John Farrow, a 67-year-old Vietnam veteran, had not been able to sleep for days. A week ago, his primary care doctor at his local outpatient Veterans Administration (VA) clinic told him that his prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood level was rapidly increasing, and his prostate was abnormal on...
Excitement was high on the last day of the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in anticipation of Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s remarks related to the Moonshot Initiative to accelerate progress in cancer research. The Secret Service made elaborate...
“We are at a fortunate time to have multiple routes to ‘lifetime’ (T-cell) memory (including ipilimumab [Yervoy] and nivolumab [Opdivo]),” said Jedd D. Wolchok, MD, PhD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, who was the formal discussant of the CA909-003 trial at the American...
The news is good from the longest follow-up survival study of patients with advanced melanoma who were treated with the anti–programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) agent nivolumab (Opdivo).1 Thirty-four percent of patients who received the drug in a phase I trial (CA909-003) were alive 5 years...
A study providing new information about neuropathic pain afflicting some 90% of cancer patients who have had nerve damage caused by tumors, surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation indicates gene therapy as a possible treatment. The study in rats showed transfer of a gene known as KCC2 into the spinal...
Researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine have demonstrated that distinct types of glioblastoma tend to develop in different regions of the brain. This finding provides an explanation for how the same cancer-causing mutation can give rise to different types of brain...
As reported by Vasen et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, surveillance for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma in high-risk individuals appears to be of benefit in individuals at risk due to CDKN2A mutation, with the advantage being less clear among individuals at risk due to familial clustering ...
Cetuximab (Erbitux) exhibited little apparent activity in refractory metastatic colorectal cancer harboring the KRAS G13D mutation, according to the findings of the phase II Australasian Gastro-Intestinal Trials Group ICECREAM study, which were reported by Segelov et al in the Journal of Clinical...
Researchers have identified a gene that may help to predict survival outcomes in patients with cancer of the mouth and tongue. Patients whose tumors express a gene called spectrin are 4.6 times more likely to die at any given time, according to a study by researchers at Loyola Medicine and Loyola...
Loss of appetite during illness is a common and potentially debilitating phenomenon. In cancer patients especially, it can even shorten lifespan. Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have discovered how an immune system molecule controls a brain circuit and reduces appetite. Their...
Online information on pancreatic cancer overestimates the reading ability of the overall population and lacks accurate information about alternative therapy, according to a study published by Storino et al in JAMA Surgery. The degree to which patients are empowered by written educational materials ...
Dual HER2 inhibition with trastuzumab (Herceptin) and lapatinib (Tykerb) was active in patients with refractory, KRAS codon 12/13 wild-type, HER2-positive metastatic colorectal cancer, according to an Italian phase II trial reported by Sartore-Bianchi et al in The Lancet Oncology. Study Details...
The PD-1 (programmed cell death protein 1) inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was active in advanced Merkel cell carcinoma in both Merkel cell polyomavirus (MCP)-positive and -negative tumors, according to Nghiem et al, who reported their phase II study findings in The New England Journal of...
Eli Lilly and Company announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Priority Review for the biologics license application (BLA) for olaratumab, a platelet-derived growth factor receptor alpha (PDGFRα) antagonist, in combination with doxorubicin, for the...
Amgen announced on May 3 that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted for priority review the supplemental Biologics License Application (sBLA) for blinatumomab (Blincyto) to include new data supporting the treatment of pediatric and adolescent patients with Philadelphia...
In a phase III trial (EORTC 20012 Intergroup Trial) reported by Carde et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, similar outcomes were achieved with eight cycles of ABVD (doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine, dacarbazine) vs four cycles each of escalated BEACOPP (bleomycin, etoposide, doxorubicin,...
Black residents of highly segregated neighborhoods were less likely to receive surgery for early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) than their peers in less-segregated neighborhoods, according to a study published by Johnson et al in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention....
New research presented at the ESTRO 35 Conference on April 30 (Abstract OC-0052) has shown women aged younger than 45 years with early-stage breast cancer that had not spread to the lymph nodes and who opted for breast-conserving therapy with radiation therapy had a 13% higher risk of developing a...
A large study of testicular cancer patients showed that radiation therapy was more effective than chemotherapy for patients with stage IIa disease (where one or more regional lymph nodes contain cancer cells, but they are less than 2 cm in diameter). These findings, presented at the ESTRO 35...
Long-term exposure to ambient fine particulate matter, a mixture of environmental pollutants, was associated with increased risk of mortality for many types of cancer in an elderly Hong Kong population, according to a study published by Wong et al in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers &...
A gene known as TJP1 (tight junction protein 1) could help determine which multiple myeloma patients would best benefit from proteasome inhibitors such as bortezomib, as well as combination approaches to enhance proteasome inhibitor sensitivity, according to a study led by researchers from The...
Researchers have found that treating patients who have early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) is associated with a small but increased risk of death from causes other than cancer, according to findings presented at the European Society...
Radiation therapy not only targets and destroys cancer cells, but also helps to activate the immune system against their future proliferation. However, this immune response is often not strong enough to be able to completely eradicate tumors, and even when it is, its effect is limited to the area...
Although the publication of results of clinical trials carried out in the United States within 12 months of their completion has been mandatory since 2007, a remarkably high number of phase III radiotherapy trials did not do so, according to new research presented at the European Society for...
In a study reported in Modern Pathology, Cani et al used next-generation sequencing to identify actionable mutations in orbital and ocular adnexal lymphomas, finding frequent alterations in MYD88 and chromatin modifiers. Study Details The study involved next-generation sequencing of 36...
A new report published by Teras et al in Environmental Researchfound a statistically significant, positive association between high levels of residential radon and the risk of hematologic cancer (lymphoma, myeloma, and leukemia) in women. The study is the first prospective, population-based study...
A new study by University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers published by Van Dyk et al in JAMA Oncology found that commonly used chemotherapy drugs showed no association with cognitive decline following treatment in women with breast cancer. The report addresses recent concerns that the ...
In a study published by Rafferty et al in JAMA, Elizabeth A. Rafferty, MD, formerly of Massachusetts General Hospital, and colleagues evaluated the screening performance of digital mammography combined with tomosynthesis compared with digital mammography alone for women with varying levels of...
As reported in JAMA Oncology, Sacher et al have prospectively validated a plasma droplet digital polymerase chain reaction (ddPCR) assay for detecting common EGFR and KRAS mutations in patients with advanced nonsquamous non–small cell lung cancer. Study Details The study involved 180...
In a study published by Kressin et al in JAMA, Nancy R. Kressin, PhD, of the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System, Boston University School of Medicine, and colleagues examined the content, readability, and understandability of dense breast notifications sent to women following screening...
Long-term use of the cholesterol-lowering drugs statins does not appear to decrease a patient’s risk of colorectal cancer, suggests a new, large case-control study from Penn Medicine published by Mamtani et al in PLOS Medicine. The observational analysis of over 100,000 patients’...
Although laparoscopic radical cystectomy and robotic-assisted radical cystectomy continue to grow in popularity and are successful in the treatment of bladder cancer, they are still considered experimental approaches. Using data collected by the Section of Uro-Technology of the European Association ...
In a Canadian retrospective population-based cohort study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Thavendiranathan et al found that trastuzumab (Herceptin)-based regimens were associated with an increased risk of treatment-related cardiac dysfunction among women with breast cancer, with an...
ASCO has adapted a Clinical Care Ontario (CCO) clinical practice guideline on the selection of optimal adjuvant chemotherapy for early breast cancer and adjuvant targeted therapy for HER2-positive breast cancer, as reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The adaptation was based on review by...
Positive donor Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) serostatus increases the risk for graft-vs-host disease but does not affect relapse-free or overall survival among patients with acute leukemia receiving allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT), according to a study from the Acute...
In an analysis of the phase III BOLERO trials reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, André et al found that the addition of everolimus (Afinitor) to trastuzumab (Herceptin) and chemotherapy was associated with a progression-free survival benefit in advanced HER2-positive breast cancer ...
Patients who had cancer before receiving an organ transplant were more likely to die of any cause, die of cancer, or develop a new cancer than organ recipients who did not previously have cancer, a new study published by Acuna et al in the journal Transplantation has found. However, the increased...
A 5-year study published by Hannan et al in the European Journal of Cancer showed that stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) to treat prostate cancer offers a higher cure rate than more traditional approaches, according to researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center Harold C. Simmons...
On April 25, 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved cabozantinib (Cabometyx) tablets for the treatment of advanced renal cell carcinoma in patients who have received prior antiangiogenic therapy. Cabozantinib is a dual tyrosine kinase inhibitor of MET and VEGFR2. The...
On April 25, 2016, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted breakthrough therapy designation to the anti–programmed death 1 antibody nivolumab (Opdivo) for the treatment of patients with recurrent or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck that previously received...
Results from the I-SPY 2 TRIAL show that a neoadjuvant therapy combination of the antibody-drug conjugate ado-trastuzumab emtansine (Kadcyla) and pertuzumab (Perjeta) was more beneficial than paclitaxel plus trastuzumab for women with HER2-positive invasive breast cancer, according to research...
Radiation is a commonly used therapeutic option to treat liver metastases, with the majority of tumors maintained under control after a year. However, some patients do not respond as well to radiation treatment, and the factors that predict patient outcomes are unclear. Moffitt Cancer Center...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Roemer et al identified PD-L1 (programmed cell death ligand 1) and PD-L2 genetic alterations in patients with classic Hodgkin lymphoma, finding that 9p24.1 amplification was common and associated with advanced-stage disease and poorer...
The irreversible ErbB family inhibitor afatinib (Gilotrif) was associated with improvement in progression-free survival and time to treatment failure vs the reversible EGFR (epidermal growth factor receptor) inhibitor gefitinib (Iressa) in the first-line treatment of EGFR-mutant non–small...
The cost and side effects associated with traditional cancer therapy are major concerns, and in part many patients are seeking natural remedies such as graviola, curcumin, and moringa, due to these concerns. Traditional cancer therapy is increasingly effective, and oncologists are achieving better...
As described in the full report on page 39, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) announced a Blue Ribbon Panel of experts and advocates who will inform the scientific direction and goals at NCI of Vice President Joe Biden’s National Cancer Moonshot Initiative. Members of the research community and...
Using the National Cancer Institute’s Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (CTCAE), researchers from Columbia University, New York, and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, identified six severe adverse event clusters in patients with advanced prostate cancer. The clusters...
Three measures of aggressive end-of-life care “were associated with relatively large differences in family member–reported quality ratings for end-of-life care and a lower likelihood that patients with advanced-stage cancer received care congruent with their preferences,” according to a study in...
As reported in Scientific Reports, Gaul and colleagues used high-performance mass spectrometry to interrogate the serum metabolome of patients with early-stage ovarian cancer and healthy controls. They were able to define a linear support vector machine model of 16 metabolites that identified...
As reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Asim and colleagues found that choline kinase alpha (CHKA) acts as a chaperone for the androgen receptor (AR) and may serve as a therapeutic target in prostate cancer. CHKA expression was found to be androgen regulated in cell lines,...