Direct your patients to www.cancer.net/whattoknow so they can learn about ASCO’s recent guideline on fertility preservation, including what the recommendations mean for patients and a list of questions to ask the doctor. In addition, patients can view an infographic on ASCO’s recommendations for...
ASCO recently issued an update to its guideline on fertility preservation for people living with cancer, as well as two videos jointly produced with the LIVESTRONG Foundation. Both the guideline and videos are intended to raise awareness and understanding of this important area of cancer care....
The Conquer Cancer Foundation of the American Society of Clinical Oncology is dedicated to funding breakthrough research and sharing cutting-edge knowledge, and the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) shares this commitment: It is ranked as the most widely read oncology journal worldwide, with a...
Earlier this year, ASCO and the oncology community at large lost a true pioneer, mentor, and renowned researcher. It is with great sadness that we mark the passing of Jane Cooke Wright, MD, one of seven founding members of ASCO—the only woman among the founders—and the Society’s first...
A study examining trends in x-ray computed tomography (CT) use in children in the United States has found that reducing unnecessary scans and lowering the doses for the highest-dose scans could lower the overall lifetime risk of future imaging-related cancers by 62%. The research was published...
Earlier this month, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) released its updated projections of reductions in programs due to the deficit-budget mechanism known as sequestration, which took effect on March 1, 2013. The sequestration law requires NIH to cut 5%, or $1.55 billion, of its fiscal year...
This collaborative study with Foundation Medicine (Cambridge, Massachusetts), using very sensitive deep sequencing, partially mitigates some of the anxiety generated by the identification of tumor heterogeneity. While our data in lung cancer confirm that such heterogeneity exists, they also...
In a study reported in Journal of Clinical Oncology, Stéphane Vignot, MD, of Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Medicale (INSERM) Unit 981, Paris, and Gustave Roussy Institute, Villejuif, France, and colleagues used next-generation sequencing to identify somatic alterations in...
KRAS mutations have been reported in approximately 30% of lung adenocarcinomas. They occur most frequently in codons 12 and 13 in non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), and are most common in cancer in smokers and in nonsquamous NSCLC. Some data suggest that KRAS mutation is associated with poorer...
The FDA has granted fast track designation to the SGX942 development program for the treatment of oral mucositis as a result of radiation and/or chemotherapy treatment in patients with head and neck cancer. SGX942 is a fully synthetic, 5-amino acid peptide with high aqueous solubility and stability ...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved two new drugs, dabrafenib (Tafinlar) and trametinib (Mekinist), for patients with advanced or unresectable melanoma. Dabrafenib, a BRAF inhibitor, is approved to treat patients with melanoma whose tumors express the BRAF V600E gene...
The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) will award Amato J. Giaccia, PhD, Radhe Mohan, PhD, FASTRO, and Prabhakar Tripuraneni, MD, FASTRO, with the Society’s highest honor—the ASTRO Gold Medal. The 2013 awardees will receive the ASTRO Gold Medal during the society’s 55th Annual Meeting...
Tumor control is frequently not achieved with standard immunochemotherapy in patients with primary mediastinal B-cell lymphoma, requiring consolidation with mediastinal radiotherapy. However, radiotherapy is associated with serious late adverse effects and is still associated with disease...
Commenting on these results, Carol Aghajanian, MD, Chief of the Gynecologic Medical Oncology Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, said, “There is currently no standard of care for maintenance therapy. Evidence continues to mount that targeting angiogenesis is important in...
Maintenance therapy with the targeted therapy pazopanib (Votrient) extended progression-free survival in women with ovarian cancer who were disease-free following initial treatment with surgery and chemotherapy, according to results of a phase III trial presented at the 49th Annual Meeting of...
ASCO has joined more than 70 leading health care, research, and disease advocacy organizations from around the world in taking the first steps to form an international alliance dedicated to enabling secure sharing of genomic and clinical data. The cost of genome sequencing has fallen one-million...
Brian Druker, MD, of Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, and Charles Sawyers, MD, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, will share the 2013 Taubman Prize for Excellence in Translational Medical Science. The $100,000 prize is given by the A. Alfred Taubman Medical...
This study shows us that less can be more in the sentinel lymph node era. We can avoid complete axillary resection. As a medical oncologist, I have learned that less can be more in many settings. As a result of this study, I will be able to reassure my patients that radiation therapy to the axilla...
Radiotherapy to the axilla may replace axillary lymph node dissection for local tumor control in selected patients with sentinel node–positive breast cancer, sparing many patients lymphedema, according to the final results of the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC)...
The FDA recently approved the MemoryShape Breast Implant for breast augmentation in women at least 22 years old and for breast reconstruction in women of any age. The MemoryShape Breast Implants are manufactured by Mentor Worldwide LLC. The FDA’s approval is based on 6 years of data from 955 women...
This study showed that 10 years of adjuvant tamoxifen reduced the risk of late recurrence in hormone receptor-positive breast cancer, which is a major problem. The study also showed that ‘patience is a virtue’,” stated formal discussant Ann Partridge, MD, Director of the Adult Survivorship Program...
The landmark aTTom study showed that 10 years of adjuvant tamoxifen is superior to 5 years of tamoxifen in reducing the risk of breast cancer recurrence or death but that the full survival benefits of extended treatment do not emerge until after the 10 years of treatment. These findings, which were ...
Lynn Mara Schuchter, MD, the C. Willard Robinson Professor of Hematology-Oncology and Program Leader of the Melanoma Program at Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, commented at a press briefing that the study “will ultimately be practice-changing.” She noted,...
For the first time, a drug has proven effective in the treatment of uveal (ocular) melanoma that has metastasized, according to a randomized multicenter phase II study presented at the 2013 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 “This study is the first to demonstrate an improved clinical outcome with any systemic...
This year’s ASCO Annual Meeting was really exciting in two specific ways. First, we saw the development of high-tech novel therapies and combinations that effectively manipulate the immune system and extend survival in historically difficult-to-treat diseases, like metastatic melanoma (eg,...
“These patients finally have options,” commented the DECISION trial’s discussant at the ASCO Plenary Session, Ezra Cohen, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine and Associate Director for Education at the University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center. He further noted that differentiated thyroid...
For the first time in decades, a drug has halted disease progression in treatment-resistant differentiated thyroid cancer, according to the results of a phase III study presented at the 2013 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 No new drugs have been approved for differentiated thyroid cancer in 40 years, but...
Formal discussant Electra D. Paskett, PhD, Professor of Medicine at The Ohio State University, was enthusiastic about these trial results and the potential of visual inspection with acetic acid screening, as well as low-cost human papillomavirus (HPV) screening to save lives in the developing...
In the era of personalized medicine for cancer care, it was both surprising and encouraging to hear about a simple low-tech intervention delivered by women in the community that cut the rate of death from cervical cancer in India by about one-third. The intervention, a simple visual inspection...
Formal discussant Gottfried Konecny, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, also viewed the study as a game changer. He cited the strengths of the study, including its design, randomization with stratification, P values adjusted for multiple testing, and the...
The addition of bevacizumab (Avastin) to chemotherapy prolongs overall survival in women with metastatic cervical cancer compared with chemotherapy alone, according to the results of a randomized phase III study presented at the Plenary Session of the ASCO Annual Meeting.1 Women on the...
Yogi Berra offered the comment “It’s déjà vu all over again” when he witnessed Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris repeatedly hitting back-to-back home runs in the early 1960s. His pithy remark neatly summarizes my reaction when I read the article, “Dose-Adjusted EPOCH-Rituximab Therapy in Primary...
The American medical education system was in a state of crisis in 1910 when Abraham Flexner published his treatise, Report on Medical Education in the United States and Canada (Carnegie Foundation Bulletin Number Four).1 A century later, we face another crisis in medical education—not in terms of...
Lynn Mara Schuchter, MD, the C. Willard Robinson Professor of Hematology-Oncology and Program Leader of the Melanoma Program at Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, commented on the wealth of promising agents now dotting the formerly barren landscape for...
For metastatic melanoma, the activity of ipilimumab can be boosted by the addition of granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF, Leukine), according to a phase II study that found the combination improved overall survival, vs ipilimumab alone. The results were presented at the 2013...
Trudy Nan Small, MD, was a pediatric hematologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center who specialized in the diagnosis and care of children undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for hematologic malignancies and those with life-threatening genetic disorders of the immune system....
Plasma Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV) DNA has prognostic significance in Hodgkin lymphoma, both prior to therapy and at 6 months of follow-up, according to results of a study published in Blood. “Plasma EBV-DNA positivity at month 6 is associated with particularly poor outcomes and may serve as an...
“Among men with nonmetastatic prostate cancer, replacing carbohydrates and animal fat with vegetable fat may reduce the risk of all-cause mortality,” according to a prospective study of 4,577 men with nonmetastatic prostate cancer in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Vegetable fat intake...
An expert panel of 13 urologic and medical oncologists worked together to identify 23 quality indicators for renal cell carcinoma, as described in an article in the Journal of Oncology Practice. “These 23 [quality indicators] will provide a means of evaluating the quality of [renal cell carcinoma]...
About one in five patients who had completed primary breast cancer treatments but had not started endocrine therapy “had elevated memory and/or executive function complaints that were statistically significantly associated with domain-specific” neuropsychological test performances and depressive...
Overall survival benefits of six management strategies for ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) are within 1 year of each other, according to a disease simulation model integrating empirical data from published literature and quantifying the tradeoffs among the different management strategies with...
In the June 10 issue of The ASCO Post, the article, “Study Questions Routine Use of Imaging after Treatment for Diffuse Large B-cell Lymphoma,” includes an error in an Expert Point of View box featuring an interview with Andrew D. Zelenetz, MD, PhD. Dr. Zelenetz is quoted as saying that at his...
The use of dietary supplements by patients with cancer has increased significantly over the past 2 decades despite insufficient evidence of safety and effectiveness. Finding reliable sources of information about dietary supplements can be daunting. Patients typically rely on family, friends, and...
When I was 9 years old, a bout of nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain sent me to the emergency room. The physicians diagnosed appendicitis and rushed me to the operating room. But what the surgeon found instead was a 10-cm-wide, grade 2, immature teratoma. In 1968, treatment for malignant ovarian...
Radium-223 dichloride (Xofigo) is an alpha particle–emitting radiotherapeutic drug that mimics calcium and localizes to areas of high bone turnover, providing targeted therapy for skeletal metastasis. The drug was recently approved for treatment of patients with castration-resistant prostate...
BRAF V600E mutations are associated with poor prognosis in colorectal cancer. A study by Coffee and colleagues examined PI3K/mTOR signaling in BRAF V600E colorectal cancer cell lines after BRAF inhibition as well as cell viability and apoptosis after combined BRAF and PI3K/mTOR inhibition. Western ...
In today’s high-tech, sci-fi–loving culture, “programmed death receptor” seems like a term apt to stir up public interest, particularly when those receptors are being “targeted” by “agents.” In this case, however, the agents are antibodies that target programmed death 1 (PD-1) receptor and disable...
In the News focuses on media reports that your patients may have questions about at their next visit. This continuing column will provide summaries of articles in the popular press that may prompt such questions, as well as comments from colleagues in the field. Much of the news about immunotherapy ...
Founded in 1994, just 1 year after ASCO launched the State/Regional Affiliate Program, the Society of Rhode Island Clinical Oncologists is one of ASCO’s oldest state affiliates. Like many other ASCO affiliates, the Providence-based group is facing a myriad of challenges, including ensuring...
Indiana University (Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center) Northwestern University (Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center) Penn State University (Penn State Hershey Cancer Institute) Purdue University (Purdue University Center for Cancer Research) Rutgers University (The...