Robert Seeger, MD, Division Head for Basic and Translational Research of the Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA), has been selected for the 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant Consortium (PBMTC). As the eighth...
Laurie H. Glimcher, MD, an internationally recognized immunologist, has been named the next president and CEO of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Glimcher is currently the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of the Medical College at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, where she is also Professor...
On February 26, 2016, everolimus (Afinitor) was approved for treatment of adult patients with progressive, well-differentiated, nonfunctional neuroendocrine tumors of gastrointestinal or lung origin that are unresectable, locally advanced, or metastatic.1,2 The drug was previously approved for...
“Proton therapy may very well offer reduced late toxicities. Reflecting back on past reirradiation studies both within and outside of the cooperative groups, it seems that the late toxicities in this retrospective study were somewhat similar,” said David Raben, MD, Professor of Radiation Oncology...
Proton-beam radiation therapy may be an attractive option for reirradiation of recurrent head and neck cancer, with encouraging disease control and survival rates and improved toxicity rates compared to photon reirradiation, according to John Han-Chih Chang, MD. Most head and neck cancers present...
“As radiation oncologists, we have pushed some important envelopes to try to mitigate long-term toxicity,” said David Raben, MD, Professor of Radiation Oncology at the University of Colorado Cancer Center, Aurora, Colorado. “We’ve been able to utilize intensity-modulated radiation techniques to...
Efforts to reduce the late toxicity associated with chemoradiotherapy for locally advanced head and neck squamous cell cancer have focused on radiation therapy dose de-escalation in select populations, according to James Melotek, MD, a radiation oncologist at the University of Chicago. “Patients...
“This is really the dawn of a new era in the treatment of head and neck cancer, particularly with immunotherapy,” said Brian Nussenbaum, MD, Director of Head and Neck Surgical Oncology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. According to Dr. Nussenbaum, a better understanding is...
Definitive radiation, with or without chemotherapy, induces a combination of immune-stimulating and inhibitory effects in patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck, according to research presented by Jonathan Schoenfeld, MD, MPhil, MPH, at the 2016 Multidisciplinary Head and Neck...
Smokers whose oropharyngeal tumors are positive for the human papillomavirus (HPV) might need more aggressive treatment for their disease, according to research presented by Jose Zevallos, MD, at the 2016 Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancer Symposium in Scottsdale, Arizona.1 Over time,...
Earlier this month, experts from four major institutions issued the annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer (1975–2012). This year’s report showed that death rates continued to decline for all cancers combined, as well as for most cancer sites for men and women of all major racial and...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved obinutuzumab (Gazyva), an anti-CD-20 monoclonal antibody, for use in combination with bendamustine (Bendeka, Treanda) followed by obinutuzumab monotherapy for the treatment of patients with follicular lymphoma who relapsed after, or are...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved everolimus (Afinitor), an mTOR inhibitor, for the treatment of adult patients with progressive, well-differentiated nonfunctional neuroendocrine tumors of gastrointestinal (GI) or lung origin with unresectable, locally advanced, or metastatic ...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the tyrosine kinase inhibitor crizotinib (Xalkori) for the treatment of patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors are ROS1-positive. Crizotinib was first approved in 2011 for the treatment of patients whose tumors are ...
The Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) Annual Cancer Symposium is not only the largest surgical oncology conference in the world, but the 69th meeting, recently held in Boston, is the group’s largest ever, according to SSO Past President Jeffrey A. Drebin, MD, PhD, the John Rhea Barton Professor...
Surgeons are clearly more comfortable in the operating room than the laboratory, but there is a place for them in translational cancer research as well, according to one surgeon who has led cutting-edge research in pancreatic cancer. “Translational studies require access to patients, to tissue, and ...
A quality improvement initiative to reduce the reliance of patients on visits to the emergency department for treatment of side effects related to cancer treatment was reported to be highly effective, according to early findings from a new study. 1 The strategy, involving a telephone triage...
On March 26, 2013, ASCO announced that it had completed a prototype of CancerLinQ™, the Society’s groundbreaking health information–technology initiative to achieve higher quality, higher value cancer care with better outcomes for patients. At this year’s 2016 ASCO Quality Care Symposium, Robert S. ...
The Cancer Drug Development Forum exists to provide, as the name implies, a meeting place to bring together academia, the pharmaceutical industry, and most important regulators for full and frank discussions to facilitate anticancer drug development. In the recent past, the Cancer Drug Development...
Venous thromboembolic events are more prevalent in patients with cancer than in persons without it. Cancer is associated with a high rate of venous thromboembolism recurrence, bleeding, requirement for long-term anticoagulation, and reduced quality of life. Moreover, thrombosis is the second most...
As reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, Burger and colleagues recently reported findings of the RESONATE-2 trial of ibrutinib (Imbruvica) vs chlorambucil (Leukeran) as initial therapy for elderly patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).1 The study met its primary endpoint of...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine and at the 2015 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting, Jan A. Burger, MD, PhD, and colleagues found that first-line treatment with the oral Bruton’s tyrosine kinase inhibitor ibrutinib (Imbruvica) improved progression-free and overall...
A new study from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center evaluating the use of neurofeedback found a decrease in the experience of chronic pain and an increase in quality of life among patients with neuropathic pain. The study was presented at the annual meeting of the American...
Women with advanced ovarian cancer caused by genetic mutations—including in BRCA1 and BRCA2—lived significantly longer than those who did not have a mutation following treatment with a chemotherapy regimen that included bevacizumab (Avastin). According to a study, those with BRCA1 and a ...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Sadowski et al found that Ga-68 dotatate positron-emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) improved detection of gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors compared with 111In-pentetreotide single-photon emission computed...
As reported by Lichtman et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, an ancillary study (Alliance A171201) of the CALGB 49907 trial showed no significant association of pretreatment creatinine clearance with grade ≥ 3 hematologic toxicity, dose modification, therapy completion, relapse-free...
The phase III ICON6 trial showed that adding cediranib to platinum-based therapy increased progression-free survival and toxicity in women with first relapse of platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer, reported Ledermann et al in The Lancet. Study Details In the double-blind trial, 456 women with...
Updated results of the phase I ASCEND-1 trial, reported by Kim et al in The Lancet Oncology, indicate that the ALK inhibitor ceritinib (Zykadia) produced high response rates in advanced ALK-rearranged non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), including intracranial disease, in both patients with...
Dr. Robert Rifkin, Medical Director of Biosimilars at US Oncology Research, moderates a roundtable discussion on Global Perspectives on the Integration of Biosimilars into Oncology Practice, held in conjunction with the 2015 American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida....
Families of patients dying with lung or colorectal cancer judged end-of-life care as better when it was less aggressive, involved earlier hospice, avoided intensive care unit (ICU) admission, and included death outside of the hospital, according to a study reported by Wright et al in JAMA. Study...
In a long-term follow up of two large U.S. prospective cohorts reported in JAMA Oncology, Cao et al found that regular use of aspirin was associated with a reduced risk of gastrointestinal (GI) tract cancers. In 2015, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended the use of aspirin in...
In a phase III trial (ECOG-ACRIN E2805) reported in The Lancet by Haas et al, no benefit of adjuvant VEGFR (vascular endothelial growth factor receptor) inhibitor treatment with sunitinib or sorafenib (Nexavar) was observed vs placebo in patients with completely resected high-risk nonmetastatic...
Among patients with breast cancer, lung cancer, or chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), those who had a specific form of the CYP3A7 gene (CYP3A7*1C) had worse outcomes compared with those who did not have CYP3A7*1C. This may be related to how the patients metabolize the therapeutics used to treat...
Latinas who eat processed meats such as bacon and sausage may have an increased risk for breast cancer, according to a new study that did not find the same association among white women. The study, published by Kim et al in Cancer Causes & Control, suggests that race, ethnicity, genetics,...
Consuming a diet with a high glycemic index was independently associated with an increased risk of developing lung cancer in non-Hispanic whites, according to a new epidemiologic study from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. This research, published by Melkonian et al in Cancer...
A study published by Beyaz et al in Nature reveals how a high-fat diet makes the cells of the intestinal lining more likely to become cancerous. It joins a growing body of research that finds obesity and eating a high-fat, high-calorie diet are significant risk factors for many types of cancer....
In a study reported in JAMA, Bekelman et al assessed the site of death, health-care utilization, and hospital expenditures among patients aged ≥ 65 years dying with cancer in Belgium, Canada, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United States. The United States had lower...
In a Finnish study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Uusitalo et al found that patients with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) were at increased risk of other cancers in addition to nervous system disease. The study included data from a population-based series of patients with...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Garcia-Manero et al, the phase III ONTIME trial showed that treatment with the Ras mimetic rigosertib did not significantly improve overall survival vs best supportive care in patients with high-risk myelodysplastic syndromes after failure of hypomethylating...
In the phase II POPLAR trial reported in The Lancet, Fehrenbacher et al found that the anti–PD-L1 (programmed cell death ligand 1) antibody atezolizumab improved overall survival vs docetaxel in patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who had progressed on prior platinum-based...
According to a study led by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) researchers, a majority of patients diagnosed with breast cancer go on to develop symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and in most of these cases, symptoms persist for at least a year. These findings were published by Voigt et ...
A majority of people with advanced cancer want to hear findings from DNA sequencing and to learn how those results may affect their health and treatment options, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists report. Their findings were reported by Gray et al in Genetics in Medicine. The discovery...
The addition of fosaprepitant (Emend) to palonosetron and dexamethasone reduced the risk of emesis during 5 weeks of chemoradiotherapy for cervical cancer, according to the phase III GAND-emesis trial reported in The Lancet Oncology by Ruhlmann et al. Study Details In the double-blind trial, 234...
A retrospective analysis of the phase III registration trial IMCL-9815 of cetuximab (Erbitux) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Rosenthal et al suggests that the addition of cetuximab to radiotherapy was of benefit irrespective of p16 expression in patients with locoregionally...
As reported by Shaw et al in The New England Journal of Medicine, a woman with metastatic ALK-rearranged non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who had received multiple prior therapies, including the first- and second-generation ALK inhibitors crizotinib (Xalkori) and ceritinib (Zykadia),...
As the nation embarks on an ambitious “moonshot” to accelerate progress against cancer, our system for delivering today's cancer treatments must be better prepared to bring advances to all patients, warns a new report from ASCO. The State of Cancer Care in America: 2016, published...
Researchers at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre have confirmed in a screening effectiveness study that early screening with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can reduce breast cancer mortality for female survivors of childhood Hodgkin lymphoma who received chest radiation. The findings published by...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Cristofanilli et al, the final results of the phase III PALOMA-3 trial show that the addition of the CDK4/CDK6 inhibitor palbociclib (Ibrance) to fulvestrant (Faslodex) improved progression-free survival in women with hormone receptor–positive,...
The oral Aurora A kinase inhibitor alisertib was active in combination with irinotecan/temozolomide in patients with relapsed or refractory neuroblastoma, in a phase I dose-escalation trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by DuBois et al. The maximum tolerated dose of alisertib was 60...
A tumor’s immune response to a single dose of the HER2 inhibitor trastuzumab (Herceptin) predicted which patients with HER2-positive breast cancer would respond to the drug on a more long-term basis, according to the results of a study published by Varadan et al in Clinical Cancer Research....