On July 6, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), an organization representing a membership of over 50,000 oncologists, cancer scientists, other health-care professionals, and patient advocates, issued the following statement. AACR is deeply concerned about the ramifications of the...
Data from the world’s largest prostate cancer screening study provides further evidence to support the introduction of a targeted screening program for the disease, said researchers. In 2009, the European Randomised Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC) showed that screening can reduce...
Researchers have found a significant difference in the gut microbiota of patients with prostate cancer compared with those who have benign biopsies. Although the finding is an association, it could partly explain the relationship between lifestyle effects and geographic differences in prostate...
Opioids are a cornerstone of cancer pain management, but there is a lack of consensus on how to treat pain patients with cancer who also have struggled with opioid use disorder or prescription opioid misuse. In a study published by Fitzgerald Jones et al in JAMA Oncology, researchers outlined...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning that results from the phase III DUO clinical trial show a possible increased risk of death with duvelisib compared to ofatumumab among patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL). The trial also found...
On June 24, the editors of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) published an editorial online in response to the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The Court held in a vote of 5 to 4 that the Constitution of the United States does...
Dual targeting with the bispecific antibody amivantamab-vmjw showed antitumor activity and tolerability in patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and MET exon 14 skipping mutations, according to results of the ongoing phase I CHRYSALIS study.1,2 Updated results were presented...
Patients with cancer have received priority status to receive COVID-19 vaccinations, but limited data are available regarding the safety and efficacy of the vaccines for patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors for lung cancer. Now, a new study published by Hibino et al in the Journal of...
The national advocacy group Children’s Cancer Cause, which plays a leadership role in advocacy and training on national issues affecting childhood cancer, has established an annual $10,000 award, the Survivorship Champion’s Prize, to be presented to a group, program, or institution making...
A new report led by researchers at the American Cancer Society (ACS) in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) shows more than 18 million Americans (8.3 million males and 9.7 million females) with a history of cancer were living in the United States as of January 1, 2022, with a...
On June 27, the Biden Administration, through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), announced a new model aimed at improving cancer care for Medicare patients and lowering health-care costs. CMS’ Center for Medicare and...
On June 27, ASCO released a statement on the recent ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health. ASCO is committed to the delivery of medically appropriate, equitable, evidence-based cancer care. For patients of child-bearing age, a cancer diagnosis raises medical considerations around pregnancy and...
Maxwell Oluwole Akanbi, MD, PhD, of McLaren Regional Medical Center, discusses the study he conducted, using the SEER database, to evaluate the impact of lung cancer screening recommendations on low-dose CT scanning. The data suggest that guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force led...
Our growing knowledge of the molecular and genomic drivers of cancer has translated into a robust pipeline of promising anticancer agents. However, bringing new drugs from the lab to the patient with cancer can be frustratingly slow. To that end, the accelerated approval system was created by the...
The group of compounds called parabens, which are found in widely used hair and personal care products, may increase breast cancer risk in Black women—more so than in White women—according to a study presented at ENDO 2022, the Endocrine Society’s Annual Meeting. One in eight women in the United...
Women who are longer-term survivors of metastatic breast cancer may have a worse survival rate if they have diabetes and poorly controlled blood sugar levels, according to a new study presented at ENDO 2022, the Endocrine Society’s Annual Meeting. This is the first study to specifically examine the ...
On June 24, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy lisocabtagene maraleucel (Breyanzi) for adult patients with large B-cell lymphoma (LBCL) who have disease refractory to first-line chemoimmunotherapy or relapse within 12 months of...
Hearing the words “You have cancer” is a devastating blow, especially when the biggest health issues you’ve had to contend with over more than 6 decades are common colds and knee and hip replacements. But in 2017, the symptoms I thought were from a lingering summer cold drove me to seek medical...
Radiation therapy has long been one of the three pillars of cancer therapy—surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy—only recently joined by what is widely considered a fourth pillar, immunotherapy. In part 1 of this two-part report, we trace the beginnings of radiation oncology in the United...
In March 2022, Kristeleit et al reported the results of the ARIEL4 trial1 of rucaparib in relapsed BRCA-mutant ovarian cancer in The Lancet Oncology (summarized in this issue of The ASCO Post) and are to be congratulated on this accomplishment. This report, along with the almost simultaneous...
On June 23, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval for dabrafenib (Tafinlar) plus trametinib (Mekinist) for the treatment of adult and pediatric patients aged 6 years and older with unresectable or metastatic solid tumors with a BRAF V600E mutation whose disease...
On June 23, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued marketing denial orders (MDOs) to JUUL Labs Inc for all of their products currently marketed in the United States. As a result, the company must stop selling and distributing these products. In addition, those currently on the U.S....
In Ukraine, with a population of about 44 million, there are more than 1.3 million patients with cancer. Approximately 160,000 new cases of cancer are diagnosed each year.1 In almost every region, there are local cancer centers; specialized oncologic centers are located in large cities. In Kyiv,...
Cancer cases and deaths are expected to double in Africa over the next 2 decades, according to findings from a study published by Sharma et al in Frontiers in Medicine. The study also revealed that the region lacks sufficient health-care resources and infrastructure to handle this growing cancer...
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) now stands as the largest single public funder of biomedical research in the world.1 The FY2022 Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 2471), signed into law in March, increases biomedical research funding by nearly 5%, and it provides a total of $45 billion...
From 1999 to 2019, rates of cancer deaths declined steadily among Black people in the United States. Nevertheless, in 2019, Black people still had considerably higher rates of cancer death than people in other racial and ethnic groups, a large epidemiologic study has found. The study was led by...
Investigators at the American Cancer Society presented results of several studies during poster sessions at the 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting. Summaries of a few of these studies are provided here. COVID-19 and Cancer Mortality According to a new study led by researchers at the American Cancer Society,...
Debu Tripathy, MD, Professor and Chair of Breast Medical Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, shared his thoughts on TROPiCS-02 with The ASCO Post. He said the study is important because it addresses the needs of “a population with limited options, whose...
Guru P. Sonpavde, MD, Director of the Bladder Cancer Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a faculty member of Harvard Medical School, Boston, said these follow-up data from CheckMate 274 provide reassurance that the disease-free survival benefit is maintained with adjuvant nivolumab. “We...
New research published by Zeng et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network raises issues with clinical trial findings that show adjuvant hormone therapy–related hot flashes predict better treatment outcomes among patients with estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer. The...
A study of more than 90,000 postmenopausal women found that those who consumed at least one sugar-sweetened beverage daily faced a 78% higher risk of developing liver cancer compared with people who consumed less than three servings per month of such beverages. These findings were presented by Zhao ...
Research shows that what we eat may influence our cancer risk, but it’s not always clear which foods or dietary patterns are best for cancer prevention. Results from a new study presented by Shah et al during Nutrition 2022 Live Online, the annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition,...
Gilberto de Lima Lopes, Jr, MD, MBA, of Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami, and Oladimeji Akinboro, MD, MPH, of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), discuss a data analysis, which suggests that most subgroups of patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer ...
A new perspective piece authored by researchers from the American Cancer Society and The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio shows the high burden of breast cancer mortality among Black women as compared to White women began in the United States in the 1980s. At that time,...
Researchers have, for the first time, identified genes that may predict response to a therapy for a blood cancer that can have serious side effects for some patients. The therapy, selinexor, is part of the treatment armamentarium for multiple myeloma, but the ability to target its use to patients...
Representing a total investment of $100 million, the following teams are the first to be funded through the partnership between Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Institute in the United States. These teams join the Cancer Grand Challenges community, which now unites more than 700...
Martin McCabe, PhD, of the University of Manchester, discusses a phase III assessment of chemotherapy for patients with recurrent and primary refractory Ewing sarcoma. The trial, called rEECur, is the first study to provide comparative toxicity and survival data for the four most commonly used...
Akihiro Ohba, MD, of Japan’s National Cancer Center Hospital, discusses phase II data from the HERB trial on fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki, which showed activity in patients with HER2-expressing unresectable or recurrent biliary tract cancer (Abstract 4006).
Rainer Fietkau, MD, of Germany’s University Hospital Erlangen, discusses phase III findings of the CONKO-007 trial, which examined the role of sequential chemotherapy and chemoradiotherapy administered to patients with nonresectable locally advanced pancreatic cancer following standard-of-care...
Etienne Brain, MD, PhD, of the Institut Curie, discusses phase III findings from the Unicancer ASTER 70s trial, in which patients aged 70 or older with estrogen receptor–positive, HER2-negative breast cancer and a high genomic grade index received adjuvant endocrine therapy with or without...
According to a study published by DuMontier et al in the journal Blood Advances, frailty assessments—geriatric exams considered essential to predicting health outcomes in older adults with cancer—are both safe and feasible when conducted virtually for patients with blood cancers. While providers...
William Catalona, MD, Professor of Urology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, and past Principal Investigator on the Northwestern-based prostate SPORE, explained the evolution of his views regarding active surveillance in men with low-risk prostate cancer. Although...
Telemedicine stepped up to the plate when the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe. Oncology providers—and practitioners in all specialties—had to rapidly adapt to a telemedicine format when face-to-face visits were severely limited. This scenario had its benefits for both patients and providers (and...
People with blood cancers living in rural areas are less likely to receive end-of-life hospice care compared to those living in metropolitan regions, according to a new study published by Hussaini et al in the journal Blood Advances. In this study, researchers identified significant disparities in...
On June 17, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized emergency use of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine and the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for the prevention of COVID-19 to include use in children as young as 6 months of age. For the Moderna vaccine, the FDA amended the emergency...
Ann H. Partridge, MD, MPH, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Véronique Diéras, MD, of the Centre Eugène Marquis, discuss the many challenges posed by next-generation antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs). They include side effects such as hematotoxicity, gastrointestinal toxicities, and interstitial...
Gilberto de Lima Lopes, Jr, MD, MBA, of the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami, and Matthew Krebs, PhD, of The University of Manchester and The Christie NHS Foundation Trust, discuss results from the CHRYSALIS study. The trial showed that the bispecific antibody...
Ann H. Partridge, MD, MPH, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Ian E. Krop, MD, PhD, of Yale Cancer Center, discuss phase I/II findings on patritumab deruxtecan, a HER3-directed antibody-drug conjugate, in patients with HER3-expressing metastatic breast cancer. A pooled analysis showed antitumor...
Erika Hamilton, MD, of Sarah Cannon Research Institute at Tennessee Oncology, discusses phase III data from the DESTINY-Breast03 study, which reinforced the consistent safety profile of fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) vs ado-trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) in patients with HER2-positive...
This is Part 4 of Updates in Lymphoma, a four-part video roundtable series. Scroll down to watch the other videos from this Roundtable. In this video, Drs. Alison J. Moskowitz, Andrew M. Evens, and Ann S. LaCasce discuss the management of relapsed/refractory Hodgkin lymphoma. The patient is a...