A study of more than 500 patients with cancer infected with COVID-19 at a large cancer center in Boston found that Black patients with cancer and COVID-19 were twice as likely to be hospitalized due to complications related to the virus as compared to White patients. Black patients were also more...
In the post-trastuzumab era, a number of U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved targeted agents for metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer are available, but there is no preferred option for third-line treatment and beyond. At the 2019 Chemotherapy Foundation Symposium, Shanu Modi, MD,...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, and colleagues, the phase III IMpower110 trial has shown significantly prolonged overall survival with first-line atezolizumab vs platinum-based chemotherapy in patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)...
New agents for the treatment of advanced HER2-positive breast cancer should be coming soon to your clinic, according to Sara A. Hurvitz, MD, Director of the Breast Cancer Clinical Research Program and Associate Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of...
This year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to three scientists who have made a decisive contribution to the fight against blood-borne hepatitis, a major global health problem that causes cirrhosis and liver cancer in people around the world. Harvey J. Alter, MD; Michael Houghton, ...
Next-generation sequencing of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) obtained from blood samples may improve diagnostic testing in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and may also be faster and less expensive than standard tissue profiling, according to research presented by Natasha B. Leighl, ...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Stephen R.D. Johnston, MD, PhD, and colleagues, the phase III monarchE trial has shown that adjuvant abemaciclib plus endocrine therapy significantly improved invasive disease–free survival vs endocrine therapy alone in patients with hormone...
Five years ago, as Rachel B. Issaka, MD, MAS, was beginning her second year as a gastroenterology fellow and feeling proud of the progress she was making in her training, she was suddenly confronted with an all-too-familiar slight that underrepresented minority providers may often experience. As...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by David S. Hong, MD, and colleagues, the phase I CodeBreaK100 trial showed activity of the oral KRAS G12C inhibitor sotorasib in heavily pretreated patients with KRAS p.G12C–mutant advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), colorectal cancer,...
A gift of $126 million to the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine will accelerate advances in finding cures for cancer and expand innovative treatment options. The donation is the single largest in the University of Miami’s 95-year...
Before Judith Kaur, MD, the self-proclaimed “Mother of the YIA” became Conquer Cancer®, the ASCO Foundation’s first grant recipient more than 35 years ago, she was a wife, a teacher, and then a stay-at-home mom. Going to medical school and becoming a research pioneer was just a daydream. “When I...
Incidence rates for pancreatic cancer were 6-fold to 10-fold higher among participants in a study who had recent-onset diabetes and weight loss.1 This led the study authors to write: “The coexistence of these symptoms should be recognized by clinicians given that both the relative and absolute...
Cancer in My Community is a Cancer.Net Blog series that shows the global impact of cancer and how providers work to care for people with cancer in their region. Why I Care for People With Cancer When you tell someone that you are a pediatric oncologist and treat children with cancer, the first...
In the phase III VIALE-A trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Courtney D. DiNardo, MD, MSCE, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and colleagues found that venetoclax plus azacitidine significantly improved overall survival vs azacitidine alone in previously...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Jean-Jacques Grob, MD, PhD, of Aix-Marseille University, France, and colleagues, the first interim analysis of the phase II KEYNOTE-629 trial has shown the achievement of durable responses with pembrolizumab treatment of recurrent or metastatic...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Daniel O. Persky, MD, of the University of Arizona Cancer Center, Tucson, and colleagues, the phase II Intergroup National Clinical Trials Network Study S1001 has shown good outcomes with positron-emission tomography (PET)-directed therapy in...
“Older adults form the majority of patients with cancer.” For more than 3 decades now, almost every article, presentation, or discussion related to cancer and aging started with this statement. As I entered the field of geriatric oncology, I thought that by simply stating this fact, everyone would...
The first half of 2016 was arguably the most exciting of my life. My wife, Jaione, and I had decided to leave the United Kingdom and move with our two children, Andrew, then 14, and Alba, then 10, to Denver, where I was taking on a leadership role in corporate affairs for a brewery company. By the...
Born in Brooklyn on April 4, 1919, Ezra M. Greenspan, MD, did not stray far from his birthplace, spending most of his 5-decade medical career in New York. After graduating from New York University School of Medicine in 1942, he was accepted into the house training program at Mount Sinai Hospital...
The ASCO Post is pleased to continue this occasional special focus on the worldwide cancer burden. In this issue, we feature a close look at the cancer incidence and mortality rates in Botswana. The aim of this special feature is to highlight the global cancer burden for various countries of the...
Leading cancer scientists working with the New York Genome Center (NYGC) announced that grants are being awarded to fund six projects that address the role of ethnicity in several major cancer types, taking advantage of the diversity of patients being treated at health-care institutions throughout...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Cristina Saura, MD, of Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, Barcelona, and colleagues, the phase III NALA trial has shown significantly prolonged progression-free survival with the irreversible pan-HER tyrosine kinase inhibitor neratinib plus...
Improved local-regional tumor control may not be enough to justify the increased morbidity of adding neoadjuvant radiation to chemotherapy in esophageal and gastroesophageal junction cancers, according to a pair of studies presented during the 2020 Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) International...
George J. Chang, MD, MS, FACS, FASCRS, of the Department of Surgical Oncology at The University of MD Anderson Cancer Center, told The ASCO Post that although adjuvant therapy in stage II disease has been shown to improve outcomes in patients with certain high-risk features, “the benefits are...
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 September 1, 2020, azacitidine tabletswere approved...
“In 2015, papers showed that ctDNA could suggest relapse noninvasively in serial plasma samples. In those studies, ctDNA was positive prior to relapse detected by computed tomography scans,” explained session moderator David Scott, MBChB, PhD, of the Center for Lymphoid Cancer, BC Cancer,...
A review of the 2019 Drug Trials Snapshots Report1 from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) showed that although female participation in clinical trials grew to 72% from 56% in the FDA’s 2018 Drug Trials Snapshots Report,2 ethnic minority participation in clinical trials actually declined...
The challenge in treating patients with borderline resectable pancreatic cancer is how to render tumors resectable and how to achieve the negative surgical margins that enhance long-term survival odds. Fortunately, neoadjuvant chemotherapy is helping to achieve these important goals, according to...
As reported in European Urology by Matthew R. Smith, MD, and colleagues, the final analysis of phase III SPARTAN trial has shown significant prolongation of overall survival with apalutamide vs placebo in patients with nonmetastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer and prostate-specific antigen ...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Wu et al, the phase III ADAURA trial has shown significantly prolonged disease-free survival with adjuvant osimertinib vs placebo in patients with resected EGFR-mutant non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). These findings were also presented during ...
The combination of nivolumab plus cabozantinib was superior to the former standard, sunitinib, as first-line treatment for advanced/metastatic renal cell carcinoma, according to results of the phase III CheckMate 9ER trial reported by Toni K. Choueiri, MD, and colleagues at the ESMO Virtual...
Findings from the JAVELIN Bladder 100 trial were published by Thomas Powles, MD, and colleagues in The New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers reported that the PD-L1 inhibitor avelumab led to a 31% reduction in risk of death, and extended median survival by more than 7 months in patients with ...
There are approximately 25 million foreign-born immigrants living in the United States, which is more than 13% of the nation’s total population. Of these individuals, it is estimated that about 11 million are undocumented; by far, the largest group of this immigrant undocumented population is...
Results from a phase II trial led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center suggest that a combination of ipilimumab (anti–CTLA-4) plus nivolumab (anti–PD-1) can generate durable responses in a subset of patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, an...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Mlecnik et al found that high Immunoscore values were associated with reduced risk of disease recurrence and better outcomes with chemotherapy vs no chemotherapy in patients with stage III colon cancer. Study Details The international...
In a French Head and Neck Radiotherapy Oncology Group phase II trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Sun et al found that the addition of Debio 1143 (a small-molecule antagonist of inhibitor of apoptosis proteins) to high-dose cisplatin chemoradiation improved locoregional disease control in...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Wolf et al, the phase II GEOMETRY mono-1 trial has shown durable responses with the selective MET inhibitor capmatinib in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and MET exon 14–skipping mutations. The trial supported the May...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Nowak et al, the Australian phase II DREAM trial showed activity with the triplet of durvalumab plus cisplatin/pemetrexed in previously untreated patients with advanced malignant mesothelioma. Study Details In the multicenter trial, 54 evaluable patients with...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Baize et al, a French phase III trial has shown significant improvement in progression-free survival with second-line carboplatin plus etoposide vs topotecan in patients with chemotherapy-sensitive relapsed small cell lung cancer. As noted by the investigators, ...
In the TRANSCEND NHL 001 study reported in The Lancet, Jeremy S. Abramson, MD, and colleagues found that the autologous CD19-directed chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell agent lisocabtagene maraleucel (liso-cel) produced a high response rate in patients with relapsed or refractory large B-cell...
Pediatric hematologist-oncologist Theodore Laetsch, MD, has joined the Division of Oncology at Children’s Hospital ofPhiladelphia (CHOP), where he will launch a cutting-edge Very Rare Malignant Tumors Program that will seek to develop new treatments for children with rare and complex tumors. In...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Panagiotis A. Konstantinopoulos, MD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and colleagues, a U.S. Experimental Therapeutics Clinical Trials Network phase II trial has shown significantly prolonged progression-free survival with the addition of the ATR (ataxia...
On August 5, 2020, the antibody-drug conjugate belantamab mafodotin-blmf was granted accelerated approval for treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma who have received at least four prior therapies, including an anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody, a proteasome inhibitor, ...
On July 7, 2020, an oral combination of the nucleoside metabolic inhibitor decitabine and the cytidine deaminase inhibitor cedazuridine was approved for treatment of adult patients with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), including: Previously treated and untreated, de novo, and secondary MDS with the ...
“Ask any doctor why he or she enters medicine and the answer will likely be the same,” said Marc L. Citron, MD. “People become doctors to help patients...but to deliver the moments that matter to patients—to extend their lives and give quality to their days—doctors rely on new research.” In 2003,...
Multiple myeloma is a malignant clonal plasma cell malignancy that primarily affects older adults. Although therapeutic advances have led to improvements in disease-specific and overall survival over the past decade, age-related survival disparities continue to exist. The higher prevalence of...
On July 30, 2020, atezolizumab was granted approval for use in combination with cobimetinib and vemurafenib for patients with BRAF V600 mutation–positive unresectable or metastatic melanoma.1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was based on findings from the phase III, double-blind IMspire150 trial ...
On June 30, 2020, avelumab was approved for maintenance treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma that has not progressed with first-line platinum-containing chemotherapy.1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was based on findings in the randomized, multicenter, ...
In a phase III trial (PROfound) reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Johann de Bono, MB, ChB, PhD, of the Institute of Cancer Research and Royal Marsden Hospital, London, and colleagues found that olaparib significantly improved progression-free survival vs hormonal therapy in patients...
Although most patients with breast cancer are considered to have an overall excellent prognosis, 600,000 people still die annually of the disease around the world. Even in HER2-positive breast cancer, a subtype that has seen a transformation of outcomes in the past 2 decades, there’s still room for ...