Peter Marks, MD, PhD, Director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), was born in Brooklyn, New York, near Sheepshead Bay—an area named for the Sheepshead, a fish that can no longer be found in the waters that frame the neighborhood....
The COVID-19 pandemic remains a global health issue, putting unprecedented stress on health-care systems, with important implications for cancer care. Although at this stage the data are fairly limited, we know that patients with cancer are far more vulnerable to worse outcomes, including a greater ...
I have had two life-threatening cancers over the past 3 decades and can say without equivocation that there is never a good time to get cancer. My first cancer diagnosis happened in 1992, just weeks after I had accepted the position of Chief Executive Officer of Hughes Electronics. The job meant a...
Memorial Sloan kettering Cancer Center (MSK) announced that Sloan Kettering Institute (SKI) researchers Regina Bou Puerto and Mijin Kim, PhD, have been named 2021 Marie-Josée Kravis Women in Science Endeavor (Kravis WiSE) fellowship grant recipients. The Kravis WiSE initiative, created in 2020,...
Treatment with abemaciclib, an orally available inhibitor of CDK4/6, has been associated with venous thromboembolic events (VTE), elevated aminotransferases (EAT), and interstitial lung disease (ILD). Although more episodes of VTE, EAT, and ILD were reported in patients receiving abemaciclib plus...
By way of her family lineage, Aparna Parikh, MD, seemed destined for a career in medicine. “Both of my parents are physicians, as well as my maternal grandfather. I have two other siblings, all of whom are in the medical field. Medicine has always been part of my life since childhood. My parents...
In 1% to 2% of cancer cases, the primary site of tumor origin cannot be determined. Because many modern cancer therapeutics target primary tumors, the prognosis for a cancer of unknown primary (CUP) is poor, with a median overall survival of 2.7 to 16 months. In order to receive a more specific...
“It is possible that within the next several years, perhaps 75% of cancers can be detected by screening,” Bert Vogelstein, MD, PhD, projected at the Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) 2021 International Conference on Surgical Cancer Care.1 “I anticipate that perhaps 50% of cancers can be detected...
For this installment of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, spoke with Griffin P. Rodgers, MD, MACP, Director of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Rodgers, a physician-scientist,...
Narjust Duma, MD, was recently named Associate Director of the Cancer Care Equity Program and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School. In her role at the Cancer Care Equity Program, Dr. Duma will develop strategies to diminish health-care disparities...
Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued regulatory decisions related to treatments for urothelial cancer, cervical cancer, cholangiocarcinoma, solid tumors, and colorectal cancer. Acceptance of Two Supplemental Biologics License Applications for Enfortumab Vedotin-ejfv in...
Tumor mutational burden (TMB) was an accurate predictor of response to treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors for female patients with melanoma, but not for male patients, according to results of a study presented by Sinha et al during the virtual American Association for Cancer Research...
José Baselga, MD, PhD, FASCO, a global innovator in novel cancer therapeutics, led research efforts in his native country of Spain and in the United States, most notably as Physician-in-Chief at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). “My moment of recognition as an oncologist came early,...
Stand Up To Cancer has announced $3.25 million in grants from four national nonprofits to fund research to find new treatments for head and neck cancers, which are newly diagnosed in about 65,000 Americans every year. The grants include contributions of $1.5 million each from the Fanconi Anemia...
Drawing on several lines of ongoing research, David A. Tuveson, MD, PhD, has created a theoretical framework to consider while developing clinical trials in pancreatic cancer. In his keynote lecture at the 2020 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Special Conference on Pancreatic Cancer, ...
Emory University President Gregory L. Fenves, PhD, recently announced the appointment of biomedical scientist Ravi Bellamkonda, PhD, as the university’s next Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, effective July 1, 2021. Dr. Bellamkonda returns to Emory after serving as Dean of...
For this installment of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, spoke with physician-scientist Brian J. Druker, MD, Director of the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University, Portland. In 2009, Dr. Druker won the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research ...
International cancer cell therapy pioneer Carl June, MD, the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine and Director of the Center for Cellular Immunotherapies at Penn Medicine Abramson Cancer Center, has...
Women with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) and elevated decision scores had a significantly higher risk of ipsilateral breast events and a greater relative benefit from radiation therapy compared to women with lower decision scores, according to research presented by Mann et al at the Society of...
One in six men being treated for advanced prostate cancer reported experiencing a reduced sense of smell and taste, according to a study published by Alonzi et al in the journal Supportive Care in Cancer. The study authors noted that a reduced sense of smell and taste among some patients with...
Researchers have created a new technique that may help to uncover mechanisms cancer cells use to evade immunotherapies, which could lead to the development of more effective treatments. Investigators tested their new technique with cancer cells and matching immune cells from patients with melanoma...
A specific type of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) that contains a rearrangement in the MLL gene (also known as KMT2A) might be made more sensitive to chemotherapy using an antibiotic currently available to treat diarrhea, according to new research published by Zeisig et al in Science Translational...
In 2020, ASCO established the Steering Group on Cancer Care Delivery and Research in a Post-Pandemic Environment to evaluate the changes made in oncology care delivery, clinical research, and regulatory oversight in response to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as to make recommendations on how to...
An imposing painting of sailing ships graced the wall behind the desk in the office of Professor Gordon McVie, BSc (Hons), MBChB, MD, FRCP, FRCPEd, FRCPS (Glas), FMedSci, DSc. It was a gift from one of his patients with cancer, a long-term survivor who said the painting reminded her of him, walking ...
When Joseph V. Simone, MD, was 6 years old, he had his first experience with the death of a child. His 9-month-old brother became sick with the croup and was taken to the nearby children’s hospital, where he died a few days later, leaving Dr. Simone and his family devastated. Caring for sick...
The ripple effects of the coronavirus pandemic have been felt in every area of health care. In our medical specialty, oncology, clinical trials of new treatments were upended by COVID-19. In the early months of the pandemic, widespread interruptions in trial enrollment prevented some patients...
The invited discussant of CodeBreak 100 was Pasi A. Jänne, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and a thoracic oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston.1Charu Aggarwal, MD, MPH, Leslye M. Heisler Associate Professor for Lung Cancer Excellence at the University of...
Researchers have identified a cellular resilience mechanism through which acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells survive cancer treatment and repopulate, leading to disease relapse. The research, published by Cihangir Duy, PhD, MS, and colleagues in Cancer Discovery, also suggests that certain drugs...
Engineering chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells to overcome CD58 loss may be a way to boost responses in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) who do not respond to treatment with axicabtagene ciloleucel and other CAR T-cell therapies, according to a study presented at the 2020...
The world of hematologic malignancies continues to move forward at a robust pace despite the challenges of the COVID era. Although some areas of clinical trials and basic research suffered short-term stoppages or delays due to the pandemic, the studies presented at the 2020 American Society of...
A combination of genetic mutations may explain the higher incidence of and poorer outcomes from pediatric leukemia in Hispanic and Latino patients, according to a new study published by Raca et al in the journal Leukemia. Researchers said a novel therapeutic drug combination—as well as testing for...
Engineering chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells to overcome CD58 loss may be a way to boost responses in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) who do not respond to treatment with axicabtagene ciloleucel and other CAR T-cell therapies, according to an experimental study presented...
Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah recently announced that Jay Gertz, PhD, and Trudy G. Oliver, PhD, have accepted invitations to serve as co-leaders of HCI Comprehensive Cancer Center research programs. Dr. Gertz will serve alongside Jared Rutter, PhD, as co-leader of the...
Five Innovation Discovery Grants (IDG) have been awarded to faculty from Mass General Brigham for scientific advancements, as the highly competitive IDG program exceeds $3.5 million in grants since inception. Each of the five potential patient health and health-care delivery breakthroughs for 2020...
Statement By Monica M. Bertagnolli, MD, FACS, FASCO, Chair of ASCO “Congress took a giant step forward to reduce health disparities by expanding clinical trial access to more than 41.6 million Medicaid beneficiaries through passage of the bipartisan CLINICAL TREATMENT Act as part of its...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) President Stephanie Lee, MD, MPH, sat down with Anthony Fauci, MD, Director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and medical advisor to President-Elect Joseph Biden, for a virtual fireside chat about COVID-19 and cancer at...
Northwell Health recently announced that it will open a $6.2 million, 11,300-square-foot comprehensive cancer center in Riverhead, New York, by the end of this year. The new facility will provide residents of the East End of Long Island access to integrated cancer services in a conveniently located ...
Harikrishna Nakshatri, PhD, who is identifying the unique biology that may make Black women more susceptible to aggressive breast cancer, received a $1.3 million grant from the Department of Defense–Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program’s breast cancer research program. Dr. -Nakshatri...
ASH President Stephanie Lee, MD, MPH, Associate Director of the Clinical Research Division of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, congratulated the investigators on this extensive effort to collect real-world data to inform clinical...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) recently announced the donation of next-generation sequencing equipment to six reference laboratories in five countries in Latin America. These countries constitute the International Consortium on Acute Leukemia (ICAL), a clinical network supported by the...
For patients with indolent follicular lymphoma, generally take a conservative approach to treatment unless the patient is symptomatic, advised John P. Leonard, MD, Executive Vice-Chair of Weill Department of Medicine at Weill-Cornell Medicine/NewYork-Presbyterian, New York.1 “Prognostic scores are...
On December 15, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for the first over-the-counter, fully at-home diagnostic test for COVID-19. The Ellume COVID-19 Home Test is a rapid, lateral-flow antigen test, a type of test that runs a liquid sample along a...
The Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) has announced the creation of the Steven A. Rosenberg, MD, PhD, Endowed Scholars Fund. Established in honor of Dr. Rosenberg, this fund recognizes his many contributions to the field by supporting investigators who are emerging leaders in...
Researchers from Penn State College of Medicine are participating in a $10 million project to better understand why men and women with a common and deadly type of brain cancer have different survival rates. The investigators hope the study results can be used to develop new therapeutic approaches...
That Moses Judah Folkman would buck tradition, breaking his family’s long line of rabbinical succession and pursuing a career in science and medicine instead, was evident from the time he was a young child. Born in Cleveland on February 24, 1933, the first child of Rabbi Jerome and Bessie Folkman, ...
Elaine R. Mardis, PhD, Co-Director of the Institute for Genomic Medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, was born and reared in North Platte, a small city located in the west-central part of Nebraska. “My love of science was sparked and nurtured by my father, who was a chemistry professor for...
The ASH Research Collaborative COVID-19 Registry for Hematology provides up-to-date information on outcomes and the course of illness for a group of patients with hematologic malignancies and COVID-19. In general, registry data showed that hematologic malignancies increase the risk of severity of...
Researchers have successfully built banks of SARS-CoV-2–specific T cells obtained from people who recovered from the virus that are now poised to be used as an experimental treatment in patients hospitalized with COVID-19. This T cell–based therapy may represent a step forward in the search for...
A recent study finding similar overall survival rates for patients with melanomas of the trunk and extremities treated with Mohs micrographic surgery or wide local excision1 raises questions about why and when physicians might recommend, and patients opt for, one or the other procedure. “The most...
Nationally recognized oncologic surgeon Sandra L. Wong, MD, MS, FASCO, FACS, was born and raised in Stockton, California, a city on the San Joaquin River, in California’s Central Valley. “My parents were both immigrants, but unlike the stereotypical picture of hard-driving immigrant parents who...