My mother was diagnosed with the disease at 44, and my paternal grandmother died of breast cancer when she was just 33, so I’ve always been diligent about performing breast self-exams— often weekly—to ensure that if I did get breast cancer, it...
Thirteen years ago, Stephanie Koraleski, PhD, an oncology psychologist, and Kay Ryan, PhD, RN, a cardiac nurse and breast cancer survivor, in Omaha, brought together colleagues in the fields of clinical research, nursing, nutrition, mental health, physical therapy, pharmacy, and spirituality to...
Breast cancer specialist Jennifer K. Litton, MD, was born and reared in Leominster, Massachusetts, a small city in the north central part of the state. “I went to parochial schools until seventh grade and then went on to high school in Worcester. Although I enjoyed science early on, I was...
Primary treatment of most solid tumors includes surgical excision or radiation therapy, both of which require precise anatomic localization of the tumor as well as surrounding tissue and organs. If the targeting is too broad, unnecessary morbidity may occur to nearby structures, along with the...
Cancer.Net is ASCO’s patient information website, hosting a wealth of information and resources for people diagnosed with cancer and their families and caregivers. With information on over 120 types of cancer, visitors to the site can find medical information, tips for treatment management,...
Robert Taylor Ripley, MD, has recently joined the Michael E. DeBakey Department of Surgery, Division of General Thoracic Surgery, at Baylor College of Medicine as Associate Professor of Surgery. He brings with him his expertise in mesothelioma, thoracic surgical oncology, and robotic thoracic...
A phase I clinical trial investigating the use of bacterial Clostridium novyi-NT spores as an injectable monotherapy had manageable toxicities and showed early clinical efficacy in patients with treatment-refractory solid tumor malignancies, according to data presented at the CRI-CIMT-EATI-AACR...
On September 28, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved cemiplimab-rwlc (Libtayo) injection for intravenous use for the treatment of patients with metastatic cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) or locally advanced cutaneous SCC who are not candidates for curative surgery or...
Findings from the IMpower 133 trial demonstrate that adding the anti–programmed cell death ligand 1 antibody atezolizumab (Tecentriq) to standard first-line therapy with carboplatin and etoposide prolonged overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with...
USING MULTIGENE hereditary cancer panels to test for mutations in five genes can identify women at high risk for triple-negative breast cancer who may then benefit from more frequent screening, risk management, and potentially targeted therapies as well. A study that looked at multigene panel...
In the fall of 2009, I suddenly went from being a healthy, physically active 47-year-old to a patient with stage IV non–small lung cancer (NSCLC), with a 5-year survival rate of less than 5%. A never-smoker, I had attributed a persistent cough I’d been having to the change in the season. And why...
To expose future practitioners to the special challenges of treating cancer in older patients, the Geriatrics Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) has developed a clinical education model for nurse practitioner students. Why Geriatric Oncology? GIVEN THE aging population, my...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the Art of Oncology as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
The estimated cost of cancer care in the United States was $125 billion in 2010 and is expected to rise to $175 billion by 2020.1 In an effort to reign in spiraling costs and deliver better care, the term “value” has become part of the new oncology lexicon, as providers, patients, and payers seek...