As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Shipley et al in the NRG Oncology Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG), the final analysis of the phase III RTOG 9601 trial showed that the addition of antiandrogen therapy with bicalutamide to radiation therapy significantly improves overall ...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Smith et al, the final results of the phase III FACE trial showed no difference in disease-free or overall survival for adjuvant letrozole vs anastrozole in postmenopausal women with hormone receptor–positive node-positive early breast...
Studies presented at the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium added to growing evidence that tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes are important prognostic factors in breast cancer. One investigation evaluated their impact in advanced HER2-positive breast cancer, finding a linear relationship between...
By 2050, the death rates from malignant melanoma will have decreased from their current levels, but the numbers of people dying from the disease will have increased due to the aging of populations. However, if new treatments for the deadly skin cancer prove to be effective, the numbers of deaths...
In a phase II study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Ornstein et al found that an intermittent schedule of sunitinib (Sutent) may be feasible in patients with previously untreated metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Study Details In the study, 37 patients with clear cell metastatic...
In a study reported in the Journal of Oncology Practice, Shen et al found that more than three-quarters of patients receiving targeted oral therapy for chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) reached the catastrophic phase of the Medicare Part D benefit within the calendar year of starting such treatment....
In a Dutch study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, van den Bogaard et al found that a model including the volume of the left ventricle receiving 5 Gy (LV-V5) might provide improved prediction of acute cardiac events in patients with breast cancer receiving radiotherapy. Prior findings...
People with rare cancers now have the option of joining a national clinical trial testing leading-edge immunotherapies for a wide variety of tumor types. It’s the first federally funded immunotherapy trial devoted to rare cancers. Despite their name, rare cancers make up more than 20% of...
Treatment with the multikinase inhibitor cabozantinib (Cabometyx) alone or with erlotinib (Tarceva) improved progression-free survival vs erlotinib alone in second- or third-line treatment of advanced nonsquamous epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) wild-type non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC),...
In October 2015, ASCO launched the Health Policy Fellowship program to help the next generation of oncologists with an interest in health policy to develop the skills and experience necessary to achieve their goals and shape cancer care policy in an increasingly complicated and diverse care...
The statistics on the rising rates of skin cancer are alarming. According to the Skin Cancer Foundation, each year over 5.4 million cases of nonmelanoma skin cancer are treated in more than 3.3 million people, and an additional 76,380 people are diagnosed with the deadliest form of skin cancer,...
Here are several abstracts selected from the proceedings of this year’s American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, highlighting newer therapeutics in follicular lymphoma. For full details of these study abstracts, visit http://www.bloodjournal.org/content/128/22....
Response rates of 90% to 100% were achieved in early studies evaluating the combination of brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) and nivolumab (Opdivo) in relapsed or refractory classical Hodgkin lymphoma. The findings were presented at the 2016 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting &...
High-risk patients with smoldering multiple myeloma responded to a regimen of elotuzumab (Empliciti), lenalidomide (Revlimid), and dexamethasone, in a multicenter phase II study led by Irene Ghobrial, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston.1 “The high response rates among this patient...
For patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) T790M–positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), osimertinib (Tagrisso) demonstrated clinically superior efficacy over pemetrexed (Alimta) plus a platinum agent, with a 70% reduction in the risk of disease progression, according to the...
We know from chaos theory that even if you had a perfect model of the world, you’d need infinite precision in order to predict future events. —Nassim Nicholas Taleb The term “precision oncology” is used to describe diverse strategies in cancer medicine ranging from the use of targeted therapies...
In a phase Ib study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Seymour et al found that the combination of the BCL2 inhibitor venetoclax (Venclexta) and the anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody rituximab (Rituxan) was highly active in patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia...
A new analysis of the CALGB 80405 (Alliance) trial suggests that people with metastatic colorectal cancer who are more physically active fare better than those who are less active. In a large clinical trial, patients who at the time of starting chemotherapy reported engaging in physical activity...
A steady decline over more than 2 decades has resulted in a 25% drop in the overall cancer death rate in the United States. The drop equates to 2.1 million fewer cancer deaths between 1991 and 2014. The news comes from "Cancer Statistics, 2017," the American Cancer Society’s...
Findings from the National Institutes of Health Pediatric and Wildtype Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors (GISTs) Clinic, reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Weldon et al, indicate that more extensive or serial resections are not associated with improvement in event-free survival in...
A large population-based observational study by Xabier García-Albéniz, MD, PhD, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and colleagues evaluating the effectiveness and safety of screening colonoscopy for the prevention of colorectal cancer in people aged 70 to 74 and 75 to 79 has found...
In a phase II Canadian Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium Study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Lassaletta et al found that vinblastine monotherapy was associated with response or stable disease in most children with chemotherapy-naive low-grade glioma. Vinblastine monotherapy has shown ...
An analysis of data from nearly 6 million screening mammograms found no evidence for a clear cutoff age to stop breast cancer screening. Screening mammography among women aged 75 years was associated with higher cancer detection and lower recall rates than among younger women in the study. These...
Young women who carry the BRCA1 and/or BRCA2 mutation and develop breast cancer seem to have similar survival compared with young women who have BRCA-negative breast cancer. However, women with BRCA-positive triple-negative breast cancer have an 11% survival advantage compared with those with...
On December 21, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowed marketing of a new tissue-expander system for soft-tissue expansion in two-stage breast reconstruction following mastectomy and in the treatment of underdeveloped breasts and soft-tissue deformities. A patient uses a dose...
The investigational CD33-directed antibody-drug conjugate vadastuximab talirine yielded high overall and complete response rates when combined with standard “7+3” chemotherapy for patients newly diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.1 Results from this phase Ib study were presented at the 2016...
Additional interventions following upfront autologous stem cell transplant in multiple myeloma did not further improve progression-free or overall survival over transplant alone in a multicenter study presented as a late-breaking abstract at the 2016 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual...
Children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) considered at standard risk for relapse should continue to receive standard-intensity regimens, according to findings from the international randomized AIEOP-BFM ALL 2000 trial.1 A reduced-intensity treatment for children with ALL considered to have ...
Asian patients with head and neck cancer live longer with pembrolizumab (Keytruda) immunotherapy than the overall population, according to a subanalysis of the KEYNOTE-012 trial presented at the ESMO Asia 2016 Congress in Singapore. “Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma is the seventh most...
Postmenopausal women with breast cancer who took aromatase inhibitors demonstrated endothelial dysfunction, a predictor of cardiovascular disease, according to study results presented at the 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held December 6 to 10 (Abstract s5-07). Aromatase inhibitors are...
The investigational immunotherapeutic IMC-20D7S was found to be well tolerated and somewhat active in patients with advanced melanoma, including one complete response, according to the results of a phase I/Ib trial reported by Danny N. Khalil, MD, PhD, and colleagues in Clinical Cancer Research....
GUEST EDITORAdolescent and Young Adult Oncology explores the unique physical, psychosocial, social, emotional, sexual, and financial challenges adolescents and young adults with cancer face. The column is guest edited by Brandon M. Hayes-Lattin, MD, FACP, Associate Professor of Medicine and...
The optimal use of new antiemetics was the subject of a presentation at the 14th Annual School of Breast Oncology, Emory University, Atlanta, by Frankie Ann Holmes, MD, Associate Director of Breast Oncology Research at Texas Oncology, Houston. “The science of nausea and vomiting is so compelling,...
The information contained in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting clinical studies focused on immunotherapy as treatment for renal cell carcinoma. These studies are researching combination chemotherapies; immunotherapies; radiosurgery techniques; stereotactic body...
In a phase III intergroup trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Brigitta G. Baumert, MD, of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC), Brussels, and colleagues found no progression-free survival difference between temozolomide chemotherapy and radiotherapy alone in...
People who consistently smoked an average of less than 1 cigarette per day over their lifetime had a 64% higher risk of earlier death than never-smokers, and those who smoked between 1 and 10 cigarettes a day had an 87% higher risk of earlier death than never-smokers, according to a new study from...
In an interview with The ASCO Post, Steven Piantadosi, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, expressed enthusiasm for the Oncology Research Information Exchange Network (ORIEN) network of data-sharing. “With...
Checkpoint inhibitors and targeted therapies are reshaping the landscape of cancer care across multiple tumor sites, but treatments for brain tumors remain decidedly unchanged. The standard of care for high-grade gliomas in the front-line setting—a combination of surgery and chemoradiation—is the...
Oncologists may be accustomed to looking for commonalities in patients, but highly personalized therapies are now being developed based on mutational analysis of tumors. According to data presented at the Cedars-Sinai annual symposium on New Therapeutics in Oncology: The Road to Personalized...
Positive studies about brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) in cutaneous T-cell lymphoma1 and rituximab (Rituxan) maintenance therapy in mantle cell lymphoma (MCL)2 were reported at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Hematology (ASH). “These abstracts each focus on approved agents and...
Trial results presented by Stadtmauer during the 58th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition in San Diego (Abstract LBA-1) suggest two therapies that are often added to standard therapy in patients with multiple myeloma do not improve rates of progression-free survival ...
Compared with standard therapy, pacritinib significantly reduces spleen size among people with myelofibrosis who have very low levels of platelets, according to a late-breaking study presented by Mascarenhas et al during the 58th American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition...
It may be possible to safely prevent one of the most common—and costly to treat—infections contracted by hospitalized patients undergoing bone marrow transplantation for the treatment of blood cancers, according to a study from the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of...
In the largest-ever study on screening mammography outcomes, researchers found that there is no clear cutoff age to stop breast cancer screening. The findings were presented November 28, 2016, at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). This research adds support ...
Although alcohol consumption is associated with increasing the risk of many cancers, including liver, pancreatic, colon, rectal, and breast, the link between alcohol and higher risk of melanoma is equivocal. Now, a large prospective study by Rivera et al investigating the link between alcohol...
In an analysis reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Chen et al predicted that an increase in the number of patients living with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) due to improved treatment with oral targeted therapies will be accompanied by a markedly increased overall cost to patients and ...
Chambers et al found that a mindfulness-based cognitive therapy intervention did not improve measures of distress or anxiety vs minimally enhanced usual care among men with advanced prostate cancer, according to an Australian study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. In the study, 189...
Like many patients in the chronic phase of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), my cancer was discovered during a routine physical, when an off-the-chart white blood cell count signaled a serious problem that my primary care physician attributed to unspecified internal bleeding. Fortunately for me, my...
Impaired sleep quality is a concerning problem for many patients with cancer, and pharmacologic treatments come with many negative effects. Several small studies indicate that yoga improves persistent fatigue, sleep disturbance, anxiety, and quality of life, in addition to reducing the need for ...
A randomized phase II clinical trial evaluating cabozantinib (Cabometyx) compared with standard-of-care sunitinib (Sutent) as first-line therapy for patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma has found that cabozantinib reduced the rate of disease progression or death by 34% compared with...