African Americans who develop metastatic renal cell carcinoma have had worse survival historically than whites. With the advent of targeted therapy, the hope is that the gap in survival would be narrowed. However, a new study has shown that survival for African Americans with metastatic renal cell...
The use of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening has led to a dramatic rise in the number of men diagnosed with low-grade prostate cancer. Active surveillance is recommended to manage patients with favorable-risk, low-grade prostate cancer, with the goal of avoiding overtreatment of these...
Compared to patients with non-Medicaid insurance, uninsured patients and patients with Medicaid are more likely to present with advanced stages of head and neck cancer and have higher overall and cancer-specific mortality rates, according to research presented by Churilla et al at the 2016...
The majority of patients with locally advanced head and neck cancers rely on cost-coping strategies that alter their lifestyle in order to manage the financial burden of their care, according to research presented by Kung et al at the 2016 Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancer Symposium (Abstract...
“This platform has no selection bias. Phlebotomy samples are drawn at key decision points. We begin to see that heterogeneity of circulating tumor cells predicted for shorter progression and survival times with selected androgen receptor–directed therapies. We need to study this prospectively,”...
An early study showed that an experimental blood test (ie, “liquid biopsy”) that characterizes the phenotype and genomic characteristics of circulating tumor cells appears to have utility in personalizing treatment decisions for individual men with advanced prostate cancer.1 The assay—developed and ...
Discussant Kathryn Schmitz, PhD, MPH, Professor of Epidemiology at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, underscored the study’s findings: Diabetes that follows pediatric cancers is not consistent with an autoimmune disorder. “That’s really good news in my book,” said Dr....
An ongoing pilot study, designed to assess dynamic indices of insulin and glucose homeostasis in childhood cancer survivors exposed to abdominal radiation, has found a variety of derangements in glucose and insulin homeostasis in this cohort.1 According to an analysis presented at the 2016 Cancer...
A randomized clinical trial examining the effect of a 15-week healthy living program on weight loss in cancer survivors showed a 5.3% decrease in baseline body weight in those participating in the program.1 “Cancer survivors randomized to a 15-week clinic-based weight-loss intervention lost an...
Moderator of the session Chunkit Fung, MD, MSCE, Assistant Professor at the Wilmot Cancer Center, University of Rochester, New York, said that the analysis shows the cost-effectiveness of performing yearly physical examinations. “In addition to the cost savings,” Dr. Fung observed, “clinicians need ...
A study evaluating annual physical examination as a screening method to detect thyroid cancer in cancer survivors exposed to neck radiation has shown a substantial cost reduction compared with ultrasound screening, with no thyroid cancer–related mortality.1 According to the analysis, this method...
CancerLinQ LLC, a wholly owned nonprofit subsidiary of ASCO, has named three new members to its leadership team. David Dornstreich, Robert Merold, and Jennifer L. Wong recently joined CancerLinQ LLC and, in their various roles, will be utilizing their extensive strategic experience to fully realize ...
A survey of oncology surgeons from six hospitals in Washington State found that the surgeons in the sample “displayed and valued cultural awareness and sensitivity” but that “cultural awareness and sensitivity did not necessarily result in culturally competent behavior.”...
Although more people than ever before are surviving cancer—there are currently 14.5 million cancer survivors, and that number is expected to climb to 19 million by 20241—they often experience long-lasting physical, emotional, and financial concerns related to the disease. To address the unmet...
The United Kingdom’s phase II NEOSCOPE trial compared the toxicity and efficacy of two preoperative chemoradiation regimens—carboplatin/paclitaxel and oxaliplatin/capecitabine—and judged one to be the winner. “CarPacRT passed the prespecified efficacy criteria for taking forward to phase III, but...
Patients with throat cancer exposed to both human papillomavirus (HPV) and tobacco smoke demonstrate a pattern of mutations along several key cancer genes, according to research presented by Zevallos et al at the 2016 Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancer Symposium (Abstract 1). These distinct...
Claus Rödel, MD, Director and Chair of the Department of Radiotherapy and Oncology, University of Frankfurt, Germany, and invited discussant of the study, pointed out that these investigators found “the opposite” of what most previous studies have shown: Others have found an increased risk for...
Second malignancies were not more common among patients who underwent radiotherapy for rectal cancer. In fact, radiotherapy appeared to offer some degree of protection against subsequent cancers, according to the findings of a study from the Netherlands reported at the 2016 Gastrointestinal Cancers ...
A retrospective review to evaluate the frequency of serum tumor marker testing “found a high rate of serum tumor marker testing overuse and extreme overuse in patients with advanced solid tumors,” Melissa K. Accordino, MD, of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New...
Claus Rödel, MD, of the Department of Radiotherapy, University of Frankfurt, Germany, discussed the study at the 2016 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium. “The main strength of the Polish II study is clearly its innovative design,” he said. “It sequentially combines effective local radiotherapy and...
As neoadjuvant treatment for locally advanced rectal cancer, a shorter course of radiation therapy followed by chemotherapy may be as good as, or better than, standard chemoradiotherapy, according to a study from the Polish Colorectal Study Group presented at the 2016 Gastrointestinal Cancers...
Commenting on the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1)/PD-1 ligand (PD-L1) antibodies in tumors with mismatch repair deficiency, Bertram Wiedenmann, MD, PhD, Professor of Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology, Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany, suggested, “The efficacy of pembrolizumab...
Evidence has long supported a volume-outcome relationship for surgical resection of pancreatic cancer, yet surgery alone is not enough to prolong survival in patients with localized disease. James L. Abbruzzese, MD, of Duke University and Duke Cancer Institute, Durham, North Carolina, discussed his ...
Patients with pancreatic cancer who received adjuvant chemotherapy at a high-volume center had superior median and 5-year overall survival than did patients who were treated in a community setting, according to the results of a study presented at the 2016 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.1 This...
Bringing new cancer therapies through the discovery and development process entails considerable risk and many years of study. It also requires substantial investment and incentives from the public and private sectors to fuel future investment and discovery. A system that rewards advances in cancer ...
Striking the right balance between under- and oversurveillance of cancer survivors is challenging, and oncology providers are best served by knowing and following guidelines—though they can change often. Cancer recurrence and second cancers are two of the major threats to the health of cancer...
In a phase III trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Walker et al found that treatment with antithymocyte globulin reduced the need for immunosuppressive therapy in patients with hematologic malignancies receiving hematopoietic cell transplantation from unrelated donors. Study Details In this...
An international research team has determined how inherited gene variations lead to severe drug toxicity that may threaten chances for a cure in children with leukemia. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists led the study, results of which set the stage to expand the use of a...
Preliminary research has identified autoantibodies—immune proteins found in the blood specific for one's own proteins—that can potentially detect lung cancer early by distinguishing between smokers with or without lung cancer and can also discriminate between lung cancer and low-dose...
Although the results may not yet be as impressive as those seen in melanoma, lung, and kidney cancers, monoclonal antibodies targeting the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) are producing responses, with some durability, in gastrointestinal cancers, according to studies presented at the 2016...
Annual screening with the fecal immunochemical test is highly sensitive for detecting colorectal cancer and “is feasible and effective for population-level colorectal cancer screening,” according to a large-scale retrospective cohort study assessing the fecal immunochemical...
According to new recommendations from the U.S. Multi-Society Task Force on Colorectal Cancer published by Kahi et al in Gastroenterology, postoperative colonoscopy is associated with improved overall survival for colorectal cancer patients. Therefore, it is critically important that colorectal...
A study of all Norwegian men born between 1965 and 1985 showed that male cancer survivors are less likely to have children than those without a cancer diagnosis. “These findings are important for male cancer survivors, seeing as we can identify groups at risk of having reproduction...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Brinkman et al, a study in the St. Jude Lifetime Cohort showed that adult survivors of pediatric central nervous system (CNS) tumors are at increased risk of severe neurocognitive impairment. Study Details The study involved 224 survivors of CNS...
Among patients with high-risk, primary cutaneous melanomas, the risk of death from melanoma at a median follow-up of 8.8 years was significantly higher among those randomized to surgery with a 1-cm excision margin than among those randomized to surgery with a 3-cm excision margin. Although overall...
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators may have uncovered a novel mechanism behind the ability of obesity to promote cancer progression. In their report published by Incio et al in Clinical Cancer Research, the research team describes finding an association between obesity and an...
When breast cancer becomes metastatic, patient survival is drastically reduced, prompting the need to explore the genes that may cause tumor cells to metastasize. Now, scientists from The Wistar Institute have shown that a gene that was once thought only to be found in the brain is also expressed...
In a phase III trial reported in The Lancet, Schöffski et al found that eribulin improved overall survival vs dacarbazine in patients with advanced or metastatic soft-tissue sarcoma who had received at least two prior systemic treatments for advanced disease. Outcome in the subgroup with...
Intense tumor lymphocytic infiltration was associated with improved outcomes in patients with resectable non–small cell lung cancer, according to a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Brambilla et al. Study Details The LACE-Bio (Lung Adjuvant Cisplatin Evaluation...
Two-year conditional overall and disease-free survival were substantially increased in patients surviving and surviving without recurrence for 2 years after first-line curative therapy for metastatic testicular germ cell tumors, according to a study reported by Ko et al in the Journal of Clinical...
In a Dutch study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Schaapveld et al found that survivors of Hodgkin lymphoma treated between 1965 and 2000 were at a 4.6-fold greater risk of second cancer vs the general population during long-term follow-up. There was no significant difference in the ...
Pediatric oncologists from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have investigated techniques to improve and broaden a novel personalized cell therapy to treat children with cancer. The researchers say that a patient’s outcome may be improved if clinicians select specific...
A novel Yale University study answers age-old questions about how cancers spread by applying tools from evolutionary biology. The new insights will help scientists better understand the genetic origins of tumor metastases, and lead to more effective targets for treatment, said the researchers. The...
Cancer patients who miss two or more radiation therapy sessions (except for planned treatment breaks) have a worse outcome than fully compliant patients, investigators at Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care (MECCC) and Albert Einstein College of Medicine's Albert Einstein Cancer Center have...
Use of the androgen receptor–inhibitor enzalutamide (Xtandi) more than doubled progression-free survival vs the nonsteroidal antiandrogen bicalutamide in patients with metastatic prostate cancer progressing on androgen-deprivation therapy, according to the randomized phase II TERRAIN trial...
The American Cancer Society (ACS) and ASCO have issued a Breast Cancer Survivorship Care guideline, published jointly in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. The guideline recommendations were formulated by a multidisciplinary expert work group and are based on...
An experimental nanoparticle therapy that combines low-density lipoproteins (LDL) and fish oil preferentially kills primary liver cancer cells without harming healthy cells, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers report. The study was published by Wen et al in Gastroenterology. “This...
A highly lethal cancer sometimes requires large doses of highly toxic drugs. However, a blitzkrieg approach can be unfeasible for some patients due to severe side effects. Now a team of researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has found that an implantable device can deliver a ...
Annual testing for blood in the stool using high-sensitivity guaiac fecal occult blood tests or fecal immunochemical tests is one of several recommended colorectal cancer screening strategies for adults 50 to 70 years old. However, although a positive finding requires a follow-up colonoscopy to...
In a study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Armstrong et al found that late mortality decreased over time among 5-year survivors of childhood cancer in the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study cohort. The reduction is consistent with efforts during recent decades to modify treatment with ...