The 2022 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition took place in the vibrant city of New Orleans. The meeting brought together tens of thousands of participants from across the world to present and discuss the results of studies that ranged from hypothesis-generating to...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Mariados et al found that use of a hyaluronic acid rectal spacer reduced radiation exposure of the rectum—and reduced the incidence of grade ≥ 2 gastrointestinal (GI) toxicity—in patients receiving hypofractionated radiation therapy for prostate cancer. Study...
Investigators have developed a predictive model that may be used in research and eventually clinical settings to identify individuals at high risk of developing endometrial cancer who would benefit from screenings, according to a report published by Shi et al in the Journal of the National Cancer...
Investigators have confirmed that rates of pancreatic cancer are rising overall, but they are rising faster among younger female patients—particularly among patients who identified as Black—than among male patients of the same age, according to a new study published by Abboud et al in...
Investigators have found that socioeconomic deprivation, the presence of modifiable chronic health conditions, and frailty may all independently be associated with increased rates of late mortality among pediatric cancer survivors, according to a new study published by Ehrhardt et al in JAMA...
Researchers have discovered that dietary interventions may help reduce fatigue, improve diet quality, and lead to an overall better quality of life for cancer survivors, according to a new study published by Weinhold et al in Nutrition and Cancer. Background For many cancer survivors, the side...
The American Cancer Society (ACS) has released its Cancer Statistics 2023 report, which showed that overall cancer mortality has dropped by 33% since 1991, averting an estimated 3.8 million cancer deaths, according to the report. Data in the report also showed that women between the ages of 20 and...
Guest Editor’s Note: Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy is a common and potentially debilitating side effect of neurotoxic chemotherapy. It worsens the quality of life for many cancer survivors, with limited treatment options. In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology...
The most humbling—and fortunate—experience I’ve had since I was diagnosed with osteosarcoma 13 years ago at the age of 43 was being treated in the pediatric wing of a major cancer center in New York City. It is pretty difficult to feel sorry for yourself when you are sitting next to a 14-year-old...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Global Oncology series, Guest Editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with Kristin Flowers, MD, a general surgeon at Tanana Valley Clinic at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital in rural Alaska. Dr. Flowers’ surgical areas of interest include treating...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Derek Raghavan, MD, PhD, FACP, FRACP, FASCO, Founding President of the Levine Cancer Institute. Established in 2011, the Levine Cancer Institute is part of Atrium Health (formerly the...
At the inaugural MD Anderson Clinical Education Symposium on Immunotherapy Organ Toxicity Management (IOTOX), a panel of experts discussed common immune-related adverse events associated with immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy, including gastrointestinal (GI), hepatic, dermatologic, pulmonary, and ...
KRAS G12C–mutated colorectal cancer represents 3% to 4% of metastatic colorectal cancers. Like other KRAS-mutated metastatic colorectal cancers, this group of patients represents a patient population with an unmet need, with limited options beyond two lines of therapy. In contrast to other KRAS...
What is team-based cancer care, and how has it evolved over the past decade? A special series in ASCO’s JCO Oncology Practice highlights transformations in team-based delivery models within the cancer care system and their potential direction. A carefully curated series of 15 peer-reviewed articles ...
The ASCO Board of Directors recently took further action to support members in lower-middle–income countries. In alignment with ASCO’s strategic goal of making a global impact, the Board elected to expand free membership for physicians from lower-middle–income countries, as defined by the World...
On December 22, 2022, mosunetuzumab-axgb, a bispecific CD20-directed CD3 T-cell engager, was granted accelerated approval for adults with relapsed or refractory follicular lymphoma after two or more lines of systemic therapy.1 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was based on findings in the...
The high-energy vibe at the 2022 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exposition reflected the welcomed presence of enthusiastic on-site attendees and the high quality of the research presented. The ASCO Post has already reported in detail on many of these presentations, and now...
Julio C. Chavez, MD, Associate Member in the Lymphoma Section of the Department of Malignant Hematology at Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, who co-moderated the session where the glofitamab study was presented, shared his thoughts with The ASCO Post. “Glofitamab has great activity in high-risk...
Patients with large B-cell lymphoma who achieve a complete response to glofitamab are very likely to remain in remission 12 months after the end of treatment, according to Martin Hutchings, MD, PhD, of Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, who reported these findings at the 2022 American Society of...
The latest analysis of the TROPiCS-02 breast cancer trial showed that the antibody-drug conjugate sacituzumab govitecan-hziy is effective in patients with a wide range of Trop-2 expression levels. The findings were reported at the 2022 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium by Hope S. Rugo, MD, FASCO, ...
Press briefing moderator Virginia Kaklamani, MD, Professor of Medicine at UT Health San Antonio and leader of the Breast Cancer Program at UT Health San Antonio MD Anderson Cancer Center, said the findings from RxPONDER and those regarding the tumor microenvironment of metastasis (TMEM) doorway are ...
Suboptimal treatment, which often underlies worse outcomes for cancer in racial minorities, did not explain a recent finding from the landmark RxPONDER study: non-Hispanic Black women with hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative, lymph node–positive breast cancer had worse outcomes compared with...
The invited discussant of the SOFT analysis was Polly Niravath, MD, Associate Professor and Director of the Cancer Survivorship Program at Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas. She noted that the study evaluated the use of the Breast Cancer Index (BCI) as a prognostic tool in early hormone...
The advent of the BCR::ABL1 tyrosine kinase inhibitors for the treatment of Philadelphia chromosome (Ph)-positive chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) was a therapeutic miracle that changed the management paradigm of CML. The first of them, imatinib, was developed in the late 1990s.1,2 Within a few...
Catherine S. Diefenbach, MD, Associate Professor at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, Director of the Clinical Lymphoma Program, and Director of Hematology Translational Research at Perlmutter Cancer Center, in New York, called the findings from the TRANSFORM trial “very striking.” “This study...
Initial data from the global phase III SPOTLIGHT trial may herald the use of a new targeted agent for a subset of patients with advanced gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma.1 The addition ofzolbetuximab, which targets the transmembrane protein claudin18.2 (CLDN18.2), to chemotherapy ...
Julie R. Gralow, MD, FACP, FASCO, Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and Association for Clinical Oncology, issued the following statement after President Joseph R. Biden’s State of the Union address earlier this week. “ASCO applauds...
Investigators have found further evidence to quantify the vast, lingering impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic on timely cancer screening—highlighting the urgent need for health-care providers to address significant delays to cancer screenings in populations most likely to delay testing,...
More than one in two patients with cancer may experience symptoms of long COVID for more than 6 months after initial COVID-19 infection, according to a new study published by Dagher et al in eLife. The findings were comparable to the reported incidence of long COVID in the general population, but...
Studies show that although clonal hematopoiesis is an age-related phenomenon in the general population, it can also be induced by exposure to chemotherapy, which can affect both the emergence and evolution of clonal hematopoiesis clones, accelerating aging at both the physiologic and molecular...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) will award Carl H. June, MD, with the 2023 AACR Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research during the AACR Annual Meeting 2023, taking place from April 14 to 19 in Orlando, Florida. Dr. June is the Richard W. Vague Professor in...
Methotrexate may be linked to an elevated risk of three types of skin cancer, according to a new study published by Polesie et al in the British Journal of Cancer. Additionally, among patients taking the drug to treat moderate to severe psoriasis, an increased risk was observed only for basal cell...
The sessions’ invited discussant, Imane H. El Dika, MD, Assistant Attending Physician at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, said the results of the two trials in advanced biliary tract cancer were clear, and did not change the current standard of care of durvalumab combined with...
Biliary tract cancer is particularly difficult to treat, with a median overall survival of about 1 year with standard-of-care gemcitabine-based regimens. Advanced biliary tract cancer is an area of significant unmet need because of its aggressive nature, limited treatment options, and poor...
Researchers have found that stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) may be an effective treatment for patients with early-stage lung neuroendocrine tumors, according to a new study published by Oliver et al in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology • Biology • Physics. Background Primary...
Researchers revealed that the blood pressure drug losartan may prevent immunotherapy-induced edema and allow patients with glioblastoma to continue receiving immune checkpoint inhibitors without developing adverse effects in the brain, according to a new study published by Datta et al in...
The World Health Organization (WHO) has released a new Global Breast Cancer Initiative Framework, providing a roadmap to attain targets to save 2.5 million lives from breast cancer by 2040. The new framework recommends that countries implement three pillars of health promotion—early detection,...
The newly identified category of “HER2-low” breast cancer has raised many new issues in this malignancy now that the DESTINY Breast-041 trial determined that fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) may effectively treat this tumor. Among the issues are challenges in accurately identifying just...
A new study from University Hospitals (UH) Connor Whole Health found children, adolescents, and young adults with cancer or sickle cell disease treated at a pediatric academic medical center reported clinically significant reductions in pain, stress, and anxiety in response to massage therapy....
The UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening (UKCTOCS) has shown that general population screening did not significantly reduce ovarian and tubal cancer deaths, and the researchers concluded that such screening cannot be recommended. The findings from the study prompted the Ovarian Cancer ...
According to a review published by Ashley et al in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, preexisting dementia may complicate cancer care and increase the risk of worse clinical outcome and inferior patient experience. People living with dementia are more likely to have cancer diagnosed at an...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Morton et al, the European phase III FOxTROT trial has shown that neoadjuvant plus adjuvant oxaliplatin/fluoropyrimidine resulted in a reduced risk of residual disease or disease recurrence vs adjuvant oxaliplatin/fluoropyrimidine in patients with...
Higher consumption of ultraprocessed foods may be linked to increased cancer burden and mortality, according to a new, UK-based study published by Chang et al in eClinicalMedicine. Ultraprocessed foods are food items which have been heavily processed during their production—such as fizzy drinks,...
Age-based heuristics may lead to large differences in breast cancer treatment based on small differences in chronologic age, according to a new study published by Talcott et al in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology • Biology • and Physics. Background Radiation therapy often is given...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Josephine M.N. Lopes Cardozo, MD, PhD, and colleagues found that a higher score on a polygenic risk score consisting of 313 common genetic variants (the PRS313) was generally associated with more favorable tumor characteristics in patients...
In a U.S. cohort study reported in JAMA Oncology, Voruganti et al found that the uptake of immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy for patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has been associated with “modest” improvements in overall survival, particularly among older patients. As...
Population-based genomic screening may facilitate early detection of medullary thyroid cancer in patients with variants in the RET gene, according to a new study published by Pichardo et al in JAMA Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery. Background Medullary thyroid cancer accounts for 2% to 5% of...
The targeted therapy momelotinib may offer clinically significant improvement in disease-related symptoms, including anemia and spleen enlargement, for patients with myelofibrosis, according to a novel study published by Srdan Verstovsek, MD, PhD, and colleagues in The Lancet. The findings support...
Individuals who ovulate for longer over their lifetimes may have a higher risk of developing ovarian cancer, suggesting that suppressing ovulation can lower this risk, according to a new study published by Fu et al in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The researchers also offered clues...
New research shows that patients with type 2 diabetes may experience a substantially higher rate of cancer mortality than the general population—by 18% for all cancers combined, 9% for breast cancer, and as much as 2.4-fold for colorectal cancer—according to a new study published by Ling et al in...