Stephen S. Grubbs, MD, a community oncologist and Managing Partner at Medical Oncology Hematology Consultants, PA, has been named the Senior Director of ASCO’s new Clinical Affairs Department. Dr. Grubbs is a longtime ASCO member and volunteer and the Principal Investigator of the Delaware...
Prostate cancer survivors currently approach 3 million in number and comprise 43% of all male cancer survivors in the United States.1 These men face myriad unique oncologic, functional, emotional, and psychological issues that require evaluation and management throughout the survivorship phase of...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Matthew J. Resnick, MD, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and colleagues, ASCO has endorsed the 2014 American Cancer Society Prostate Cancer Survivorship Care Guidelines.1,2 The ASCO endorsement panel was co-chaired by Dr. Resnick and David...
Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitors are one of the most exciting new classes of agents in development for the treatment of ovarian cancer. Olaparib (Lynparza), the lead oral PARP inhibitor, received accelerated approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of...
PARP inhibitors offer a promising alternative for targeted therapy in ovarian cancer” and have “clear benefit in BRCA-mutation carriers,” but questions remain about when is the best time to use them and the cost-effectiveness of maintenance therapy, Elizabeth M. Swisher, MD, of the University of...
In February 2015, the President’s Cancer Panel reported that human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination uptake among boys and girls was falling drastically short of target rates, posing “a serious but correctable threat to progress against cancer.” In response, the National Cancer Institute (NCI)...
More than 7,200 cases of anal cancer were diagnosed in 2014—approximately 2,600 in men and 4,600 in women—representing an increase of more than 4,000 from 8 years ago. In more than 90% of patients, infection with the human papillomavirus (HPV) is the cause, tagging anal cancer as a largely...
Since 1990, we have seen an approximate 35% reduction in breast cancer mortality among women in the United States. Three protagonists can share this clinical success story: prevention, early detection, and better therapies. To shed light on the current state of breast cancer research and therapy,...
Olaparib (Lynparza) achieved encouraging response rates in men with metastatic prostate cancer, particularly those with mutations in genes involved in DNA repair (BRCA2 and ATM, most commonly).1 If validated, these results of the TOPARP-A trial will usher in the first drug targeted to somatic or...
Richard Pazdur, MD, was awarded the American Association of Cancer Research’s (AACR) Distinguished Public Service Award at the 2015 AACR Annual Meeting. The Association chose Dr. Pazdur for this award based on his “extraordinary, steadfast leadership in scientific and regulatory affairs” and his...
A new “off-the-shelf” treatment promises to induce remission in rituximab (Rituxan)-refractory Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-associated lymphoproliferative disorder, a potentially fatal complication of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Historically, this complication has been difficult to treat...
Elaine Mardis, PhD, Co-director of The Genome Institute at Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, commented on the IMPaCT trial and the constraints of the U.S. health-care system. “The correct clinical trial has not yet been performed to demonstrate the clinical utility of genomic...
The ability to do genomic analysis of patients’ tumors holds great promise for revolutionizing cancer treatment, and genomics has already made some great strides. However, the Individualized Molecular Pancreatic Cancer Therapy (IMPaCT) trial is a cautionary tale about the hurdles involved in...
Add lung cancer to the growing list of cancers that may derive benefit from immunotherapy. The KEYNOTE-001 trial found that pembrolizumab (Keytruda) achieved durable responses in a proportion of patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and high levels of expression of the protein PD-L1...
Results presented at The International Liver CongressTM 2015 show that cancer rates in patients with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) were significantly increased compared to the non-HCV cohort. The researchers suggest an extrahepatic manifestation of HCV may be an increased risk of cancer. Study...
At the 20th Annual Conference of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) held in March 2015 in Hollywood, Florida, NCCN presented Daniel G. Coit, MD, with the Rodger Winn Award. The award, named for NCCN’s “founding father” of the Guidelines Program and the first Editor-in-Chief of the...
For 2 decades, the NCCN Guidelines® have been recognized as the standard of cancer care in the United States, combining evidence, experience, and choice, so that multidisciplinary cancer treatment teams—including patients—are empowered to make informed decisions about cancer care,” said Robert W....
Two daily doses of nicotinamide, a form of vitamin B3, significantly reduced the occurrence of nonmelanoma skin cancers by 23% in individuals considered at high risk for these lesions in an Australian study. Results of the phase III ONTRAC trial, which will be presented at the 2015 ASCO Annual...
Another exciting multiple myeloma treatment will be presented at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting,” Philip L. McCarthy, MD, Professor of Oncology and Director of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Center at Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, New York, commented in an interview with The ASCO Post....
The monoclonal antibody elotuzumab, given with lenalidomide (Revlimid) and dexamethasone, extended progression-free survival by a median of 5 months, compared with lenalidomide/dexamethasone alone, in the eagerly awaited phase III ELOQUENT-2 trial, which will be presented at the 2015 ASCO Annual...
At the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting, the phase III E3805 (CHAARTED) trial presented at the Plenary Session showed that the addition of docetaxel to standard hormone therapy extended survival by more than 1 year in men with newly diagnosed, hormone-sensitive prostate cancer.1 The survival benefit of...
Results from the STAMPEDE trial showed that the addition of docetaxel to standard hormone therapy improved overall survival by a median of 10 months over hormone therapy alone in men with newly diagnosed, advanced, hormone therapy–naive prostate cancer.1 The study also showed that zoledronic acid...
John “Jack” Harris Saiki, MD, Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico Department of Medicine, Hematology/Oncology Division, lived the history of modern-day oncology with a career spanning 44 years. In the early days of his career, with the support of a grant from the federally funded New ...
Dorothy “Dottie” Thomas was wife and research partner to 1990 Nobel laureate E. Donnall Thomas, MD, pioneer of the bone marrow transplant and former Director of the Clinical Research Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Dr. and Mrs. Thomas formed the core of a team that proved bone...
One of the early giants in the field of cancer prevention, Lee W. Wattenberg, MD, published in 1966 what would be regarded as a landmark paper in the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) journal Cancer Research. During his research, he reviewed 36 years of animal studies, looking at the...
In 1971, then Surgeon General Jesse L. Steinfeld, MD, took Big Tobacco to task, stating, “Let me suggest that certain purveyors of cigarettes stop making remarks about how some young mothers in childbirth might welcome smaller babies. The mother who smokes is subjecting the unborn child to the...
John Michael Fitzpatrick, MCh, FRSCI, was one of Europe’s most highly regarded medical opinion leaders. He studied medicine at University College Dublin and did his clinical internship at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin. While doing his residency at St. Vincent’s, he decided to become a urologist, ...
Eddie Reed, MD, was a pioneer in the molecular pharmacology of DNA-damaging anticancer agents and the clinical development of paclitaxel for ovarian cancer. He graduated from Yale University School of Medicine in 1979, completed his internship and residency at Stanford University in 1981, and was...
Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. —Theodore Roosevelt Longevity, in and of itself, is not an accomplishment. Luck and good genes are just human lottery tickets. Most people fortunate enough to live long lives have a productive sweet ...
Robert C. Young, MD, ASCO Past President, longtime leader of Fox Chase Cancer Center, and an internationally recognized expert in lymphoma and ovarian cancer, is a forward-looking doctor who is confident about something not in his future: retirement. “I’ll never quit working; I’m just not wired...
Dear Dr. Wilson: I am writing to express our family’s deepest and heartfelt appreciation for the lifesaving care you and your team provided for our son, Patrick…. I don’t know how widely it is known that you save lives at the National Cancer Institute—offering hope to people like Patrick, who have...
At the end of the day, I’m still a kid from South Philly,” Andrew C. von Eschenbach, MD, former Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), told The ASCO Post. Dr. von Eschenbach is the product of a closely knit yet culturally...
John L. Marshall, MD, a global leader in the research and treatment of gastrointestinal cancers, grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, in a family that put high value on education. As a young boy, science was already on his mind; he enjoyed the explorative nature that chemistry and biology offered....
The Tampa Bay area of Florida is a haven for golfers and fishermen looking to unwind under the warm tropical skies. And the clean highways stretching through the scenic west coast of Florida are also a perfect excuse for weekend motorcycle enthusiasts, such as Alan F. List, MD, the President and...
Due to childhood health issues, Sandra J. Horning, MD, formed an opinion about doctors at a young age: They were good people who helped other people. By her early teens, Dr. Horning began to ponder a career in medicine, which offered the possibility of blending her love of science with a career...
As a young boy growing up in the Bronx, Vincent T. DeVita, Jr, MD, admired the local iceman, a thick-muscled guy known as Nunzi, who used to carry a big block of ice on his shoulder with a set of tongs, and effortlessly slide it into the DeVitas’ icebox. “A friend once asked me what I wanted to be...
Numerous challenges and milestones mark the course of an oncology career. Community doctors remember special patients, often speaking about a singular bond that is unique among a profession that deals with life and death daily. Researchers recount long hours of seeming futility and then the...
At the 2007 ASCO Annual Meeting, Lodovico Balducci, MD, received the inaugural B.J. Kennedy Award and Lecture for Scientific Excellence in Geriatric Oncology. Called the “patriarch of geriatric oncology,” Dr. Balducci is widely known in the oncology community for his warm humor and thick Italian...
In 1985, Carolyn R. “Bo” Aldigé founded the Prevent Cancer Foundation in honor of her father, who had died the previous year of head and neck cancer. She started the Foundation in her kitchen with a typewriter, a sheath of carbon copy paper, and a telephone. “I quickly rented an office because a...
A population-based cohort study “indicates that more extensive lymph node clearance during surgery for esophageal cancer may not improve survival,” Maartje van der Schaaf, MD, PhD, of the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, and colleagues reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute....
Using imatinib to treat chronic-phase chronic myeloid leukemia (CP-CML) first line, with selective switching to nilotinib (Tasigna) “leads to excellent molecular response and survival” and “may be preferable to universal first-line use of more potent agents, considering efficacy, toxicity, and...
In a study reported in Clinical Cancer Research, Chacon and colleagues found that ex vivo manipulation of the tumor microenvironment could enhance expansion of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes for use in adoptive cell therapy. The addition of an agonistic anti–4-1BB antibody during initial tumor...
In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Church and colleagues assessed whether proofreading mutations in POLE (which encodes the DNA polymerase epsilon catalytic subunit) were associated with prognosis in endometrial cancer. Such mutations have been reported in...
Gene fusions resulting in androgen receptor–modulated ERG gene overexpression can be found in up to 70% of patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. In a study reported in Clinical Cancer Research, Attard and colleagues assessed the effect of ERG rearrangement on outcomes in...
Does the finding that the incidence of fractures is “compellingly higher” after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation mean that physicians counseling patients about transplant should feel compelled to discuss the fracture risks? Huifang Linda Lu, MD, PhD, the corresponding author of the study...
The incidence of fractures is “compellingly higher” after receiving hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, according to a retrospective study of patients receiving transplants for treatment of multiple myeloma, other hematologic malignancies, and some solid tumors (mostly breast and ovarian) as...
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard announced a $10 million gift from the Gerstner Family Foundation, which will expand cancer research at Broad Institute and broaden collaborations with Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The research will focus on the...
My first experience with cancer was when I was just 9 years old, and a lump the size of an egg popped out on the right side of my neck. A biopsy of the tumor found that it was Hodgkin lymphoma, and I was given huge doses of external-beam radiotherapy applied to my neck, chest, and underarm lymph...
Margaret Foti, PhD, MD (hc), CEO of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), was honored for her “dedication and commitment to solving cancer through research” and for her “passionate advocacy for increased federal funding for cancer research and biomedical science,” at Massachusetts...
Meir Wetzler, MD, Chief of the Leukemia Section at Roswell Park Cancer Institute and University at Buffalo (UB) Professor of Medicine, died on February 23 from injuries sustained during a skiing accident in Colorado. He was 60 years old. Nationally prominent in his field, Dr. Wetzler helped set...