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Showing 25251 - 25300Autologous Stem Cell Transplant Improves Survival in Transformed Follicular Lymphoma
As reported by the Canadian Blood and Marrow Transplant Group in Journal of Clinical Oncology,1 patients with transformed follicular lymphoma receiving autologous transplantation have improved survival outcomes compared with patients receiving rituximab (Rituxan)-containing chemotherapy alone....
Women in Oncology: Trending in the Right Direction
According to ASCO President Sandra M. Swain, MD, FACP, an important part of her Presidential theme, “Building Bridges to Conquer Cancer,” is finding creative ways to ensure that we have enough oncologists to care for our burgeoning cancer patient population. Adding more women to the oncology...
Breakthroughs in Targeted Therapies for Breast Cancer Are Improving Patient Survival Rates
For more than 20 years, José Baselga, MD, PhD, has devoted his medical and scientific career to caring for breast cancer patients and the development of novel molecular targeted agents to treat the disease. From 1996 to 2010, he was Head of the Oncology Department of Vall d’Hebron University...
Breast Cancer Survivors Not Likely to Maintain Physical Activity Sufficient for Benefits of Exercise
Few breast cancer survivors meet national exercise recommendations during the 10 years after being diagnosed, even though they are among the women who could most benefit from regular physical activity, according to a study by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Prior studies and...
Reducing Incidental Cardiac Irradiation during Breast Radiotherapy
In the treatment of breast cancer, a wealth of data from prospective clinical trials and meta-analyses has documented the benefits of radiation to prevent local-regional recurrence and improve survival. Accordingly, important quality indicators in breast cancer care include: (1) receipt of...
SIDEBAR: Left-sided Adjuvant Breast Radiotherapy: A Change of Heart?
Darby and colleagues are to be congratulated for an ambitious population-based case-control study that demonstrates the impact of postoperative adjuvant ionizing radiation for early-stage breast cancer on ischemic heart disease.1 The study examined roughly 1,000 cases and 1,000 controls in Sweden...
SIDEBAR: Critical Information on Radiation's Heart Effects
The paper by Darby et al provides extremely important information on quantitative estimates of the effect of radiotherapy on coronary events in women with breast cancer.1 The authors have determined a direct relationship between radiation dose and effects on the heart and provide strong evidence...
Risk for Ischemic Heart Disease after Radiotherapy for Breast Cancer
A population-based case-control study reported by Sarah C. Darby, PhD, Professor of Medical Statistics in the Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiologic Studies Unit at the University of Oxford, and colleagues in The New England Journal of Medicine indicates that incidental exposure of the heart ...
Factors Increasing Risk of Death from Breast Cancer Identified
Several studies presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Washington, DC, focused on factors associated with breast cancer mortality. One study found that older women with longer intervals between mammograms had a higher likelihood of dying of breast cancer. ...
Novel Approaches to Genetic Testing and Overcoming Treatment Resistance Highlighted at AACR Meeting
Below are brief summaries of highlights from the very full, comprehensive collection of studies presented at the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. The abstracts describe a potential strategy to overcome resistance and genetic characterization of...
Expert Point of View: Richard Hurt, MD
Richard Hurt, MD, Director of the Nicotine Dependence Center at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, applauds the new American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) policy recommendations. “It is disappointing that more oncologists are not paying enough attention to tobacco use in their...
Tobacco Use in Cancer Patients: Often Overlooked but Critical to Address
One would hope that the importance of treatment for tobacco dependence would be well recognized as a cornerstone of standard care for cancer patients. However, a policy statement released by the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) at its recent Annual Meeting revealed some surprising...
Congress Must Reverse Devastating Budget Cuts to Cancer Care
Sandra M. Swain, MD, FACP, ASCO President, issued the following statement on April 27, 2013: “Today, out of concern for public safety, Congress provided the Federal Aviation Administration enhanced flexibility in application of sequestration related cuts, including reversal of furlough requirements ...
Greater Prediagnosis Soy Food Consumption Associated with Improved Survival in Women with Lung Cancer
As recently reported by Gong Yang, MD, MPH, Research Associate Professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Oncology,1 higher prediagnosis consumption of soy food was associated with improved overall survival in Chinese women with lung...
The Tissue Is the Issue: Choosing Therapy for Lung Cancer
The new guidelines from the College of American Pathologists, International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, and Association for Molecular Pathology (CAP/IASLC/AMP) are a significant step toward personalized therapy of patients with lung cancer. More than 226,000 new patients per year are...
New Molecular Testing Guideline for Selection of Lung Cancer Patients for EGFR and ALK Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitor Treatment
A new guideline for molecular testing to select lung cancer patients for treatment with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) tyrosine kinase inhibitors has been jointly developed by the College of American Pathologists, International Association for the Study ...
FDA Approves Antiemetic Drug for New Line of Prefilled Generic Injectables
BD Rx Inc, announced that the FDA has approved metoclopramide hydrochloride, an injectable antiemetic, as the second drug to be offered in the recently launched BD Simplist line of ready-to-administer prefilled generic injectables. BD Simplist prefilled injectables are designed to help improve...
Novel Cancer Immunotherapy Set to Enter Clinical Trials
PDS Biotechnology Corporation has announced that its Investigational New Drug application for the novel cancer immunotherapy agent PDS0101 has been granted by the FDA, allowing the agent to be evaluated in human patients. PDS0101 is based on the company’s Versamune nanotechnology vaccine platform....
Breakthrough Therapy Designation for Lambrolizumab for the Treatment of Advanced Melanoma
Merck has announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has designated lambrolizumab (MK-3475) as a Breakthrough Therapy for the treatment of patients with advanced melanoma. Lambrolizumab is Merck’s investigational antibody therapy targeting the programmed death receptor (PD-1) that...
Ibrutinib Receives Third Breakthrough Therapy Designation from the FDA
Pharmacyclics, Inc, announced that the FDA has granted an additional Breakthrough Therapy Designation for the investigational oral agent ibrutinib as monotherapy for the treatment of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or small lymphocytic lymphoma with deletion of the short arm of...
ASCO Announces New Conflict of Interest Policy
In April, ASCO released its updated conflict of interest policy in the development and presentation of scientific research and educational content. The revised policy is designed to increase transparency in financial relationships between individuals and health-care companies and impose new...
Expert Point of View: Charles E. Ray, Jr, MD, PhD
Addressing the studies on cryoablation and irreversible electroporation ablation at a Society of Interventional Radiology press briefing, Charles E. Ray, Jr, MD, PhD, Chief of Interventional Radiology at University of Colorado, told The ASCO Post that these novel approaches to metastases are...
Interventional Radiologists Report Novel Approaches for Metastatic Lesions
For the treatment of metastases to the liver and the lung, interventional radiologists reported early success with two novel approaches at the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) 38th Annual Scientific Meeting, held recently in New Orleans. Cryoablation of Lung Tumors For patients with...
Early Data Promising for Concurrent Sorafenib Plus Embolization in Metastatic Liver Cancer
If sorafenib (Nexavar) and local ablation techniques are both effective in the treatment of metastatic hepatocellular carcinoma, could they deliver an even greater punch when combined? The concurrent use of interventional radiology approaches and sorafenib for metastatic hepatocellular carcinoma is ...
Refractory Liver Metastases Yield to Yttrium-90 Radioembolization
In patients with unresectable hepatic metastases from metastatic melanoma and neuroendocrine tumors, radioembolization led to good outcomes in studies from Emory University School of Medicine reported at the 38th Society of Interventional Radiology Annual Scientific Meeting, held recently in New...
In Chicago for ASCO?
Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University is celebrating the 20th Annual Cancer Survivors’ Celebration with a first! Join the Lurie Cancer Center for a timed 5K run along the lakefront on Sunday, June 2. The run will start in Chicago’s Grant Park at 7:15 AM, before the ...
NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology: 2013 Updates
At the 18th Annual Conference of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), representatives of NCCN Guidelines panels presented two new sets of guidelines along with updates for several tumor types, summarized in this issue of The ASCO Post. New NCCN Guidelines for Survivorship “The...
On the Potential for Conflicts of Interest
In a recent issue of The ASCO Post, I counted 14 expert commentaries where the authority who wrote or was interviewed for the piece reported “no potential conflicts of interest.” I wondered how likely that was. We need to be clearer on the meaning of potential conflicts of interest. How often have...
How Is Sequestration Affecting Health Care?
The Budget Control Act of 2011, which calls for $1.2 trillion in federal funding cuts in national defense and nondefense programs, went into effect on March 1. The across-the-board cuts affect 21 agencies and programs directly involved in the health-care sector, including: Centers for Disease...
Sequestration's Impact on Cancer Care
On March 1, the deficit-budget mechanism known as sequestration took effect, triggering $85 billion in across-the-board cuts to most federal agencies over the remaining 7 months in fiscal year 2013. The total federal deficit reduction budget under the Budget Control Act of 2011 calls for $1.2...
Proof of Principle for Adoptive T-cell Therapy in Cancer
In a recently published study, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center investigators demonstrated the considerable antitumor efficacy of 19-28z chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-modified T cells in patients with relapsed/refractory B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The ASCO Post asked lead...
Profound and Rapid Molecular Remission with CD19-targeted T Cells in Relapsed B-cell ALL
As was recently reported in Science Translational Medicine, Renier J. Brentjens, MD, and colleagues at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, found that profound molecular remission was rapidly induced in patients with relapsed B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) using autologous T ...
More Recollections on Emil 'Tom' Frei III, MD
I have read with interest the recent tributes to Emil “Tom” Frei III, MD, who passed away in April. I was backstage at the ASCO Annual Meeting in 1981, when Dr. Frei was giving his Karnofsky acceptance address. I had a slide presentation at the combined ASCO/American Association for Cancer Research ...
Patients with Cancer Can Have Cachexia-related Poor Prognostic Factors Regardless of Overall Weight
“Patients with cancer who are cachexic by the conventional criterion (involuntary weight loss) and by two additional criteria (muscle depletion and low muscle attenuation) share a poor prognosis, regardless of overall body weight,” concluded a study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Researchers...
Smoking Early in Life Is More Strongly Associated with Increased Risk of Breast Cancer
Analyses of data from 73,388 women in the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Prevention Study II (CPS-II) Nutrition Cohort and from a meta-analysis including 14 other studies “support the hypothesis that active smoking increases the risk of breast cancer, especially when smoking begins at an early...
Black, Asian, and Younger Women at Increased Risk of PTSD after Diagnosis of Localized Breast Cancer
Nearly one-quarter of women in a large prospective study of racially diverse patients with stage I to III breast cancer reported symptoms consistent with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with increased risk of PTSD among black, Asian, and younger women. “These potential risk factors can be...
Surgery Delays Longer Than 6 Weeks in Young Women with Breast Cancer Decrease Survival
Delays of more than 6 weeks from time of diagnosis until surgical treatment of breast cancer among young women significantly decreases survival times compared to those with a shorter treatment delay time, according to a study in JAMA Surgery. “This adverse impact on survival was more pronounced in...
Some Stage II/III HER2-positive Tumors May Be Treated with Targeted Therapy without Chemotherapy
Results from a multicenter phase II study of patients with locally advanced HER2-positive breast cancer who receive targeted therapy with trastuzumab (Herceptin) and lapatinib (Tykerb) “support the hypothesis that selected patients with HER2-positive tumors may not need chemotherapy,” investigators ...
Study Clarifies Appropriate Timing of Follow-up Imaging after Benign Breast Biopsies
Follow-up imaging for patients with benign breast biopsies can be safely done at 12 months rather than 6 months, when radiologic and pathologic findings are concordant, according to a study reported at the American Society of Breast Surgeons Annual Meeting in Chicago.1 Current guidelines from the...
Expect Questions from Your Patients
Patients reading or hearing about the updated draft recommendation statement from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) on the use of medications to reduce risk for primary breast cancer1 may ask if and how it applies to them. To help answer those questions, the information presented...
Women at Increased Risk for Breast Cancer Should Be Offered Medications to Reduce Risk, Draft Recommendations Advise
Clinicians should engage in shared decision-making with women who are at increased risk of breast cancer about using medications, such as tamoxifen and raloxifene (Evista), to reduce risk, and should offer prescriptions to women considered at low risk for adverse effects from these medications,...
SIDEBAR: IBD and Melanoma
Inflammatory bowel disease (including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis) is associated with a 37% greater risk for melanoma. Given the new data, physicians should appropriately counsel patients with inflammatory bowel disease about the risk of melanoma.
Inflammatory Bowel Disease Raises Risk of Melanoma
Patients with inflammatory bowel disease are at higher risk of melanoma, reported researchers at Mayo Clinic. Researchers found that inflammatory bowel disease is associated with a 37% greater risk for the disease. The findings were presented at the Digestive Disease Week 2013 conference in...
Innovator Award Won by Kenneth Tsai, MD, PhD, for Plan to Map Molecular Path to Skin Cancer
A proposal to examine the cellular journey from normal skin to precancerous lesion to skin cancer earned Kenneth Tsai, MD, PhD, the Sixth Annual Landon Foundation–AACR Innovator Award for Cancer Prevention Research at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting, held recently ...
Francis Crick's Discovery of the Structure of DNA Transformed 20th Century Biologic Sciences
“My Dear Michael, Jim Watson and I have probably made a most important discovery. We have built a model for the structure of des-oxy-ribose-nucleic-acid, called DNA for short.… In other words we think we have found the basic copying mechanism by which life comes from life,” wrote Francis Crick,...
Oncology Meetings
June Molecular and Translational Oncology WorkshopJune 14-18 • Fort Myers, FloridaFor more information: www.cancereducationconsortium.org/programs_mtow.html 12th International Conference on Malignant LymphomaJune 19-22 • Lugano, SwitzerlandFor more information: www.lymphcon.ch British...
SIDEBAR: Support and Resource Links
For a list of national, not-for-profit organizations that provide programs, information, services, and support for people with cancer, please visit: www.cancer.net/publications-and-resources/support-and-resource-links
Coping with Tongue Cancer: A Lonely Journey
Thirteen years ago, at just 34 years old, I never expected that my life could be interrupted by cancer. A nonsmoker and nondrinker, I had always practiced a healthy lifestyle and wasn’t concerned initially when what looked like a cold sore popped up on the left side of my tongue. But as several...
Innovative State Program Reduces Colorectal Cancer Disparities, Mortality Rates Among African American Patients
A study analyzing the impact of the Delaware Cancer Consortium, the state’s cancer control program, reports a 41% reduction in colorectal mortality rates for African Americans.1 The recently published study provided analysis on a novel design and approach used to eliminate colorectal cancer...
Focus on the Delaware Society for Clinical Oncology
Although the state of Delaware comprises just 2,489 square miles, giving it an area ranking of 49 out of 50 states, its small size gives its population of nearly 1 million an advantage many larger states do not have: ready access to local politicians to address complex issues such as improving...
