On November 13, 2020, pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was granted accelerated approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in combination with chemotherapy for patients with locally recurrent unresectable or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer with tumors expressing PD-L1 (Combined ...
In the phase II ProCAID study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Crabb et al found that the addition of the pan-AKT inhibitor capivasertib to docetaxel and prednisolone did not significantly improve progression-free survival in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate...
The San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) honored Susan E. Hankinson, ScD, MPH, for her significant contributions to breast cancer research. Dr. Hankinson received the 2020 AACR Distinguished Lectureship in Breast Cancer Research award...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) President Stephanie Lee, MD, MPH, sat down with Anthony Fauci, MD, Director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and medical advisor to President-Elect Joseph Biden, for a virtual fireside chat about COVID-19 and cancer at...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Thierry André, MD, of Sorbonne Université and Hôpital Saint Antoine, Paris, and colleagues, the second interim analysis of the phase III KEYNOTE-177 trial has shown significantly prolonged progression-free survival with pembrolizumab vs...
To complement The ASCO Post’s continued comprehensive coverage of the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, here are three abstracts selected from the meeting proceedings focusing on novel therapies for polycythemia vera. For full details of these study...
The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) announced the appointment of Sue S. Yom, MD, PhD, FASTRO, as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology • Biology • Physics (Red Journal), ASTRO’s flagship scientific journal. Dr. Yom, who is Vice Chair and Distinguished...
Anita Kinney, PhD, MSN, Professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health and Associate Director for Population Science and Community Outreach at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, is among 10 recipients across the nation of an American Cancer Society and Pfizer community grant of $399,892 to...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) recognized three Choosing Wisely Champions, practitioners working to tackle overuse of hematology tests and treatments, at the all-virtual 2020 ASH Annual Meeting & Exposition. Choosing Wisely, a program of the ABIM Foundation and Consumer Reports, aims...
Are we winning the war on cancer? It’s not so clear, especially with COVID-19 poised to erase recent gains, panelists said at a session on global cancer control at the 2020 European Cancer Summit, which was sponsored by the European Cancer Organisation. “We know what we have to do. My question is...
Omid Hamid, MD, Chief of Research/Immuno-Oncology at The Angeles Clinic & Research Institute and Co-Director of the Cutaneous Malignancy Program at Cedars-Sinai Cancer Center, Los Angeles, commented on the investigational use of bempegaldesleukin in melanoma. “The role of interleukin-2 [Il-2]...
A first-line regimen combining the novel interleukin-2 (Il-2) agonist bempegaldesleukin (NKTR-214) with nivolumab showed encouraging clinical activity in patients with metastatic melanoma in the phase I/II PIVOT-02 trial, according to a presentation during the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Society for ...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms of action, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. On December 1, 2020, pralsetinib (Gavreto) was granted...
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has named Welela Tereffe, MD, MPH, as Chief Medical Executive. Recognized as a patient-centered and institutionally minded leader, Dr. Tereffe will assume this new position and join the institution’s executive leadership team on January 1, 2021....
The ASH Research Collaborative COVID-19 Registry for Hematology provides up-to-date information on outcomes and the course of illness for a group of patients with hematologic malignancies and COVID-19.1 In general, registry data showed that hematologic malignancies increase the risk of severity of...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) recently announced the donation of next-generation sequencing equipment to six reference laboratories in five countries in Latin America. These countries constitute the International Consortium on Acute Leukemia (ICAL), a clinical network supported by the...
The randomized phase II CAPTIVATE trial showed that a fixed-duration treatment approach with 12 cycles of ibrutinib and venetoclax as first-line therapy for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) achieved a 30-month progression-free survival of more than 95% in patients with undetectable minimal...
Victoria was a 79-year-old woman living alone in a London suburb. Having no children of her own, she visited us regularly here in the United States. She was one of three sisters and my sister-in-law. I knew her for more than 50 years, and she always reminded me of Audrey Hepburn, both in looks and ...
On November 25, 2020, naxitamab-gqgk (Danyelza) was granted accelerated approval for use in combination with granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) for pediatric patients 1 year of age and older and adult patients with relapsed or refractory high-risk neuroblastoma in the bone...
Stem cell transplants are not frequently offered to older patients with high-risk myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). According to a study from the Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network (BMTCTN 1102), these patients may indeed achieve a survival benefit from stem cell transplant. As...
The Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) has announced the recipient of the ACCC 2020 Clinical Research Award: Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, Ensign Professor of Medicine, Professor of Pharmacology, Chief of Medical Oncology, and Associate Director for Translational Research at the Yale Cancer...
Electra D. Paskett, PhD, was born in New York City, the daughter of a Greek immigrant who led a notable dance band. As a young child, Dr. Paskett frequented her parents’ rehearsal and dance studio, which was situated above a bustling Woolworth’s Five-and-Dime store. One of the studio’s famous...
In 2017, a workgroup task force, made up of medical students and faculty at George Washington University, Texas Christian University, and the University of North Texas Health Science Center, conducted a literature review to identify best practices for teaching and learning about race and culture in ...
Sentinel lymph node biopsy “had similar diagnostic accuracy and prognostic ability as lymphadenectomy in patients with high-grade endometrial cancer at greatest risk for nodal metastases,” according to the SENTOR trial, a prospective cohort study of 156 patients with clinical stage I disease. Using ...
In a single-institution study reported in JCO Oncology Practice, Nadler et al describe the development of an intervention at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto, that succeeded in increasing referrals of patients with gastrointestinal cancer to a cancer rehabilitation program. As stated by the ...
Patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who have pleural effusion, especially those requiring pleural evacuation, experienced poorer survival when treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors, according to findings presented by Epaillard et al at the European Society for Medical Oncology...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, the second interim analysis of the phase III KEYNOTE-177 trial has shown significantly prolonged progression-free survival with pembrolizumab vs fluorouracil (5-FU)-based chemotherapy as first-line treatment of patients with advanced...
A TEAM OF SCIENTISTS from Albert Einstein College of Medicine has received a 5-year, $4.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to establish a research center to investigate human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)- and human papillomavirus (HPV)-related cancers in Africa. The...
New York University (NYU) Langone Health’s Perlmutter Cancer Center recently appointed Abraham Chachoua, MD, as the new Director of Perlmutter Cancer Center’s Lung Cancer Center. Dr. Chachoua currently serves as the Jay and Isabel Fine Professor of Oncology and Professor of Urology at NYU...
Enrichment of the lungs with oral commensal microbes was associated with advanced-stage disease, worse prognosis, and tumor progression in patients with lung cancer, according to results from a study published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.1 “The...
Immunotherapy with checkpoint inhibitors, established as a treatment of many solid tumors, may be finding a role in the treatment of breast cancer. The current state of the art regarding immunotherapy for triple-negative breast cancer was the focus of a talk by Heather L. McArthur, MD, MPH, Medical ...
Prostate cancer has lagged behind other solid tumors with regard to molecularly targeted therapy and precision medicine, with no targeted therapies approved specifically in prostate cancer, but that has changed with the recent approval in 2020 of a PARP (poly [ADP-ribose] polymerase) inhibitor for...
That Moses Judah Folkman would buck tradition, breaking his family’s long line of rabbinical succession and pursuing a career in science and medicine instead, was evident from the time he was a young child. Born in Cleveland on February 24, 1933, the first child of Rabbi Jerome and Bessie Folkman, ...
Whole-lung low-dose radiation therapy led to quicker recovery from COVID-19–related pneumonia in hospitalized and oxygen-dependent patients compared with matched controls treated with best supportive care and physician’s choice of anti–COVID-19 therapy, according to the results of a small trial.1...
Delivering stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT also called stereotactic ablative radiotherapy) in one or four treatment sessions led to similar outcomes in patients with up to three lung metastases (ie, oligometastatic disease) in the phase II randomized SAFRON II trial. The study, conducted...
Caring for older adults with cancer is the purview of every oncologist. Over the next 30 years, the older adult population (65 years and older) will represent the fastest-growing segment of the world population. Globally, the number of persons 80 years and older is expected to triple from 143...
Colombia is located in the northwestern corner of South America, geographically privileged with coasts on both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the Andean region, and the Amazon rainforest. Based on its population of nearly 50 million (see Table 1), Colombia is the second largest country in South...
Elaine R. Mardis, PhD, Co-Director of the Institute for Genomic Medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, was born and reared in North Platte, a small city located in the west-central part of Nebraska. “My love of science was sparked and nurtured by my father, who was a chemistry professor for...
On December 8, ASCO issued comprehensive recommendations to guide the cancer community’s eventual recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. By applying lessons learned during the pandemic, ASCO’s Road to Recovery Report: Learning From the COVID-19 Experience to Improve Clinical Research and Cancer Care...
Genetic mutations linked to myeloproliferative neoplasms may emerge in childhood or even in utero, decades before they cause cancer, according to a late-breaking abstract presented today at the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition by Jyoti Nangalia, MBBChir, and ...
In the phase II ZUMA-5 trial, axicabtagene ciloleucel led to responses in 92% of patients with indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma treated with the cellular immunotherapy. These findings were reported by Caron Jacobson, MD, MMSc, and colleagues at the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) presented Mohandas Narla, DSc, of the New York Blood Center, with the 2020 Wallace H. Coulter Award for Lifetime Achievement in Hematology. Dr. Narla is being recognized for his significant contributions to hematology through his groundbreaking research, his ...
Stem cell transplants are not frequently offered to older patients with high-risk myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). According to a study from the Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network (BMTCTN 1102), these patients may indeed achieve a survival benefit from stem cell transplant. As...
The ASH Research Collaborative COVID-19 Registry for Hematology provides up-to-date information on outcomes and the course of illness for a group of patients with hematologic malignancies and COVID-19. In general, registry data showed that hematologic malignancies increase the risk of severity of...
Sarcoma has bedeviled researchers for many years because of its heterogeneity. Sarcoma encompasses more than 100 different subtypes, which makes it difficult to design studies to identify effective therapies. As researchers dig deeper into the constellation of subtypes of sarcoma, some therapies...
Dual CTLA-4/PD-1 blockade with ipilimumab plus nivolumab provided durable responses in patients with recurrent or metastatic nasopharyngeal carcinoma, according to updated efficacy and safety findings from a phase II study presented by Kao et al at ESMO Asia Virtual Congress 2020 (Abstract 266O)....
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Markus Moehler, MD, and colleagues, the phase III JAVELIN Gastric 100 trial showed no improvement in overall survival with avelumab maintenance vs continued chemotherapy after first-line induction in HER2-negative, unresectable, locally advanced or ...
The Immunoscore assay can assess the risk of disease recurrence in Asian patients with early-stage colon cancer and may be used together with TNM classification to guide clinical decision-making, according to findings presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Asia Virtual...
As part of its ongoing commitment to addressing inequities in cancer care and research, ASCO has launched an educational series focused on the role of social determinants of health in cancer care and outcomes. The free series, which kicked off in October, will help educate oncology trainees and...
A team of researchers from the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center in Ann Arbor received an $11.2 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to study how to use the microbiome to limit complications of stem cell transplants for blood cancers and other diseases....