Mastectomies that preserve the nipple and an envelope of breast skin are as safe as more radical operations for qualifying early-stage breast cancer patients, according to a meta-analysis and systematic literature review presented at the American Society of Breast Surgeons 16th Annual Meeting.1...
Bilateral prophylactic mastectomy may ease cancer-related anxiety for patients at high risk of breast cancer, but it does very little to contain the costs. A study presented at the American Society of Breast Surgeons 16th Annual Meeting found that bilateral prophylactic mastectomy was not...
Neil Howard Segal, MD, PhD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, who discussed the study at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting, emphasized that pembrolizumab (Keytruda) exerted a “clear benefit in patients with mismatch repair deficiency,” based on the “very impressive response rate of...
A genetic marker to predict response to anti–PD-1 (anti-programmed cell death protein 1) antibodies may have emerged in colorectal cancer, a tumor type that is a newcomer to the anti–PD-1 ballgame. In a phase II study of colorectal cancer patients treated with pembrolizumab (Keytruda), the presence ...
Michael B. Atkins, MD, Deputy Director, Lombardi Cancer Center of Georgetown University, Washington, DC, discussed CheckMate 067 at the Plenary Session. Pending overall survival data, he concluded, “Nivolumab and nivolumab plus ipilimumab are superior to ipilimumab. These treatments (along with...
In advanced melanoma, combination treatment with nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) more than doubled the median progression-free survival time over ipilimumab alone in the CheckMate 067 trial. That said, single-agent nivolumab proved almost as powerful in patients expressing the programmed ...
Eribulin (Halaven), a cytotoxic agent approved for advanced/metastatic breast cancer, may improve overall survival for patients with two common and difficult-to-treat forms of advanced/metastatic sarcoma, investigators reported at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 Eribulin is a microtubule inhibitor...
Lynn Schuchter, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, a designated ASCO expert, commented at the press briefing that the results might apply to a select group of patients concerned about lymphedema but not yet to the broader population. “I would say that this is a really important...
Complete lymph node dissection did not improve survival in melanoma patients randomized to this practice, vs sentinel lymph node biopsy alone, German investigators reported at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 “This is the first study that tested the typical recommendation of complete lymph node...
Joseph A. Sparano, MD, Professor of Medicine and Women’s Health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, was the formal discussant of the study and commented, “These findings confirm the strong signal observed in the phase II PALOMA1 trial, and there were no subgroups that did not...
Suzanne Lentzsch, MD, PhD, Director of the Multiple Myeloma and Amyloidosis Program, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and New York Presbyterian Hospital, served as the study’s discussant. She called the 29% response rate in this heavily pretreated or refractory population...
Heavily pretreated patients with multiple myeloma achieved rapid, durable, and deepening responses to the anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody daratumumab, in a phase II study presented at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 “Daratumumab showed remarkable single-agent activity in heavily pretreated and...
The benefit from immune-directed therapies in patients with advanced melanoma is not limited to the exploding field of checkpoint inhibitors. According to Robert Andtbacka, MD, Associate Professor of Surgical Oncology, at the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City,...
Researchers at The Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke University are being barraged by patients wishing to enroll in their clinical trial of an engineered poliovirus for recurrent glioblastoma. This comes as a result of a CBS 60 Minutes interview with lead researcher Matthias...
If new immunotherapy combinations were administered to the half a million Americans dying of cancer each year, the nation’s price tag for treating them—for just 1 year—could top $174 billion, according to projections by Leonard Saltz, MD, Chief of Gastrointestinal Oncology and Chair of the Pharmacy ...
At the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting, Annick Desjardins, MD, Associate Professor of Neurology at Duke University Medical Center, presented a brief update on the ongoing study of oncolytic PVS-RIPO in glioblastoma, which now includes 24 patients.1 The median age of enrolled patients is 57, most have a...
Lloyd Damon, MD, Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, discussed the study and noted that although ruxolitinib (Jakafi) is associated with a fair amount of anemia and thrombocytopenia, pacritinib did not increase these conditions in PERSIST-1. In fact, treatment was...
An emerging JAK inhibitor, pacritinib, appears not only effective in a broad population of patients with myelofibrosis but also among a subset with very low platelet counts, investigators from the global phase III PERSIST-1 trial reported at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 “There is a huge unmet...
Study discussant Shanu Modi, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, commented, “Neither T-DM1 [Kadcyla] nor T-DM1 plus pertuzumab [Perjeta] proved to be superior to the old standard of care, taxane plus trastuzumab [Herceptin]. MARIANNE was a valiant trial, but THP (taxane,...
Results are now in for the phase III MARIANNE trial. Although ado-trastuzumab emtansine (formerly known as T-DM1, Kadcyla) proved noninferior to trastuzumab (Herceptin) plus a taxane in the first-line metastatic breast cancer setting, it performed no better than the standard of care.1 “T-DM1 and...
“We have had remarkable success in treating patients with cancer. Millions of survivors are a testament to this success. But the ‘cost of cure’ borne by our patients is substantial in terms of diminished quality and quantity of life,” commented the formal discussant of the study Michael P. Link,...
Survivors of childhood cancers can expect longer lives than their peers of 30 years ago. Improvements in the care of children with cancer have reduced the long-term mortality rate, according to an analysis of 34,000 participants in the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study.1 Cumulative all-cause late...
At the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting, both ASCO and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) unveiled details of new precision medicine trials that will greatly expand the number of patients with cancer who are benefiting from targeted agents. The trials will match a patient’s tumor molecular profile with an ...
Daniel G. Coit, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and Chair of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Melanoma Guidelines Panel, discussed the findings reported by Lewin et al at the ASCO Annual Meeting. “This is a small retrospective study examining a prospective...
In monitoring patients with melanoma at high risk for relapse, surveillance imaging with 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose–positron-emission tomography (FDG-PET)/computed tomography (CT) can detect asymptomatic metastases and thus facilitate early treatment, according to Australian investigators who presented ...
Commenting on the EF14 study was Martin J. van den Bent, MD, of The Brain Tumor Center at Erasmus MC Cancer Institute in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, who was reticent to predict that tumor treating fields will become a standard of care. He noted that 57% of patients are still alive; therefore, the...
A novel treatment modality that applies electric forces to brain tumors via scalp electrodes improved outcomes in a study reported at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 In the first report of the full dataset, tumor treating fields significantly and consistently prolonged both progression-free...
Keith T. Flaherty, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Director of the Termeer Center for Targeted Therapy, Boston, was interviewed by The ASCO Post for his thoughts on the findings from Atreya and colleagues. He believes the study’s outcomes are sufficient for...
Triplet therapy that inhibits the BRAF, MEK, and EGFR pathways appears promising in BRAF-mutated colorectal cancer, a malignancy that typically does not respond to BRAF inhibition alone.1 At the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting, Chloe Evelyn Atreya, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco,...
Kenneth Yu, MD, MSc, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, called investigational PEGPH20 “a very promising tumor microenvironment-targeted approach” that appears to be well tolerated. “The results are preliminary but there appears to be a biomarker ...
Patients with stage IV pancreatic cancer who received a novel enzyme along with standard chemotherapy experienced a doubling in progression-free survival, compared to those given chemotherapy alone, in a study presented at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 Response rates and median duration of...
Jeffrey L. Wolf, MD, Director of the Myeloma Program at the University of California, San Francisco, formally discussed the ENDEAVOR study at the ASCO Annual Meeting. He commented that the “doubling” in progression-free survival is “impressive” and said that “time will tell if this difference...
In the first head-to-head study comparing two proteasome inhibitors in relapsed multiple myeloma, carfilzomib (Kyprolis)/dexamethasone provided a doubling in progression-free survival, compared with bortezomib (Velcade)/dexamethasone.1 Results of the phase III ENDEAVOR trial of the two regimens in...
An anticancer therapy may be hailed as a breakthrough in some corners, whereas its value may be hotly contested in others. In an effort to bring clear, unbiased perspective to new expensive therapies, the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) has created a valuable tool for oncologists,...
Checkpoint inhibitors were major attention grabbers at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting, but studies suggested there are other encouraging means of harnessing the immune system in the treatment of glioblastoma. EGFRvIII-Targeted Vaccine David A. Reardon, MD, Clinical Director of the Center for...
Peter B. Bach, MD, MAPP, Director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (Memorial), New York, discussed Dr. Schrag’s study at the ASCO Health Services Research and Quality of Care session. “Dr. Schrag’s analysis could have been ‘back of the...
The landmark CALGB/SWOG 80405 trial concluded that bevacizumab (Avastin) and cetuximab (Erbitux) provide comparable benefit in the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer. However, in terms of cost, bevacizumab was recently declared the winner. In an economic analysis presented at the 2015 ASCO...
Access to cancer medicines—including some old standbys—is inconsistent across Europe, depriving many patients of treatments that are the standard of care elsewhere,1 according to Alexandru E. Eniu, MD, PhD, Chair of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Emerging Countries Committee and...
It’s been 10 years since floodwaters washed away lives in New Orleans—for most, figuratively or temporarily, but for more than 1,800, literally. We who call this place home all lost something—homes, possessions, jobs, pets, loved ones, our sanity. Mold and muck marked our days for a long time, but...
Pasquale W. Benedetto, MD, the Leonard M. Miller Professor of Medicine at the University of Miami/Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, recently spoke at the 2015 New Orleans Summer Cancer Meeting about his approach to diagnosing and treating germ cell tumors in men.1 The ASCO Post was there to...
Emerging laboratory technology will be “moving the bar forward” in terms of molecular markers, genomics, and gene-expression profiling, with the potential for huge payoffs to oncologists and patients, according to Mark Pegram, MD, the Susy Yuan-Huey Hung Professor of Medicine at Stanford School of...
For breast cancer patients with robust family histories, medical oncologists should be testing not only for BRCA1/2 mutations, but also for large duplications and deletions as well as for PALB2 mutations. “These [findings] have proven utility in testing breast cancer patients,” said Louise E....
Two “firsts” in studies of colorectal liver metastases were highlighted at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting: the first prospective randomized trial to evaluate radiofrequency ablation plus chemotherapy1 and the first large randomized phase III trial to study liver-directed selective internal radiation...
With a growing number of options for follicular lymphoma, clinicians may wonder whether there is one best regimen. James O. Armitage, MD, FACP, FRCP, Professor of Medicine at the University of Nebraska, Omaha—and Editor-in-Chief of The ASCO Post—tackled this question and offered recommendations at...
With immunotherapy changing the face of lung cancer, is there still a place for targeted therapy? Two experts from Emory University debated this issue at the 2015 Debates and Didactics in Hematology and Oncology Conference held in Sea Island, Georgia. Fadlo Khuri, MD, was recently named President...
James Jett, MD, of National Jewish Health in Denver, moderated the press briefing where the study results were presented and called MAPS a “landmark study” that could change the standard of care in this malignancy. Martin J. Edelman, MD, Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland,...
The standard of care for malignant pleural mesothelioma may be poised for change, judging by results from a study by the French Cooperative Thoracic Intergroup. The addition of bevacizumab (Avastin) in the first-line setting to the current standard of care, pemetrexed (Alimta)/cisplatin, improved...
Are there patients with locally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck associated with human papillomavirus (HPV) for whom chemotherapy can be omitted? Experts debated this question at the 2015 Debates and Didactics in Hematology and Oncology Conference in Sea Island, Georgia,...
Autologous stem cell transplantation has played a critical role in the treatment of mantle cell lymphoma, but in the age of novel treatments, is it always warranted? Two experts in the field explored the question at the 2015 Debates and Didactics in Hematology and Oncology Conference sponsored by...
All patients with aggressive non Hodgkin lymphoma should be evaluated for MYC and BCL2/6 gene expression, if possible, by fluorescent in situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry. Several intensive treatment regimens are available. Dr. Cohen favors dose-adjusted R-EPOCH for patients with...