“Breast cancer brain metastases are a clinical challenge that are only increasing in incidence and are a consequence of advanced breast cancers, largely HER2-positive and triple-negative,” according to Carey K. Anders, MD, Professor of Medicine and Medical Director of the Duke Brain and Spine...
A recent review of scientific literature showed that the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted virtually every aspect of cancer care and research—from introducing new risks for patients to disrupting the delivery of treatment and the continuity of research. The report, published by Ziad Bakouny, MD, and...
Immunotherapy has changed the treatment paradigm for cancer, inducing durable responses in a subset of patients with previously refractory disease. However, current approaches are successful in only approximately 20% of cancers (so-called hot tumors). For the nearly 80% of cancers that are “cold”...
The Special Conference on Pancreatic Cancer, sponsored by the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and held virtually this year, showcased cutting-edge discoveries and promising advances in the understanding and treatment of pancreatic cancer, reported by some of the world’s foremost...
ASCO believes that the best cancer care starts with the best cancer information. Its patient education website, Cancer.Net, gives patients and caregivers expertise and resources from ASCO in plain, easy-to-understand language so that they may make informed health-care decisions. Refer your patients ...
The Association for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) recently submitted comments to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) in response to its request for comments on improving patient identification and matching in the nation’s health information technology...
Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation® is pleased to announce the recipients of its 2020 Quality Care Symposium Merit Awards. These distinguished awards recognize oncology fellows and trainees who are first authors on top-ranking abstracts selected for presentation at the virtual ASCO Quality Care...
ASCO called for new actions to reduce disparities in cancer outcomes affecting racial and ethnic minorities, rural populations, sexual and gender minorities, people without insurance, and other disadvantaged populations. In a policy statement published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO),...
The well-loved Art of Oncology section of the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) and its pioneering podcast are both resonating as never before, as cancer specialists are prompted into deeper reflections about the poignant moments that give life meaning by the COVID-19 pandemic. JCO’s Art of...
Recent advances such as immune, cellular, and targeted therapies have provided new and effective means to treat a variety of cancers. Despite this considerable progress, cancer caught in its earliest stages remains the most curable. That is why Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is opening a new clinical ...
Despite decades of research and clinical advances, the diagnosis and treatment of pancreatic cancer remain formidable challenges. Recently, enormous efforts have been made to develop new methods for the early diagnosis and treatment of pancreatic cancer, such as those led by Diane M. Simeone, MD, a ...
Pain is one of the most common byproducts of cancer and its treatment. Tumors, surgery, intravenous chemotherapy, radiation therapy, targeted therapy, supportive care therapies (such as bisphosphonates), and diagnostic procedures can all cause pain in patients and may contribute to symptoms of...
Debbie’s Dream Foundation: Curing Stomach Cancer (DDF) recently announced its new COVID-19 Resources and Support Program. The program’s primary goal is to support, educate, and protect the already vulnerable stomach cancer community during the pandemic. The new initiative will help patients with...
As first-line treatment for advanced gastric cancer, nivolumab plus chemotherapy leads to significantly improved progression-free and overall survival over chemotherapy alone, investigators reported during a Presidential Symposium of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Virtual Congress ...
To accelerate progress in the survival rates of people with cancer in the United States and to reduce cancer disparities across the entire spectrum of cancer from diagnosis to survivorship, there needs to be increased access to cancer screening and prevention programs. To shed light on this...
The results of monarchE were discussed by George W. Sledge, Jr, MD, Professor of Medicine and Chief of Oncology at Stanford University Medical Center, who offered some possibilities as to why its results were positive and those for palbociclib, in the phase III PALLAS trial, were “resoundingly...
The widespread use of antiretroviral therapy to suppress the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has helped tens of millions of people with HIV live healthier, longer lives—but an unfortunate consequence of people living longer with HIV is an increased risk of cancer. For 25 years, the AIDS...
LUNGevity Foundation, a nonprofit organization, recently announced three recipients of its 2020 Career Development Awards for lung cancer research. These awards were presented to Kathyrn Arbour, MD, Assistant Attending at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; Carl Gay, MD, PhD, of The University...
Cancer geneticist Stephen Gruber, MD, PhD, MPH, has joined City of Hope as Director of its newly founded Center for Precision Medicine. He will lead a team of more than 14 researchers who will work across the institution to pioneer personalized cancer prevention and treatment plans. As a medical...
Colorectal cancer is more prevalent among Black people, a group with the highest rates of death for an illness that is curable if caught early. “The unfortunate reality is that minorities, especially Black people, have a much lower chance of getting life-saving cancer treatment. Health care works...
The text and photographs here are excerpted from a four-volume series of books titled Oncology: Tumors & Treatment, A Photographic History, The Anesthesia Era 1845–1875 by Stanley B. Burns, MD, FACS, and Elizabeth A. Burns. The photograph appears courtesy of Stanley B. Burns, MD, and The Burns...
The COVID-19 pandemic changed the face of U.S. health-care services in such rapid fashion that many providers were caught off guard, learning and preparing on the fly. Patients with cancer, given their multiple physical and emotional challenges, were especially vulnerable. To get a sense of the...
Born in Watertown, Wisconsin, in 1900, Mary Woodard Lasker was introduced to the ravages of cancer when she was just 3 or 4 years old and went with her mother to visit the family’s laundress, Mrs. Belter, who had just undergone surgery for breast cancer. On the way over to Mrs. Belter’s home, Ms....
The past 2 years have seen a dramatic change in the standard of care for patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer whose disease has progressed on trastuzumab. Promising new agents and combinations for later lines of therapy may also challenge current treatment strategies, according to...
The development of geriatric oncology has been slow but progressive. Thanks to the effort of investigators throughout the world, embattled but undeterred by the objection of a cautious establishment, geriatric oncology has provided a blueprint for the treatment of cancer in the population of...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies sometimes used by patients with cancer. In this installment, Yen Nien Hou, PharmD, DipIOM, LAc, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, focus on the...
In a systematic review and meta-analysis reported in The Lancet, Claire L. Vale, PhD, and colleagues found that immediate adjuvant radiotherapy did not improve event-free survival vs early salvage radiotherapy in men with intermediate-risk or high-risk localized or locally advanced prostate cancer...
In the post-trastuzumab era, a number of U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved targeted agents for metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer are available, but there is no preferred option for third-line treatment and beyond. At the 2019 Chemotherapy Foundation Symposium, Shanu Modi, MD,...
New agents for the treatment of advanced HER2-positive breast cancer should be coming soon to your clinic, according to Sara A. Hurvitz, MD, Director of the Breast Cancer Clinical Research Program and Associate Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of...
Here we present summaries of several additional clinical trials in HER2-positive breast cancer reported over the past year. Jame Abraham, MD, Chair of the Division of Hematology and Oncology at the Taussig Cancer Center, Cleveland Clinic, shared his perspective on several of these trials presented ...
Based on some unexpected negative results, oncologists using atezolizumab for metastatic triple-negative breast cancer should pair it with nab-paclitaxel, not paclitaxel. In contrast to the overall survival benefit shown for atezolizumab plus nab-paclitaxel in the previous IMpassion130...
In the phase III DANUBE trial, reported in The Lancet Oncology, Thomas Powles, MD, PhD, and colleagues found that durvalumab monotherapy did not prolong overall survival vs standard chemotherapy in previously untreated patients with largely metastatic urothelial carcinoma with high PD-L1...
Five years ago, as Rachel B. Issaka, MD, MAS, was beginning her second year as a gastroenterology fellow and feeling proud of the progress she was making in her training, she was suddenly confronted with an all-too-familiar slight that underrepresented minority providers may often experience. As...
In response to studies showing that between 30% and 60% of patients with blood cancer are at risk of death if infected with COVID-19 compared with patients who are cancer-free, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) has announced its launch of the first clinical trial dedicated solely to this...
A gift of $126 million to the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine will accelerate advances in finding cures for cancer and expand innovative treatment options. The donation is the single largest in the University of Miami’s 95-year...
A large cohort study with close to 160,000 men and women reported that “recent-onset diabetes accompanied by weight loss was associated with a substantial increase in risk for pancreatic cancer and may represent a high-risk group in the general population for whom early detection strategies would...
In 2019, ASCO launched an Asia-Pacific Regional Council, a group of distinguished oncology leaders from countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The Council’s purpose is to advise ASCO on the needs of members in the region and facilitate and encourage member involvement in ASCO’s global activities....
MorphoSys and Incyte have announced that tafasitamab-cxix, a humanized Fc-modified cytolytic CD19-targeting monoclonal antibody, has been included in the latest National Comprehensive Cancer Network Clinical Practice Guidelines® (NCCN Guidelines®) in Oncology for B-Cell Lymphomas. Specifically,...
Conquer Cancer®, the ASCO Foundation has joined forces with the Israel Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) to grant a 2020 Career Development Award (CDA) to a physician-scientist in Israel. The CDA supports early-career clinical and translational investigators during their first few years of faculty...
The Corporation of Brown University has approved the establishment of the Cancer Center at Brown. The center takes a broad-spectrum approach to research, from working to understand how cancer develops, grows, and metastasizes, to developing new therapeutics for patients in a personalized way that...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Jean-Jacques Grob, MD, PhD, of Aix-Marseille University, France, and colleagues, the first interim analysis of the phase II KEYNOTE-629 trial has shown the achievement of durable responses with pembrolizumab treatment of recurrent or metastatic...
“Older adults form the majority of patients with cancer.” For more than 3 decades now, almost every article, presentation, or discussion related to cancer and aging started with this statement. As I entered the field of geriatric oncology, I thought that by simply stating this fact, everyone would...
The first half of 2016 was arguably the most exciting of my life. My wife, Jaione, and I had decided to leave the United Kingdom and move with our two children, Andrew, then 14, and Alba, then 10, to Denver, where I was taking on a leadership role in corporate affairs for a brewery company. By the...
Born in Brooklyn on April 4, 1919, Ezra M. Greenspan, MD, did not stray far from his birthplace, spending most of his 5-decade medical career in New York. After graduating from New York University School of Medicine in 1942, he was accepted into the house training program at Mount Sinai Hospital...
Researchers at the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute have secured a 1-year, $630,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to help support the Institute’s clinical trials, which target underserved populations in Detroit and in the rural areas that Karmanos serves. The NCI P30 Cancer...
The ASCO Post is pleased to continue this occasional special focus on the worldwide cancer burden. In this issue, we feature a close look at the cancer incidence and mortality rates in Botswana. The aim of this special feature is to highlight the global cancer burden for various countries of the...
Findings from a study among patients with melanoma randomly assigned to observation following removal of a positive sentinel lymph node “strongly support the therapeutic effect of the sentinel lymph node biopsy in providing long-term regional nodal disease control in the large majority of...
Age is not just a number when it comes to prognosis for invasive breast cancer. According to data presented during the 2020 Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) International Conference on Surgical Cancer Care, age at diagnosis of breast cancer is a highly prognostic clinical variable that warrants...
Improved local-regional tumor control may not be enough to justify the increased morbidity of adding neoadjuvant radiation to chemotherapy in esophageal and gastroesophageal junction cancers, according to a pair of studies presented during the 2020 Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) International...
Findings from a retrospective cohort study could fuel the debate over the use of adjuvant chemotherapy in stage II colon cancer, according to data presented during the virtual edition of the 2020 Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) International Conference on Surgical Cancer Care.1 Results of the...