In a study exploring the mechanisms of stabilized disease vs tumor regression with targeted anti–epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) therapy in colorectal cancer reported in Science Translational Medicine, Zanella and colleagues found that stable disease as response was characterized by...
In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Kobold and colleagues assessed whether combining tumor-specific T cells modified with a marker antigen and a bispecific antibody that selectively recognizes transduced T cells and tumor cells could improve T-cell recruitment to...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the “Art of Oncology” as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO). These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
In my opinion, the combination of pertuzumab (Perjeta) and trastuzumab (Herceptin) is one of the most important advances in the field of metastatic breast cancer in the past 10 years. As recently reported by Swain, my other colleagues, and me and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, the...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Sandra M. Swain, MD, of Washington Cancer Institute, MedStar Washington Hospital Center, and colleagues, the final prespecified overall survival analysis in the phase III CLEOPATRA study showed a significant 15.7-month increase in median overall ...
Alan Alda, Co-Founder of the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and Visiting Professor at Stony Brook University, suggests these steps to improve scientific communication. The ability to be empathic and imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling is the key to becoming a more...
Alan Alda’s passion and appreciation for science extend nearly as far back to his early life as his love of acting. The son of actor Robert Alda, Mr. Alda began his acting career at the age of 16. Although he has appeared in such widely acclaimed films as The Seduction of Joe Tynan, Crimes and...
ASCO Answers: Managing the Cost of Cancer Care explains the various costs associated with cancer treatment, including health-care coverage through the Affordable Care Act. It also provides a list of financial resources available to help offset expenses related to care and tips for organizing...
No one ever expects to hear the words “you have cancer,” but over the course of the day, over 5,000 people in the United States are given that news.1 I first heard those words in the summer of 2007 and have been living with cancer ever since. At the time of my diagnosis, I knew this would forever...
The following essay by Kishore K. Dass, MD, is adapted from The Big Casino: America’s Best Cancer Doctors Share Their Most Powerful Stories, which was coedited by Stan Winokur, MD, and Vincent Coppola and published in May 2014. The book is available on Amazon.com and thebigcasino.org. Born in...
BOOKMARKTitle: Less Medicine, More Health: 7 Assumptions That Drive Too Much Medical CareAuthor: H. Gilbert Welch, MDPublisher: Beacon PressPublication date: March 3, 2015Price: $24.95; hardcover, 241 pages He’s the best physician that knows the worthlessness of most medicines. —Benjamin Franklin...
The process of delivering novel treatments for patients with cancer involves a multifaceted and long-term interaction between three distinct entities: clinical researchers, who conduct the trials which test treatments; drug developers, including the pharmaceutical industry, which takes cancer drugs ...
For over a decade, Patrick W. Mantyh, PhD, JD, has been investigating the molecular and cellular mechanisms that are involved in cancer-related pain, especially bone pain caused by advanced breast, prostate, and lung cancers. His early laboratory work using mouse models of bone cancer led to an...
Here are several steps for helping pediatric and adolescent patients to cope with cancer and its treatment. Give young patients control whenever possible, suggests Shawna Grissom, MS, CCLS, CEIM, Director of the Child Life Program at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and offer them realistic...
Getting a cancer diagnosis and going through treatment are difficult for patients of any age, but the experience can be especially traumatizing for the nearly 16,000 infants, children, and adolescents diagnosed each year with cancer,1 especially during the early days of treatment. Young cancer...
The text and photographs on this page are excerpted from a four-volume series of books titled Oncology Tumors & Treatment: A Photographic History, by Stanley B. Burns, MD, FACS. The photos below are from the volume titled “The Anesthesia Era: 1845–1875.” To view additional photos from this...
The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) responded to the approval of H.R.2, a Medicare-reform bill to end the program’s sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula. ASCO’s Statement ASCO President Peter Paul Yu, MD, FACP, FASCO, praised the ...
Roche announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the cobas KRAS Mutation Test for diagnostic use. The real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test is designed to identify KRAS mutations in tumor samples from patients with metastatic colorectal cancer and aid...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted for filing and review Bristol-Myers Squibb’s supplemental Biologics License Application (sBLA) for nivolumab (Opdivo) for the treatment of previously untreated patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma. The FDA also granted Priority...
The information contained in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting clinical studies for patients with newly diagnosed or relapsed or refractory lymphoma of the skin. The studies include observational, phase I, and phase II trials investigating single-agent and...
A famous Talmudic question asks: “What is truer than the truth?” The answer: “The story.” This is the story of my personal journey in search of meaning and the development of an approach to care for patients with advanced cancer, which I came to call “meaning-centered psychotherapy.” In terms of...
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. On April 24, the monoclonal antibody ramucirumab (Cyramza) was...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Fast Track designation for the development of evofosfamide (TH-302), administered in combination with gemcitabine, for previously untreated patients with metastatic or locally advanced unresectable pancreatic cancer. Evofosfamide is an...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted Breakthrough Therapy Designation to AbbVie’s investigational agent venetoclax (ABT-199) for the treatment of relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) in patients with 17p deletion. Venetoclax is an investigational oral B-cell...
Mario R. Capecchi, PhD, was honored for his tremendous scientific contributions, which have had a profound impact on the understanding of cancer, with the 12th annual American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Award for Lifetime Achievement in Cancer Research at the AACR Annual Meeting 2015....
The treatment landscape for metastatic melanoma has recently undergone a remarkable transformation. Prior to 2011, clinicians and patients were presented with difficult decisions between therapies without proven survival benefit. Now, similarly difficult but much more hopeful choices are posed...
In the phase III KEYNOTE-006 trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine,1 Caroline Robert, MD, PhD, Head of the Dermatology Unit at the Institut Gustave Roussy, Paris, and colleagues found that the anti–programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) antibody pembrolizumab (Keytruda) increased...
Geriatrics for the Oncologist is guest edited by Stuart Lichtman, MD, FACP, FASCO, and developed in collaboration with the International Society of Geriatric Oncology (SIOG). Visit SIOG.org for more on geriatric oncology. The Task Forces of the International Society of Geriatric Oncology (SIOG) are ...
The recent publication of the results of our National Cancer Institute (NCI) RO1-funded randomized controlled trial of meaning-centered group psychotherapy for advanced cancer patients in the Journal of Clinical Oncology,1 and the accompanying summary published in this issue of The ASCO Post,...
In a randomized trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, William Breitbart, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and colleagues found that meaning-centered group psychotherapy significantly improved psychological well-being compared with supportive group psychotherapy in...
James Allison, PhD, was named a recipient of the 2015 Pezcoller Foundation–American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) International Award for Cancer Research at the 2015 AACR Annual Meeting. Dr. Allison, Chair of Immunology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, was acknowledged ...
The role of a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician at cancer centers continues to grow, as survivors live longer and national cancer organizations advocate for more rehabilitation services throughout the continuum of survivorship care. Working with physiatrists at your institution can...
In the past 2 decades, the incidence of thyroid cancer has risen steeply, with rates now growing by 5.5% annually.1 In 2014, 62,980 new cases of thyroid cancer were diagnosed in the United States. The good news is that, overall, the prognosis of thyroid cancer remains excellent; 97.8% of patients...
In a phase III trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Martin Schlumberger, MD, of Institut Gustave Roussy, and colleagues found that the multikinase inhibitor lenvatinib (Lenvima) produced a large improvement in progression-free survival vs placebo in patients with advanced...
The report from Dr. Steven Narod and colleagues recently published in JAMA1 and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post adds to the growing evidence regarding observed disparities in breast cancer outcomes by race and ethnicity among women in the United States. Since 1990, breast cancer death rates ...
In a study reported in JAMA, Javaid Iqbal, MD, of Women’s College Research Institute, Toronto, and colleagues found racial/ethnic differences in the likelihood of breast cancer diagnosis at stage I and subsequent survival in U.S. breast cancer patients.1 These differences seemed largely to reflect...
Large, randomized phase III clinical trials showed that the addition of HER2-targeted therapy to chemotherapy for patients with early-stage, HER2-overexpressing breast cancers substantially decreased the risk of recurrence and improved survival. The chemotherapy given in these trials varied, but it ...
In a phase II study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Sara M. Tolaney, MD, MPH, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and colleagues found that adjuvant paclitaxel and trastuzumab (Herceptin) was associated with high invasive disease-free survival in women with small, node-negative,...
Ever since the early application of adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer decades ago, it has been recognized that there is always a price to pay for its success in reducing breast cancer mortality. Most of that “cost” is commonly considered in terms of the potential morbid short- and long-term...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Antonio C. Wolff, MD, of Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, Baltimore, and colleagues found a low but higher-than-expected incidence of marrow neoplasms in patients receiving adjuvant radiation therapy or chemotherapy...
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...
Be on the lookout for a big announcement from the Conquer Cancer Foundation at the 2015 Annual Meeting. How will you be able to take part? By making a gift in support of vital cancer research, education, and tools to improve the quality of cancer care. Donations can be made online at ccf.asco.org...
ASCO has announced the second class of oncology practices for its Quality Training Program. Twelve practices across the United States will participate in this 6-month comprehensive course, which will guide them through quality improvement activities using proven innovative learning techniques....
ASCO and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) have launched a project to apply team-based oncology clinical care delivery and are calling for writing teams to submit the best clinical oncology patient-centered practices. The two organizations will work with interested authors to create writing teams ...
A new app from ASCO University enables clinicians to earn Maintenance of Certification (MOC) points quickly, conveniently, and easily by answering questions on a smartphone, tablet, or computer. The ASCO MOC app, available for iOS and Android devices, as well as on a mobile-friendly responsive...
Multidisciplinary Cancer Management Courses (MCMCs) offered by ASCO International, in collaboration with other organizations, seek to improve cancer care globally through the promotion of interdisciplinary cancer management. Attendees of select MCMCs have the option to attend a 1- to 2-day training ...
June McKoy, MD, MPH, JD, LLM, MBA, Associate Professor of Medicine and Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and Director of Geriatric Oncology for the Lurie Cancer Center, has been selected by National Cancer Institute (NCI) Director, Douglas Lowy, MD, to join ...
National Institutes of Health (NIH)Director Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, has announced the selection of Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable, MD, as Director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD). Dr. Pérez-Stable is expected to join NIH in September 2015. “Dr....
On March 31, 2015, Harold Varmus, MD, left his position as Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to join the faculty of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York as its Lewis Thomas University Professor of Medicine. Dr. Varmus was also named Senior Associate Core Member of the New York...
BOOKMARKTitle: The Story of Pain: From Prayer to PainkillersAuthor: Joanna BourkePublisher: Oxford University PressPublication date: 2014Price: $34.95: hardcover, 416 page “Pain may even kill. It may overwhelm the nervous system by its mere magnitude & duration.” —Peter Mere Latham, 1871...