Treatment with olaparib delayed disease progression, and early survival data suggest a positive trend in favor of olaparib compared with newer hormonal agents in men with pretreated metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer and homologous recombinant repair genetic alterations—specifically...
Oncologists are a special breed of physician who enter a patient’s life during one of the most distressing and often traumatic life experiences: a cancer diagnosis. That’s just the start of the journey, which can last many years and involve great successes and disappointments. This unique...
Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute (FCS) welcomes Zanetta Lamar, MD, to the statewide practice. She is practicing medical oncology and hematology in the Naples Goodlette office. After earning her medical degree with honors from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Dr. -Lamar...
The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) recognized the recipients of its 2019 Gold Medal awards and other high-profile honors at the 2019ASTRO Annual Meeting in Chicago. Gold Medalists Walter J. Curran Jr, MD; Silvia C. Formenti, MD, FASTRO; and Thomas R. Mackie, PhD, were awarded the...
Linda L. Hogan died on August 30, 2019, following a 25-year history of living with breast cancer and a more recent diagnosis of advanced lung cancer. She was born on November 29, 1946, in Farmington, Maine, and was the only child of Eleanor Sidell (Hogan) Stevens of Madison/Waterville, Maine, and...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the Art of Oncology as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
The National Institutes of Health(NIH) has recently announced the names of two recipients of the 2019 Director’s Pioneer Awards whose research focuses on cell biology: Jennifer H. Elisseeff, PhD, is focusing onregenerative immunotherapies, and Valentina Greco, PhD, is studying the role of stem...
Chair of the German Breast Group, Sibylle Loibl, MD, of the University of Frankfurt, commented as a formal discussant of MONALEESA-3 and MONARCH 2. “It’s great to see overall survival in the first- and second-line metastatic breast cancer settings. We haven’t seen that in many years,” she said....
The advent of new targeted agents for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) has ushered in a golden age of treatment, leading to longer, more durable periods of disease control. Not all oncologists are convinced, however, that improvements in progression-free survival alone warrant dispensing with...
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.” –Robert Frost One of the first patients I encountered after residency was a 26-year-old woman with a single brain metastasis from melanoma. For anonymity, let’s call her Anna. Anna had just...
Nationally regarded melanoma researcher Mary J.C. Hendrix, PhD, was born in La Jolla, California, a seaside community surrounded by ocean bluffs and beaches within the city of San Diego. She was reared in a Navy family that moved from the West Coast to the East Coast during her childhood,...
Formal discussant Sherene Loi, MD, PhD, Professor of Cancer Therapeutics at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne, Australia, characterized the results of KEYNOTE-522 as “exciting.” “This is the first phase III neoadjuvant study in triple-negative breast cancer. Despite breast cancer not...
National lung cancer screening guidelines are inadequate to diagnose patients who contract lung cancer from occupational exposure, including first responders, according to a study reported by Vershalee Shukla, MD, at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer’s (IASLC) North America ...
At a press conference at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2019, Pilar Garrido, MD, PhD, of Ramon y Cajal University Hospital, Madrid, commented on the FLAURA trial: “These results are good news for patients with lung cancer, which is the most common cause of cancer deaths. ...
Formal discussant of the ASCEND-7 trial, Lizza E. Hendriks, MD, PhD, of the Maastricht University Medical Center, The Netherlands, said that up to 50% of patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) will develop central nervous system (CNS) metastases, and these patients can have poor quality...
The ALK inhibitor ceritinib demonstrated efficacy in patients with ALK-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and active brain metastases, according to the results of the ASCEND-7 trial reported at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2019.1 Substantial intracranial...
The results of simple interventions involving community health workers suggest that improvements in value-based cancer care need not come from health-care professionals. According to data presented at the 2019 ASCO Quality Care Symposium,1 reliance upon community health workers trained to assess...
Inspiration comes in many forms. For cancer researcher Ariel Hollinshead Hyun, PhD, known professionally as Dr. Hollinshead, it came at the age of 15, when she was captivated by Paul de Kruif’s book Microbe Hunters. She was fascinated by the lives of early bacteriologists detailed in the book and...
Let’s face it, men don’t go to the doctor as often as we should. At least that has been my experience. I felt compelled to finally make an appointment with my primary care physician after I began working as a research assistant at the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai in 2014, as it felt...
Most Latinx people who are LGBTQI+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex) reported being reluctant to share their gender identity and/or sexual orientation with a health-care provider, and a majority have never received cancer information tailored for their community, according...
Vassiliki Papadimitrakopoulou, MD, has been appointed Clinical Development Leader of Pfizer Oncology. Dr. Papadimitrakopoulou will be based in New York City. Recognized around the world for her expertise in personalized genomics-driven cancer therapies, immunotherapies, translational research, and ...
Human papillomavirus (HPV) causes nearly all cervical cancers and is attributed to some cancers of the vagina, vulva, penis, anus, and oropharynx. Although most HPV infections are asymptomatic and usually resolve within 1 to 2 years, persistent infections can lead to precancer and cancer. According ...
City of Hope recently announced that several of its researchers and faculty have been named as the recipients of several awards and grants. These accolades recognize individuals for their work in their respective fields of human genetics education, genomic research, and leptomeningeal disease....
By simply reaching out to new colleagues, Verna Vanderpuye, MBChB, improved the way oncology is practiced across Africa. “It is difficult to find yourself in the [predicament] of low government support, lack of research culture, and inadequate infrastructure,” explained Dr. Vanderpuye, a senior...
The Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center recently announced that Lisa M. DeAngelis, MD, has been named Physician-in-Chief and Chief Medical Officer. An expert in brain cancer, Dr. DeAngelis previously served as Chair of the Department of Neurology and was Co-Founder of MSK’s Brain Tumor...
End-of-Life Oncology is a new occasional column in The ASCO Post that will explore how to ensure the care received by terminally ill patients is in alignment with their end-of-life goals and wishes. In this inaugural installment, The ASCO Post talked with Lillie D. Shockney, RN, BS, MAS,...
Formal discussant Myung-Ju Ahn, MD, of Samsung Medical Center Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea, said that the CASPIAN results were similar to those of IMpower133, which found that the addition of the immune checkpoint inhibitor atezolizumab to etoposide/carboplatin significantly...
The novel FLT3 inhibitor gilteritinib prolonged survival in patients with FLT3-mutated relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML) across all mutation cohorts, including NPM1, DNMT3A, DNMT3A/NPM1, and WT1, with the greatest benefit seen in patients with NPM1 and DNMT3A co-mutations,...
New data have shown a trend toward clinically meaningful improvements in survival and response rates and a favorable safety profile with first-line immunotherapy compared to current standard treatment for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The data, reported by Yau et al at the European...
White men older than age 65 will have the greatest burden of oropharyngeal cancer by the year 2030, according to Maura L. Gillison, MD, PhD, Professor and Endowed Chair at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. But there is some good news, she said at the 2019 Winship Cancer Institute of Emory...
A new ASCO paper in the Journal of Geriatric Oncology1 fondly reflects on the impact of Arti Hurria, MD, FASCO, in improving the treatment of older adults with cancer. The article is part of a special issue honoring her work in this area. Dr. Hurria was killed in a traffic accident on November 7,...
The finding that women have a higher incidence of lung cancer than men of the same age and with the same smoking history was unexpected when it first emerged from studies in the 1990s. Just as unexpected was a subsequent finding. Even with their higher risk, women have a lower mortality and higher...
Denise R. Aberle, MD, of the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), was recognized by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) with the Joseph W. Cullen Prevention/Early Detection Award at the IASLC 2019 World Conference on...
"Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhumane….” —Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr Progress has been made in expanding access to health care for low-income populations, but the quality of care still lags behind and can result in less successful outcomes...
In the early fall of 2015, my daughter and I were on our way to our favorite nail salon to get picture-perfect ready for a gala later that evening at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York, when I got a call from my gynecologist saying I had “flunked my Pap test.” The Pap smear showed...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the Art of Oncology as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
Medicare patients from lower socioeconomic groups and several ethnic minority groups were more likely to be diagnosed with cancer following an emergency department visit, according to results of a study presented at the 12th American Association for Cancer Research Conference on The Science of...
Two early-career scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center—Alexandra Corella and Sander Frank, PhD—have received grants to further their prostate cancer research. Ms. Corella, a graduate research assistant, won a $25,000, 1-year fellowship from the Ford Foundation Fellowship Programs,...
Tumor mutational burden failed to prove effective as a biomarker for response to chemotherapy plus checkpoint inhibitor or chemotherapy alone as first-line treatment for nonsquamous non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in two different exploratory analyses of KEYNOTE trials.1,2 In both analyses,...
In patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma, isatuximab in combination with pomalidomide and low-dose dexamethasone nearly doubled progression-free survival when compared with pomalidomide and dexamethasone alone, with a manageable safety profile, according to data from a phase III...
Although there may be a clear role for prophylactic anticoagulation in hospitalized patients and those undergoing surgery, indication for prophylactic anticoagulation for patients with cancer seen in the ambulatory setting has yet to emerge. Until clinical trial data on prophylactic...
The battle against cancer is typically waged by the surgeon and oncologist, but a Lexington, Kentucky–based, award-winning restaurateur and chef discovered her role as a foot soldier when she applied her culinary skills to deal with the debilitating side effects of her mother’s lung cancer...
Compared with treatment with nonplatinum-based chemotherapy, monotherapy with the PARP (poly [ADP ribose] polymerase) inhibitor olaparib led to statistically significant and clinically relevant improvements in overall response rate and progression-free survival in women with germline...
“Live while you’re living, friends,” writes Julie Yip-Williams in her memoir, The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After. It was The New York Times bestseller when she died of stage IV colon cancer at the age of 42. She is the most recent of several...
Imagine undergoing major surgery in a grimy operating room without any form of antisepsis. That was the grim reality in the 1800s, when the ruling theory was that damage from “bad air” was responsible for infections in surgical wounds. Hospitals simply aired out the surgical wards at midday to...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the Art of Oncology as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
Oncologist Nakul Singhal, MD, has joined New York Cancer & Blood Specialists (NYCBS) and will be accepting new patients at the Bayside and New Hyde Park locations. NYCBS also welcomes oncologist Nicole Carreau, MD. Prior to joining NYCBS, Dr. Singhal practiced at Hackensack Meridian Health...
For this installment of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with Tatiana M. Prowell, MD, who currently serves as Associate Professor of Oncology in the Breast Cancer Program at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center and as a Medical Officer and...
The deadly nature of most pancreatic tumors is well known, with less than 10% of patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma estimated to survive 5 years after diagnosis. Recent molecular analyses of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma have shown that a patient’s prognosis changes depending on the...
Two researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle were recently awarded endowed chairs: Nancy E. Davidson, MD, FASCO, and Jerry Radich, MD. Raisbeck Endowed Chair for Collaborative Research Dr. Davidson was awarded the Raisbeck Endowed Chair for Collaborative Research at Fred ...