At the 2019 ASCO Advocacy Summit, ASCO members from 35 states held more than 160 Congressional meetings, urging members of Congress to take action to advance policy priorities that improve patient access to cancer care, including: The Covering Life-Saving Investigations Needed in Cancer and Other...
Ana Oaknin, MD, PhD, Head of the Gynecologic Cancer Program at Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, Barcelona, discussed the PRIMA/ENGOT-OV26/GOG-3012 trial along with the results of the phase III PAOLA-1/ENGOT-ov25 trial of olaparib plus bevacizumab maintenance. According to Dr. Oaknin, the...
Although stem cells throughout the body acquire genetic mutations over time, usually these alterations do not affect how the stem cells function or cause disease. However, recent research in clonal hematopoiesis and aging has found an association between clonal expansion of hematopoietic cells with ...
In September 2019, Dr. Claire Harrison and colleagues, myself among them, presented two new analyses regarding the use of the JAK2 and FLT3 inhibitor fedratinib in myelofibrosis at the Society of Hematologic Oncology (SOHO) Annual Meeting, with resulting publication in Clinical Lymphoma, Myeloma...
Lung cancer remains the number one cancer killer, leading to about 150,000 deaths per year in the United States and accounting for approximately 25% of all cancer deaths in the nation. Early detection has improved survival in other malignancies such as breast, colon, and cervical cancers, but...
Third-line treatment with cabazitaxel extended progression-free survival and overall survival in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer in the CARD trial. These results provide the first evidence from a randomized phase III trial for a survival benefit with third-line therapy, and ...
As first-line treatment for women with advanced ovarian cancer, the addition of veliparib during induction followed by veliparib maintenance therapy significantly reduced the risk of disease progression or death in the phase III VELIA/GOG-3005 trial reported at the European Society for Medical...
Men with higher levels of free (biologically active) testosterone and insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) in their blood are more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer, according to research presented by Travis et al at the 2019 National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference....
A study using a technique called Mendelian randomization to investigate the causal role played by bacteria in the development of colorectal cancer was presented at the 2019 National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference. First study author Kaitlin Wade, PhD, of the University of...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Robert J. Motzer, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and colleagues, extended follow-up of the phase III CheckMate 214 trial has shown maintained survival benefit of first-line nivolumab/ipilimumab vs sunitinib among patients with...
Inhibitors of cyclin-dependent kinases 4 and 6 (CDK4/6) are associated with a robust benefit in patients with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative breast cancer, but now the monarcHER trial has confirmed their benefit in the HER2-positive population. The new findings were reported at the...
Two new studies published in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology • Biology • Physics focused on the use of proton radiation therapy to treat patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. The first study, by Sanford et al, found that proton radiation may extend overall survival compared to...
ACCC Honors Seven Cancer Programs With Innovator Awards The Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) honored the recipients of 2019 ACCC Innovator Awards at the ACCC 36th National Oncology Conference, October 30–November 1 in Orlando, Florida, where this year’s honorees shared innovative...
As reported by Alice T. Shaw, MD, and colleagues in The Lancet Oncology, a phase I/II trial has shown overall and intracranial activity of the third-generation ALK and ROS1 tyrosine kinase inhibitor lorlatinib in patients with advanced ROS1-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Lorlatinib...
In a phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Plotkin et al found that high-dose bevacizumab induction therapy did not appear to produce better outcomes compared with lower-dose treatment in patients with neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2) and progressive vestibular schwannomas. As...
“The main goal in ovarian cancer is to avoid relapse after first-line therapy because otherwise, the probability of cure is quite low,” said European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) discussant of the PAOLA-1 trial, Ana Oaknin, MD, PhD, of the Vall d’Hebron Institute of Oncology, Barcelona....
In women with newly diagnosed ovarian cancer, front-line maintenance therapy with olaparib plus bevacizumab reduced the risk of disease progression by 41% overall and by 69% in the subset of patients with BRCA-mutated disease, vs bevacizumab and placebo, in the phase III PAOLA-1/ENGOT-ov25 trial...
In metastatic urothelial carcinoma, the bar has been set low, with a median survival of 1 year in cisplatin-eligible patients and 6 to 8 months when platinum-based therapy fails to elicit a response in patients, explained formal study discussant Thomas Powles, MD, PhD, Director, Bart’s Cancer...
In a phase II study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, McNeel et al found that a DNA vaccine (pTVG-HP) encoding prostatic acid phosphatase did not improve 2-year metastasis-free survival vs control treatment in patients with progressive, nonmetastatic, castration-sensitive prostate...
The number of approved agents in multiple myeloma has skyrocketed in recent years, leading to significant improvements in survival, but questions remain regarding the optimal duration of treatment. Although traditionally limited to a fixed number of cycles due to accumulating toxicity, novel agents ...
Treatment with olaparib delayed disease progression, and early survival data suggest a positive trend in favor of olaparib compared with newer hormonal agents in men with pretreated metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer and homologous recombinant repair genetic alterations—specifically...
The investigational MEK inhibitor selumetinib showed clinical activity in adult patients with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1)-associated plexiform neurofibromas, according to preliminary results from an ongoing phase II study presented at the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference on Molecular...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Carrie et al, the 112-month follow-up of the French phase III GETUG-AFU 16 trial has confirmed the initial 5-year report of the trial, which reported improved progression-free survival with the addition of short-term androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) to...
The incidence and mortality rates of pancreatic cancer have increased in 195 countries and territories over a 27-year period, according to a systematic analysis performed within the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017 and published in The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology. The study is the...
In a phase I trial, the combination of the BCR-ABL1 inhibitor asciminib and the small-molecule kinase inhibitor imatinib showed preliminary efficacy, safety, and tolerability in patients with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) resistant to or intolerant of treatment with two or more prior tyrosine...
GUEST EDITOR Dr. Abraham is the Director of the Breast Oncology Program at Taussig Cancer Institute, and Professor of Medicine, Lerner College of Medicine, Cleveland Clinic. For this installment of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with breast cancer...
In the phase II ORATOR trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Anthony Nichols, MD, and colleagues found a statistical but not clinically meaningful improvement in swallowing-related quality of life outcomes 1 year after treatment with radiotherapy vs transoral robotic surgery and neck dissection...
African American and Hispanic patients with multiple myeloma generally start treatment with novel therapy significantly later than white patients, according to a study published by Ailawadhi et al in Blood Advances. The study found that, on average, it took about 3 months for white patients to...
Findings from the phase Ib KEYNOTE-013 and phase II KEYNOTE-170 trials reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Armand et al indicated that pembrolizumab is highly active in relapsed or refractory primary mediastinal large B-cell lymphoma (PMBCL). The KEYNOTE-170 trial supported the 2018...
The American College of Clinical Pharmacology (ACCP) presented Peter Wiernik, MD, with the Nathaniel T. Kwit Memorial Distinguished Service Award at the ACCP’s Annual Meeting in September. Dr. Wiernik is Director of the Cancer Research Foundation of New York. The Nathaniel T. Kwit Memorial...
The advent of new targeted agents for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) has ushered in a golden age of treatment, leading to longer, more durable periods of disease control. Not all oncologists are convinced, however, that improvements in progression-free survival alone warrant dispensing with...
Nationally regarded melanoma researcher Mary J.C. Hendrix, PhD, was born in La Jolla, California, a seaside community surrounded by ocean bluffs and beaches within the city of San Diego. She was reared in a Navy family that moved from the West Coast to the East Coast during her childhood,...
In a single-center phase II study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Soff et al found that treatment with romiplostim was effective in rapidly correcting chemotherapy-induced thrombocytopenia, with maintenance treatment being effective in reducing risk of recurrent chemotherapy-induced...
A study published by Williams et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network found that direct costs for patients with metastatic breast cancer increased when their treatment differed from recommendations found in the NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology® (NCCN...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Kato et al, the phase III ATTRACTION-3 trial conducted in predominantly Asian patients has shown a survival benefit with nivolumab vs paclitaxel or docetaxel in patients with advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma who were refractory to or intolerant of...
Early salvage radiotherapy appears to be a better choice after radical prostatectomy for men with prostate cancer than adjuvant radiotherapy, according to late-breaking results from the RADICALS-RT trial and the ARTISTIC meta-analysis of three trials that included RADICALS-RT. Observation after...
GUEST EDITOR Integrative Oncology is guest edited by Jun J. Mao, MD, MSCE, Laurance S. Rockefeller Chair in Integrative Medicine and Chief of Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York. The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the...
Human papillomavirus (HPV) causes nearly all cervical cancers and is attributed to some cancers of the vagina, vulva, penis, anus, and oropharynx. Although most HPV infections are asymptomatic and usually resolve within 1 to 2 years, persistent infections can lead to precancer and cancer. According ...
ASCO’s Center for Research and Analytics (CENTRA) is now accepting research applications from ASCO members who wish to conduct member surveys for research purposes. All researchers who wish to conduct surveys of opted-in ASCO members must complete a Research Survey Pool application. The application ...
GUEST EDITORS Dr. Abutalib is Associate Director, Hematology and Cellular Therapy Program and Director, Clinical Apheresis Program Cancer Treatment at Centers of America, Zion, Illinois; Associate Professor, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science; and Founder and Co-Editor of...
Endometrial cancer remains the most common gynecologic malignancy affecting women in the United States. There are over 60,000 new cases diagnosed and more than 12,000 deaths annually. Traditional management includes surgical staging, with optimal disease cytoreduction as able, and adjuvant...
As reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, Shanafelt and colleagues recently published the interim analysis of E1912, a U.S. Intergroup–led randomized phase III trial comparing ibrutinib/rituximab, followed by ibrutinib to disease progression vs 6 months of fludarabine, cyclophosphamide, and...
Studies show that people suffering from serious mental illness are at increased risk for poor cancer outcomes and mortality due to inequities in their cancer care. Although psychiatric care at the time of diagnosis may improve care, current models for integrating psychiatric interventions and...
In an interim analysis of the phase III BEACON CRC trial reported at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2019 (Abstract LBA32) and in The New England Journal of Medicine, Scott Kopetz, MD, PhD, and colleagues found improved overall survival and overall response rate in...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Ghassan K. Abou-Alfa, MD, and colleagues, the phase III Alliance/CALGB 80802 trial has shown no progression-free or overall survival benefit with the addition of doxorubicin to sorafenib in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma. The study was stopped early...
In a phase II study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Khodadoust et al found that pembrolizumab was active in patients with advanced relapsed or refractory mycosis fungoides or Sézary syndrome. In the U.S.-based multicenter trial, 24 patients with advanced mycosis fungoides (n = 9) or...
In the phase III VELIA/GOG-3005 trial—reported at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2019 (Abstract LBA3) and simultaneously published in The New England Journal of Medicine—Robert L. Coleman, MD, and colleagues found that the use of the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitor ...
In the past few weeks, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued regulatory decisions in prostate cancer, urothelial cancer, myelofibrosis, breast cancer, pediatric brain cancer, leukemia, and skin cancer. Breakthrough Therapy Designation for Niraparib in Metastatic...
The term “sexual and gender minorities” encompasses people whose sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, or reproductive development varies from traditional, societal, cultural, or physiologic norms1 and includes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people. More than 3 ...
Formal discussant Myung-Ju Ahn, MD, of Samsung Medical Center Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea, said that the CASPIAN results were similar to those of IMpower133, which found that the addition of the immune checkpoint inhibitor atezolizumab to etoposide/carboplatin significantly...