More than 3 decades ago, the first trials of autologous hematopoietic cell transplantation as consolidation therapy for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in first remission were conducted. The initial results were inconclusive; most patients survived the procedure, but post-transplant relapse was common ...
The survival advantage conferred by adding oxaliplatin to adjuvant chemotherapy with fluorouracil (5-FU) in stage III colon cancer, as previously shown in patients in randomized controlled trials, extends to patients in the general population, including older and minority group patients and those...
Sipuleucel-T (Provenge) can generate a circulating immune response to treat men with metastatic castrate-resistant prostate cancer, as per its FDA-approved indication.1 A neoadjuvant trial was performed to investigate whether earlier use of sipuleucel-T can generate an immune response in the...
Two studies highlighted in press conferences and one presented during an invited lecture at the 2012 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium, held recently in San Francisco, suggest that early detection of pancreatic, esophageal, and colorectal cancers could soon improve. Enzyme Immunoassay Spots...
The recent 2012 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium featured a wealth of presentations on prostate, bladder, kidney, and other genitourinary cancers. Brief summaries of some of the oral and poster sessions are presented. Exercise and Recurrence Vigorous exercise has been shown to reduce cancer...
Nicholas B. Vogelzang, MD, moderator of the press briefing where these findings were presented, agreed that the first study supports intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) as the current standard of care. With costs of health care increasing exponentially, it is important to establish the...
Patients with prostate cancer are treated with various forms of radiotherapy and/or radical prostatectomy with little comparative data to inform treatment selection. Two studies presented at the 2012 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium attempt to address that gap. In one study of men with localized...
With the aging of the population, virtually all of the subspecialties of oncology will soon be concerned primarily with the care of older patients. While there is not one precise definition of the age of “geriatric” patients, it is clear that the aging of our society has necessitated a focus on the ...
With the Presidential election just around the corner, the health-care debate will undoubtedly heat up. The ASCO Post spoke with Sean R. Tunis, MD, MSc, Founder and Director, Center for Medical Technology Policy, and former Chief Medical Officer for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, ...
Timothy J. Hobday, MD, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, discussed the findings of the RADIANT-2 re-analysis at the 2012 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium. Speaking from the perspective of a clinical researcher, he said, “the conclusions of the study are reasonable” and provide “valuable ...
A re-analysis of the RADIANT-2 trial, which evaluated everolimus (Afinitor) in patients with advanced nonpancreatic neuroendocrine tumors, has yielded prognostic factors that identify a group of patients who are not only at high risk for recurrence but who may derive benefit from treatment with...
A study presented at the 2016 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium showed that 40% of patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer treated with docetaxel following abiraterone (Zytiga) had at least a 50% reduction in prostate-specific antigen (PSA), demonstrating the activity of...
In a systematic review and meta-analysis reported in The Lancet Oncology, Meulendijks et al found that the DPYD variants c.1679T>G and c.1236G>A/HapB3 were predictive of severe fluoropyrimidine-associated toxicity, with the variant c.1601G>A not achieving a significant relationship....
Radiation therapy was associated with a lower risk of cancer recurrence in pancreatic cancer surgery patients, making it, like chemotherapy, an important addition to treatment, Mayo Clinic research found. Whether radiotherapy helps patients after pancreatic cancer surgery has been a long-standing...
In a population-based cohort study in Ontario, Canada, reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Levine et al found that use of the 21-gene recurrence score (RS) assay altered decisions regarding receipt of chemotherapy compared with use of Adjuvant! Online in patients with axillary...
In the phase II LUX-Breast 3 trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Cortés et al found that afatinib (Gilotrif) alone or combined with vinorelbine did not increase patient benefit vs investigator choice of treatment in patients with HER2-positive breast cancer and progressive brain...
In the pivotal phase II IMvigor 210 study, the investigational cancer immunotherapy atezolizumab (MPDL3280A) showed encouraging response rates in patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma, Roche announced. These data were presented by Hoffman-Censits et al at the 2016...
An early study suggests that an experimental blood test may help guide individualized decisions on the most appropriate treatments for patients with prostate cancer. The new noninvasive “liquid biopsy” scans the entire landscape of different kinds of cancer cells in blood and analyzes...
New analyses from a phase III clinical trial of patients with previously treated advanced kidney cancer demonstrated that patients of all risk levels experience more benefit from cabozantinib (Cometriq) than from the current standard of care, everolimus (Afinitor). The greater activity of...
A large observational study has found that men who take aspirin regularly may have a lower risk of dying from prostate cancer. Men who took aspirin regularly after their prostate cancer diagnosis were less likely to die from the disease. However, aspirin did not affect the overall incidence of...
In an Italian trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Bandieri et al found that low-dose morphine provided better and more rapid pain relief than weak opioids in patients with moderate cancer pain. Study Details In the open-label 28-day trial, 240 adults with moderate cancer pain from ...
In a long-term follow-up study among approximately 200,000 Nordic twin individuals, there was an increased cancer risk in twins whose co-twin was diagnosed with cancer, with an increased risk for cancer overall and for specific types of cancer, including prostate, melanoma, breast, ovary, and...
Patients with incurable cancer and numerous other serious health conditions who consulted with a palliative care team within 2 days of hospitalization had significant savings in hospital costs, according to a new study led by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Published by...
In a phase III RADIANT-4 trial reported in The Lancet, Yao et al found that everolimus (Afinitor) and supportive care significantly prolonged progression-free survival vs placebo and supportive care in patients with advanced nonfunctional neuroendocrine tumors of the lung or gastrointestinal tract. ...
APRIL 3rd European Lung Cancer ConferenceApril 18-21 • Geneva, Switzerland For more information: www.esmo.org Diagnosis and Treatment of Advanced Forms of Prostate Cancer, Bladder Cancer and Kidney CancerApril 20-21 • Kiev, Ukraine For more information: http://nbscience.com Organisation for...
Death rates from all cancers combined for men, women, and children continued to decline in the United States between 2004 and 2008, according to the Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, 1975-2008. Overall cancer incidence rates among men decreased by an average of 0.6% per year...
For oocyte cryopreservation, eggs removed from a woman’s body are not fertilized with sperm to create embryos before being frozen. For this reason, oocyte cryopreservation may be a suitable option for women who do not have a partner, do not want to use donor sperm, or have religious or ethical...
The risk calculator available at the Fertile Hope website (www.fertilehope.org) lets patients know whether specific treatment regimens would put them at high, intermediate, low, very low/no risk, or unknown risk for azoospermia or amenorrhea. Both Fertile Hope and the ASCO fertility recommendations ...
The oncologist has an important role in advising patients about infertility as a potential risk of cancer treatment and answering basic questions about fertility preservation options, according to the ASCO Recommendations on Fertility Preservation in People Treated for Cancer. An ASCO slide set...
Most cancer survivors prefer to have biologic offspring despite concerns about the possible effects of cancer treatment on the child, the child’s lifetime cancer risk, or their own longevity, according to an ASCO panel that developed guidelines on fertility preservation in patients with cancer.1...
Eating more red meat appears to be associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality and death from cancer and cardiovascular disease, but substituting fish, poultry, nuts, legumes, low-fat dairy products, and whole grains for red meat is associated with a lower mortality risk, according to...
Adding salvage chemotherapy to best supportive care was tolerated and improved overall survival among patients with advanced gastric cancer previously treated with both fluoropyrimidines and platinum, administered simultaneously or concurrently. The authors of the study report, published in the...
“Analyses after 2 additional years of follow-up consolidated our previous finding that [prostate-specific antigen (PSA)]-based screening significantly reduced mortality from prostate cancer but did not affect all-cause mortality,” investigators from the European Randomized Study of Screening for...
Retrospective analyses of hormone receptors among patients enrolled in the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP) B-24 study showed that women with estrogen receptor (ER)-positive ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) who received tamoxifen after standard therapy had significant...
The addition of sorafenib (Nexavar) to capecitabine (Xeloda) improved progression-free survival among women with locally advanced or metastatic HER2-negative breast cancer in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase IIB trial. “There was no significant improvement for overall survival,” ...
Although androgen-deprivation therapy is effective in inducing regression of androgen-dependent prostate cancer, relapse often occurs in an androgen-independent manner and is associated with poor prognosis. The mechanisms underlying castration resistance are not fully understood. Sung and...
Many chemotherapy agents work by causing DNA strand breaks or accumulation of DNA replication intermediates. ATR (ataxia-telangiectasia mutated and Rad 3-related protein) is a potential target for combination drug strategies, because signaling of this protein in response to such altered DNA...
Systematic methods for profiling tumor genomic alterations remain underdeveloped, with current clinical profiling usually being confined to identification of limited numbers of oncogene point mutations. At present, there is no systematic technique for interrogating tumor samples in situ for a...
Thomas J. Smith, MD, has joined Johns Hopkins as the Director of Palliative Care for Johns Hopkins Medicine and the Hopkins’ Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center. Before joining Johns Hopkins, Dr. Smith served as the Medical Director of the Thomas Palliative Care Program and the Co-director of ...
Each year through its Special Awards Program, ASCO recognizes researchers, patient advocates, and leaders of the global oncology community who, through their work, have made significant contributions to enhancing cancer care. These recipients of ASCO’s highest, most prestigious awards collectively...
It’s been 40 years since President Richard Nixon declared, “The time has come in America when the same kind of concentrated effort that split the atom and took man to the moon should be turned toward conquering this dread disease,” and later signed into law the National Cancer Act of 1971. Passage...
ASCO recently issued a report, Accelerating Progress Against Cancer: ASCO’s Blueprint for Transforming Clinical and Translational Cancer Research, which outlines the Society’s 10-year plan for improving cancer outcomes. Central to achieving that goal are three steps, including (1) therapy...
When I found a large amount of blood on my toilet tissue just before Thanksgiving in 2010, I wasn’t too concerned. At just 45 years old, I was in excellent health, and other than the bloody stool I had no other symptoms signaling that something was seriously wrong. My primary care physician thought ...
Imatinib mesylate tablets (Gleevec) approved for the adjuvant treatment of adult patients following complete gross resection of Kit (CD117) positive gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST). Vismodegib capsules (Erivedge) approved for the treatment of metastatic basal cell carcinoma or locally...
Talon Therapeutics, Inc, announced the Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee voted 7 yes, 4 no, and 2 abstain that evidence from clinical studies supports a favorable benefit-risk assessment for use of vincristine sulfate liposomes injection (Marqibo). The manufacturer is seeking an indication for the ...
Nodular lymphocyte predominant Hodgkin lymphoma (NLPHL) accounts for approximately 5% of Hodgkin lymphoma cases. It is distinguished from classic Hodgkin lymphoma by a variety of clinical and pathologic features, including expression of B-cell associated antigens such as CD20. Given that the...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. Indication Erwinia chrysanthemi asparaginase (Erwinaze) was...
The FDA recently approved a silicone gel-filled breast implant manufactured by Sientra Inc for breast augmentation in women at least 22 years old and breast reconstruction in women of any age. As a condition of approval, Sientra is required to conduct postapproval studies that will assess long-term ...
The recent report on “Preventing Tobacco Use Among Youth and Young Adults” by the Surgeon General not only documents the devastating consequences of tobacco use for our nation’s youth, but also represents a clarion call for bold action at every level of government to implement proven strategies to...
The FDA’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) recently recommended approval of one drug for sarcoma but rejected another. The panel voted 11 to 2 that clinical studies support a favorable benefit-risk assessment for use of pazopanib (Votrient) in treating patients with advanced soft-tissue...