There are an estimated 500,000 childhood cancer survivors in the United States, a number that will increase exponentially in the coming years. Over half of all childhood cancer survivors will have received cardiotoxic therapies during primary cancer treatment or relapse. For these survivors, there...
Although the National Cancer Act of 1971 has resulted in tremendous advances in cancer research, which have led to sharp declines in cancer mortality in the United States—from 1991 to 2018, there has been a 31% decrease in overall cancer death rates—and more than 17 million cancer survivors,1 much...
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is launching the biggest strategic investment in its nearly 60-year history, committing $11.5 billion during the next 6 years to accelerate research and treatment globally for children with catastrophic diseases. The Six-Year St. Jude Strategic Plan focuses on...
In a perspective in The New England Journal of Medicine, Julia A. Beaver, MD, and Richard Pazdur, MD, of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Oncology Center of Excellence (OCE), discussed issues surrounding “dangling” accelerated approvals of anti–PD-1/PD-L1 antibodies—ie, approvals for...
For patients with relapsed or refractory classic Hodgkin lymphoma (HL), salvage chemotherapy followed by autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) is the standard of care and can induce long-term remissions in at least 60% of patients.1,2 Patients with progression of disease after...
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 February 26, 2021, the peptide-conjugated alkylating...
In 1996, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) published its first set of Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology®, covering eight tumor types. Guidelines are now published for more than 60 tumor types and topics. During the NCCN’s 26th Annual Conference, which was held virtually...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) presented Douglas R. Lowy, MD, FAACR, with the 2021 AACR–Margaret Foti Award for Leadership and Extraordinary Achievements in Cancer Research during the virtual AACR Annual Meeting 2021. Dr. Lowy is Chief of the Laboratory of Cellular Oncology,...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) will recognize the St. Baldrick’s Foundation–Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) Pediatric Cancer Dream Team with the 2021 AACR Team Science Award. In early 2013, the St. Baldrick’s Foundation and SU2C collaborated to create a Pediatric Cancer Dream Team...
The Society ofSurgical Oncology (SSO) recently announced its 2021–2022 elected Executive Council Officers, including its new President, Douglas S. Tyler, MD, MSHCT, FSSO. Dr. Tyler currently holds the John Woods Harris Distinguished Chair in Surgery at The University of Texas Medical Branch in...
Frailty is a better predictor than age of poor outcomes in patients with ovarian cancer, according to studies reported at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer. Researchers found that frail patients are less likely to undergo surgery, have more...
As President-Elect of ASCO, you are asked to choose a theme for your presidency. This can be a daunting task, as the theme will not only shape the discourse of your presidency, but also, more importantly, that of the Society. The subject should be one that reflects the needs of the cancer community ...
Internationally renowned for his pioneering research in combining high-dose radiation therapy and chemotherapy in the treatment of locally advanced head and neck cancer to improve patient survival, ASCO’s President-Elect Everett E. Vokes, MD, FASCO, is dedicating his tenure as President to...
Patients with resected early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who received the PD-L1 inhibitor atezolizumab following cisplatin-based chemotherapy had a 34% reduction in the risk of disease recurrence compared with best supportive care, according to the results from the phase III IMpower010 ...
Prompted by a rise in cases of colorectal cancer in people younger than 50, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has recommended that individuals at average risk for the disease begin screening exams at age 45 instead of the traditional age of 50. The guideline changes, published in...
The American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) has released a clinical practice resource from a global team of specialists in cancer genetics that will help inform the clinical management of patients who harbor a PALB2 variant and may be at increased risk of developing breast,...
In the phase III KAITLIN trial, replacing adjuvant taxane and trastuzumab with ado-trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) did not result in a significant improvement in invasive disease-free survival in the node-positive or intent-to-treat population, as reported by Harbeck et al at the 2020 ASCO Virtual...
The finding that breast tumors can evolve to express low HER2 potentially increases the number of patients who can benefit from new investigational agents, typically novel antibody-drug conjugate therapies, that are currently in clinical trials for HER2-low tumors. This research was presented by...
On May 10, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expanded the emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for the prevention of COVID-19 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) to include adolescents aged 12 through 15. The FDA...
Complete morphologic remission is considered the first requirement for achieving long-term, leukemia-free survival and a potential cure in patients with acute leukemia, including acute myeloid leukemia (AML), and is the goal of all therapeutic strategies to date. Recognizing that the majority of...
As patients finish active treatment, they often wonder: “What happens next?” ASCO Answers: Cancer Survivorship assists in answering this often-difficult question by helping patients better understand survivorship, including its psychological, physical, sexual, reproductive, financial, and...
In a typical year, the new participants in ASCO and Conquer Cancer’s International Development and Education Awards (IDEA) and International Development and Education Awards–Palliative Care (IDEA-PC) program would arrive at the McCormick Place Convention Center just ahead of the ASCO Annual...
It is incredible to reflect upon the scientific advances in the treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer over the past 23 years. Once considered the worst subtype of breast cancer, HER2-positive disease is now associated with the best long-term outcomes in this age of targeted treatments. With a...
A significant survival advantage accrued to patients with stage IIB and IIC cutaneous melanoma who received adjuvant immunotherapy, a large retrospective cohort study reported at the Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) 2021 International Conference on Surgical Cancer Care.1 The 3-year overall...
On February 22, 2021, cemiplimab-rwlc was approved for first-line treatment of patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC; locally advanced who are not candidates for surgical resection or definitive chemoradiation therapy or metastatic) whose tumors have high PD-L1 expression (tumor...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies sometimes used by patients with cancer. In this article, Nirupa Raghunathan, MD, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, focus on the increasing use...
City of Hope has announced the renaming of its diabetes research center as the Arthur Riggs Diabetes & Metabolism Research Institute, in honor of its long-time director and research pioneer. Arthur Riggs, PhD, is known for scientific achievements that include developing the technology leading...
Dana-Farber Cancer Instituterecently announced a major expansion with the opening of a hospital facility in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, to provide increased cancer care and outpatient services for adult patients in the region. The new 140,000–square foot, state-of-art outpatient facility is...
“There was never a night or a problem that could defeat sunrise or hope.” —Bernard Williams To complement The ASCO Post’s continued comprehensive coverage of the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, here are several abstracts selected from the meeting...
A team of researchers from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center has been awarded two research grants totaling $6 million from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to identify new ways to treat pancreatic cancer. “Pancreatic cancer is one of the ...
Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey has appointed Michael E. Salacz, MD, as Director of its Neuro-Oncology Program. The Associate Professor of Medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School joins Rutgers Cancer Institute from the University of Kansas Medical Center, where he served as...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) is recognizing geneticist Frederick W. Alt, PhD, with the 18th AACR Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research. Dr. Alt is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, Director of the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at Boston ...
Treatment with tebentafusp—a novel bispecific fusion protein—reduced the risk of death from metastatic uveal melanoma by half, compared with available treatments, in a phase III study presented at the virtual American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2021.1 This is the first...
Maryam Lustberg, MD, MPH, has been appointed Director of The Breast Center at Smilow Cancer Hospital and Chief of Breast Medical Oncology at Yale Cancer Center. She will also join the faculty at Yale Cancer Center as Associate Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology). Dr. Lustberg joins Yale from...
Formal discussant of the CheckMate 816 trial, Jhanelle E. Gray, MD, of Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, said that both neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapies have been shown to improve overall survival and relapse-free survival in non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). “Overall, neoadjuvant outcomes compare...
Although head and neck cancers include multiple histologies and primary sites, squamous cell carcinomas (SCC) originating in the oropharynx, oral cavity, larynx, or hypopharynx are the most common. Today, we recognize several different types of head and neck diseases, primarily those that are human ...
In 2020, the 8th Annual Beirut Breast Cancer Conference (BBCC) was our last in-person meeting. The first cases of COVID-19 started in Lebanon around the end of February 2020, and the pandemic continues into its second year, with waves of rising cases following superspreader events and other likely...
Futibatinib—a selective, fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) inhibitor—demonstrated anticancer activity in patients with advanced intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma and FGFR2 fusions or rearrangements. These findings are based on the primary results of the phase II FOENIX-CCA2 trial, which were...
In 1% to 2% of cancer cases, the primary site of tumor origin cannot be determined. Because many modern cancer therapeutics target primary tumors, the prognosis for a cancer of unknown primary (CUP) is poor, with a median overall survival of 2.7 to 16 months. In order to receive a more specific...
Karen E. Knudsen, MBA, PhD, of Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson Health, was recently appointed Chief Executive Officer of the American Cancer Society—the first female to head the organization in its 107-year history. Dr. Knudsen talks about the opportunities she sees ahead for the Society...
“It is possible that within the next several years, perhaps 75% of cancers can be detected by screening,” Bert Vogelstein, MD, PhD, projected at the Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) 2021 International Conference on Surgical Cancer Care.1 “I anticipate that perhaps 50% of cancers can be detected...
The first study to use x-rays and computed tomography (CT) to detect evidence of cancer among the skeletal remains of a preindustrial population suggests that between 9% to 14% of adults in medieval Britain had the disease at the time of their death. These findings were published by Mitchell et al...
In a phase II trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Falandry et al found that single-agent carboplatin was associated with poorer survival vs a standard carboplatin/paclitaxel regimen as first-line treatment for stage III/IV ovarian cancer in women aged 70 or older with high geriatric vulnerability...
More news has emerged from this week’s meeting of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC). The group voted 8 to 0 in favor of continuing the accelerated approval for pembrolizumab in sorafenib-pretreated patients with hepatocellular carcinoma; 6 to 2...
Concerns about fertility often influence how young women with breast cancer approach treatment decisions and are a reason for forgoing or delaying hormone-blocking therapy, according to findings from a recent study published by Sella et al in the journal Cancer. The findings reinforce the need for...
Roche has announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) voted 10 to 1 in favor of maintaining the accelerated approval of atezolizumab for the treatment of adults with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma who are not eligible for...
Roche announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) voted seven to two in favor of maintaining accelerated approval of atezolizumab in combination with chemotherapy (nanoparticle albumin-bound paclitaxel, or nab-paclitaxel) for the treatment of ...
The invited discussant of the phase II feMMe trial1 was Angeles Alvarez Secord, MD, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, North Carolina. She noted that, because of its “alarming” increase in incidence and mortality, endometrial cancer is “a critically...
Disease regression was observed in 82% of women with endometrial hyperplasia with atypia and 43% of women with endometrial cancer after treatment for 6 months with a hormonal intrauterine device in a phase II study reported during the virtual edition of the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO)...
Editor’s note: Dr. Gale is an authority on medical response to nuclear and radiation accidents and participated in rescue efforts at the Chernobyl disaster, as well as at Goiania, Tokaimura, and Fukushima, among other radiation and nuclear accidents. Anyone reading the popular press or even...