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Showing 2251 - 2300Sorafenib Plus Transarterial Chemoembolization for Advanced Hepatocellular Carcinoma
During the past decade, scientists began to test whether the addition of transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) to treatment with sorafenib could increase survival in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma. Scientists from Taiwan and Japan performed the first large, national-level,...
Patient-Centered Initiatives at the FDA
OCE Insights is a periodic column developed for The ASCO Post by members of the Oncology Center of Excellence (OCE) at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In this first installment, Vishal Bhatnagar, MD, Acting Associate Director of Patient Outcomes; Bellinda King-Kallimanis, PhD, Senior...
Current Controversies in Lymphoma: From the Role of Liquid Biopsy to Ways to Improve Upon Standard Chemotherapy
Two topics that hematologists are currently grappling with were addressed at the 2019 Debates and Didactics Conference in Sea Island, Georgia, sponsored by Emory University Winship Cancer Institute, by Editor-in-Chief of The ASCO Post, James O. Armitage, MD, FASCO.1 They focus on the emerging role ...
Expert Point of View: Alex A. Adjei, MD, PhD
Alex A. Adjei, MD, PhD, of Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, who was not involved in KEYNOTE-189 or KEYNOTE-021, provided some perspective on the exploratory analyses of tumor mutational burden from these and other studies. “Four studies at this meeting presented data on tumor mutational burden...
Benefits Reported With Addition of Isatuximab to Pomalidomide and Dexamethasone in Resistant Multiple Myeloma
In patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, isatuximab in combination with pomalidomide and low-dose dexamethasone nearly doubled progression-free survival when compared with pomalidomide and dexamethasone alone, with a manageable safety profile, according to data from a phase III...
ASTRO 2019: Patterns of Disease Progression in Patients With Unresectable Stage III NSCLC: Analysis of the PACIFIC Trial
Andreas Rimner, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, presented an update of the landmark PACIFIC trial at the 61st Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) (Abstract LBA-6). In earlier reports from the randomized phase III trial, Antonia et al had evaluated...
ASTRO 2019: Long-Term Hormone Therapy May Increase Other-Cause Mortality in Men With Prostate Cancer Receiving Early Salvage Radiotherapy
Findings from the randomized phase III NRG Oncology/RTOG 9601 trial were initially reported in 2017, and showed that the addition of 2 years of antiandrogen therapy to postsurgical radiation treatment for men with recurrent prostate cancer increased their long-term overall survival rate. That study ...
Conundrums in Managing Cancer-Associated Thrombosis
Although there may be a clear role for prophylactic anticoagulation in hospitalized patients and those undergoing surgery, indication for prophylactic anticoagulation for patients with cancer seen in the ambulatory setting has yet to emerge. Until clinical trial data on prophylactic...
ASTRO 2019: Effect of Closure of Women’s Health Clinics From 2010 to 2013 on Cervical Cancer Screening and Detection
Following the closure of nearly 100 women’s health clinics across the United States from 2010 to 2013, fewer women were screened for cervical cancer; more women were diagnosed with advanced stages of the disease; and disease mortality rates rose. Findings from a new analysis combining several...
ASTRO 2019: ORIOLE Trial: Observation vs SABR for Oligometastatic Prostate Cancer
The randomized, phase II ORIOLE trial studying the efficacy of targeted high-dose radiation for men with oligometastatic prostate cancer has shown that stereotactic ablative radiation (SABR) is an effective and safe option for patients who wish to delay hormone-suppression therapy. Data from the...
Chef Uses Flavor to Fuel Her Mother’s Appetite During Cancer Treatment
The battle against cancer is typically waged by the surgeon and oncologist, but a Lexington, Kentucky–based, award-winning restaurateur and chef discovered her role as a foot soldier when she applied her culinary skills to deal with the debilitating side effects of her mother’s lung cancer...
Oncology Communications Online: Pause and Think Before Hitting ‘Send’
The emergence of online technologies over the past few decades has fundamentally changed the way society communicates and shares information. This sea change has also had profound influence on the practice of medicine, from real-time information-sharing among colleagues, to having instant access...
Donald A.B. Lindberg, MD, Pathologist, Former Director of the National Library of Medicine, Dies at 85
The National Library of Medicine, located in Bethesda, Maryland, was started in 1836 as a small collection of medical books and journals in the office of the U.S. Army Surgeon General. In the ensuing years, the library grew to become the world’s largest and most prestigious biomedical library, with ...
John Hansen, MD, Transplant Expert Who Founded Volunteer Donor Registries, Dies at 76
Over the past few decades, our understanding of transplant immunology has moved from basic allograft rejection to the current molecular level that offers life-saving treatments for patients with cancer. The scientific elegance of this remarkable therapy’s arc from experimental to standard of care...
A Vigorous Life Through the Prism of Impending Death
“Live while you’re living, friends,” writes Julie Yip-Williams in her memoir, The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After. It was The New York Times bestseller when she died of stage IV colon cancer at the age of 42. She is the most recent of several...
Doctor, Where Art Thou?
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,...
Insightful Advice From a College Advisor Leads to an Unexpected Career in Oncology
For this installment of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Tatiana M. Prowell, MD, who currently serves as Associate Professor of Oncology in the Breast Cancer Program at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center and as a Medical Officer and...
Primary Central Nervous System Lymphoma: Striving for a Curative Therapy
Primary central nervous system (CNS) lymphoma is a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in which standards of care have not been well established. In light of recent insights into its pathophysiology and the emergence of novel approaches, The ASCO Post asked Tracy T. Batchelor, MD, a specialist in...
Karen M. Winkfield, MD, PhD, on Policy and Business Solutions to Address Disparities in Cancer Care
Karen M. Winkfield, MD, PhD, of the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, discusses cultural factors that contribute to cancer care disparities, the role of national policy in addressing inequities in access to care, and what local institutions can do to improve the situation.
Hey Siri, Should I Get a Medical Degree?
I received a coffee mug from a physician colleague some years ago with the tag line: “Please do not confuse your Google search with my Medical Degree.” Physicians of all stripes and colors can relate to the agony of debunking a “Dr. Google” diagnosis. However, in a fast-evolving health-care...
How Patient Advocacy Is Integral to High-Quality Oncology Care
Karen M. Winkfield, MD, PhD, has made patient advocacy—with a specific emphasis on health equity and access to high-quality care—front and center of her oncology practice since she completed her residency at the Harvard Radiation Oncology Program in Boston, where she noticed that most of the...
Stage IV Melanoma: What Current Role Should Surgery Play?
Advanced melanoma has become a different entity in the era of immunotherapy and targeted agents. Considering the potential for good outcomes from systemic therapy in advanced disease, has the role of surgery changed? Should it be offered up front or limited to patients with oligometastatic ...
Pregnancy Appears Safe After Treatment for Breast Cancer in Patients With BRCA Mutations
Pregnancy after breast cancer appears to be safe in patients with germline BRCA mutations—and particularly among those with BRCA1 mutations—according to new research. Limited data are available on the safety of pregnancy and reproductive outcomes in patients with breast cancer and BRCA mutations,...
ASCO Expands Therapeutic Options for Venous Thromboembolism Prophylaxis in Patients With Cancer
ASCO has updated its recommendations for the prevention and treatment of venous thromboembolism (VTE) in patients with cancer. “The recommendations were last updated in 2015, but since then, new, significant publications have emerged, which prompted this update,” said Nigel S. Key, MBChB, of the...
Is It Time to Intervene in Smoldering Myeloma?
Early intervention in smoldering multiple myeloma prevents progression to symptomatic disease and should be strongly considered for patients meeting new criteria for high risk, according to Sagar Lonial, MD, Professor and Chair of Hematology and Medical Oncology and the Anne and Bernard Gray...
2019 Quality Care: Cost of Treatment, Prior Authorization of Treatment Plans May Cause Barriers to Care
Drug costs and requirements for prior authorization of treatment plans pose barriers to cancer treatment and can potentially affect outcomes for many patients, according to two studies that will be presented at the ASCO Quality Care Symposium. The studies respectively examine how the high...
TITAN Trial: Apalutamide Adds to Options for Men With Metastatic Hormone-Sensitive Prostate Cancer
Androgen-deprivation therapy has been, and remains, the standard of care for patients with metastatic prostate cancer. Patients are often surprised to know that was all we would do to control their disease and sometimes asked why they would not get chemotherapy, as for other cancers. I would take...
What Role Do Physicians Play in Health Promotion Among Patients With Cancer?
A recent study published by Stump et al in Cancer indicated that certain physicians who care for patients with cancer do not often promote healthy lifestyle changes to cancer survivors, and they may fear that providing such advice would distress or overwhelm patients. The findings are noteworthy...
Many Choices Now for Men With Metastatic Hormone-Sensitive Prostate Cancer: How to Decide?
Based on the recently published ENZAMET, ARCHES, and TITAN trials,1-3 we now have several choices of systemic combination therapies for men with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer; the ENZAMET trial is reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post. In 2019, men are now faced with decisions of...
Maura L. Gillison, MD, PhD, Pioneer in HPV-Related Head and Neck Cancer, Has Often Changed Lanes in Her Career
When The ASCO Post asked physician-scientist Maura L. Gillison, MD, PhD, where she was from, she answered, “North America.” Actually, she was born in Canada, but her father worked for a large international company, so the family moved regularly through Canada, the United States, and Mexico. “I...
Role of the YAP Regulatory Network in Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma
Researchers have decoded a chain of molecules that are critical for the growth and survival of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. They say their findings, published by Murakami et al in Developmental Cell, suggest that inhibiting the YAP biologic network may effectively regress early-stage...
New From ASCO eLearning: Platform Offers Enhanced, Personalized Online Learning Experience
PERSONALIZATION AND STREAMLINED navigation were two priorities of the recent rebranding of ASCO University. Now known as ASCO eLearning (elearning.asco.org), the rebrand more accurately reflects what the program offers and who it is intended for. “The priority I see for ASCO eLearning is to make...
Some Practices May Not Be Subject to USP and Standards
ASCO recently received clarification from the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) around the newly revised USP General Chapter <797> Pharmaceutical Compounding Standards–Sterile Preparations and USP General Chapter <800> Hazardous Drugs–Handling in Health-Care Settings, which become...
Register for ASCO’s Research Community Forum 2019 Annual Meeting
Registration is open for the ASCO Research Community Forum (RCF) 2019 Annual Meeting. The ASCO RCF Annual Meeting brings together physician-investigators and research staff from across the country for 2 days of learning and collaboration. The meeting offers colleagues from a variety of research...
Looking at Prostate Cancer–Specific Mortality by Gleason Score and Race
Black men suffer disproportionately from prostate cancer, both in terms of incidence and mortality, compared with their white counterparts. However, a newer study conducted by investigators at the University of California, San Francisco, and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, found that black...
Tumor Size and Grade Matter, and Ovarian Ablation by Chemotherapy May Explain Subgroup Anomaly in TAILORx
At the 2019 ASCO Annual Meeting, and simultaneously in The New England Journal of Medicine, we heard the third paper reporting results from TAILORx.1,2 The first, in 2015,3 indicated that women with node-negative breast cancers with Oncotype DX recurrence scores less than 11 did extremely well...
Virtual Reality May Improve Pain, Vision, Functioning in Patients With Cancer
Virtual reality can be used to improve functioning in patients with cancer, according to David Rhew, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise Healthcare, Samsung Electronics America. Research has shown that this technology can decrease pain and improve vision, as...
Opioids for Cancer Pain: A Review of the Evidence and Current Challenges
In the wake of the opioid crisis in the United States, patients with cancer pain are often undeservedly confronted with rigid barriers to receiving the opioids they need. To compound this problem, the research around opioids in cancer pain has been limited—placebo-controlled trials are lacking,...
Optimal First-Line Therapy for Stage IV Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer: Immunotherapy Alone or With Chemotherapy?
Recent studies in non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) have shown benefit for combining checkpoint inhibitors with chemotherapy. Should combinations, therefore, be the first choice for treating patients with newly diagnosed stage IV disease? Two lung cancer experts debated this point at the 2019...
Expert Point of View: Thomas Paul Slavin, Jr, MD
Thomas Paul Slavin, Jr, MD, of City of Hope National Medical Center, where he is Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Medical Oncology, Division of Clinical Cancer Genomics, and a Program Member of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, commented on these substudy findings. The...
Exploratory Analysis Shows DNA Methylation Assay Highly Specific for Cancer Detection
A cell-free DNA test based on the presence of DNA methylation has proven highly specific as a multicancer detection test and appears especially good at detecting high-risk malignancies. In most cases, it can also accurately pinpoint the tumor’s tissue of origin, researchers reported at the 2019...
What Causes Liver Injury During Treatment With Pembrolizumab
Immunotherapy as a treatment for advanced solid cancers has rapidly evolved over the past decade—often yielding remarkable results. However, its use has also given way to new adverse effects, including drug-induced gastrointestinal and liver toxicities. “Checkpoint inhibitors are a game changer...
A Clinical Trial Was the Right Choice for Me
I found my cancer quite accidentally. In March 2018, as I was taking a shower, my hand casually brushed against my right mastoid bone, and I noticed the area sounded hollow. Around the same time, I realized I had developed a sense of fullness in that ear as well. I had been feeling tired, but that...
V. Craig Jordan, CMG, OBE, PhD, DSc, Honored for Accomplishments in Women’s Health
The Companion of the Most Distinguished order of St. Michael and St. George (CMG) is generally reserved for ambassadors and leaders of the United Kingdom’s defense and security services. Only 1, 750 appointees are permitted. This year, the Head of M16, the Secret Intelligence Service, was in the...
What Causes Liver Injury During Treatment With Pembrolizumab
Immunotherapy as a treatment for advanced solid cancers has rapidly evolved over the past decade—often yielding remarkable results. However, its use has also given way to new adverse effects, including drug-induced gastrointestinal and liver toxicities. “Checkpoint inhibitors are a game changer...
An Early Decision to Become an Oncologist
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 Gilberto de Lima...
Should You Become an Expert Witness in a Legal Proceeding? Here Are the Pros and Cons
Hundreds of oncologists are working “side gigs” as expert witnesses in a wide range of medicolegal settings. With increasing conflict related to liability and insurance coverage, the demand continues to grow for objective physicians who are not involved in a specific case, have no personal...
Total Cumulative Chemotherapy Dose and Survival in Breast Cancer
Physicians should attempt to maintain full doses of chemotherapy, especially early in the course of treatment, for patients with intermediate- or high-risk breast cancer, according to research published by Veitch et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. The...
Relationship Between Sleep Apnea and Cancer Risk in Women
Women with severe sleep apnea appear to also have an elevated risk of developing cancer, according to findings from a study by Pataka et al in the European Respiratory Journal. No causal relationship was demonstrated, but a link between nocturnal hypoxia in women and higher cancer risk was...
Mortality Risk for Patients With Preexisting Cardiovascular Conditions Treated With Abiraterone Acetate or Enzalutamide
A new population-based study showed that novel oral androgen signaling–inhibitor therapies may be associated with an increased risk of death in patients with preexisting cardiovascular conditions. The research was published by Lu-Yao et al in European Urology. “Data from published ...
