Breast cancer arising in younger women has increasingly become the subject of intense study, and often debate, over the past decade. Retrospective studies have illustrated that breast cancer in young women is more commonly an aggressive subtype (ie, triple-negative/basal-like, HER2-enriched),...
This issue of The ASCO Post summarizes the results of an important study recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine by Yong and colleagues. As outlined, investigators from the National University of Singapore Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine have identified re-expression of SALL4 as a ...
Hepatocellular carcinomas with characteristics of embryonic stem cell and progenitor cell gene expression are associated with particularly poor prognosis. SALL4 is an oncofetal protein that is expressed in the human fetal liver and normally silenced in the adult liver, but re-expressed in a...
Durable remissions are uncommon with current treatments for relapsed chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Bruton’s tyrosine kinase is an essential component of B cell–receptor signaling that mediates interactions with the tumor microenvironment and promotes survival and proliferation of CLL cells....
In patients with triple-negative breast cancer, the addition of carboplatin significantly improved the rate of pathologic complete response after neoadjuvant chemotherapy in a study by the German Breast Group (GBG)/Gynecologic Oncology Working Group–Breast (AGO-B) reported at the 2013 ASCO Annual...
Ardis Dee Hoven, MD, President, Internal Medicine/Infectious Disease Robert M. Wah, MD, President-elect, Reproductive Endocrinology/Obstetrics & Gynecology Jeremy A. Lazarus, MD, Immediate Past President, Psychiatry Andrew W. Gurman, MD, Speaker, Orthopedic Surgery Susan R. Bailey, MD, Vice ...
ASCO has appointed Daniel G. Haller, MD, as the first Editor-in-Chief of ASCO University®, an eLearning center designed to serve as the educational home for physicians, nurses, advanced practice providers, and patient educators at every stage of their careers. As head of the editorial board, Dr....
For the entire month of September, donors to the Conquer Cancer Foundation of the American Society of Clinical Oncology have the opportunity to double their impact through a matching gift from an anonymous individual donor. From September 1 to 30, 2013, all donations—whether made online, through...
The PARAMOUNT trial1 represents an important landmark study of continuation maintenance therapy with pemetrexed (Alimta). While maintenance therapy gained a toehold in routine management of advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) several years ago, the first trials that demonstrated a...
Obinutuzumab is a type II, glycoengineered, humanized anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody. In the phase II GAUGUIN studies reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Franck Andre Morschhauser, MD, PhD, of Centre Hospitalier Régional Universitaire de Lille and Gilles A. Salles, MD, PhD, of Hospices...
One of the primary obstacles we face in caring for patients with peripheral T-cell lymphomas is a too often inadequate response to chemotherapy with low rates of progression-free and overall survival.1 And while more intensive treatment programs and the availability of novel agents give a greater...
Maintenance therapy with olaparib extended progression-free survival and the time to disease progression after a second subsequent therapy in patients with platinum-sensitive relapsed serous ovarian cancer and a BRCA mutation, according to an updated analysis of Study 19 presented at the 2013 ASCO...
At the 3rd Annual World Cutaneous Malignancies Congress, in La Jolla, California, Steven J. O’Day, MD, Director of Clinical Research at the Beverly Hills Cancer Center and Adjunct Member of the John Wayne Cancer Institute, Los Angeles, addressed what he labeled the “key clinical questions” about...
Walter M. Stadler, MD, an authority on prostate, kidney, bladder, and testicular cancers, has been named Chief of the Section of Hematology/Oncology at the University of Chicago Medicine. This position became effective August 15, 2013. Dr. Stadler, the Fred C. Buffet Professor of Medicine and...
When Tumor Is the Rumor and Cancer Is the Answer is the guidebook to cancer that Kevin P. Ryan, MD, FACP, COL, USAF (ret) wished his patients had during his 30 years of practicing oncology. The book, recently published by AuthorHouse, is an authoritative, inspiring, and even philosophical guide for ...
The ASPECT study,1 a randomized, open-label, phase III trial examining adenovirus-mediated gene therapy with sitimagene ceradenovec followed by IV ganciclovir for patients with operable high-grade glioma, is an important achievement for both neuro-oncology and gene therapy. As vector engineering...
In the Ovarian Tumor Tissue Analysis Consortium Study recently published by Sieh et al,1 tissue microarrays from 2,933 cases of epithelial ovarian carcinoma demonstrated that progesterone receptor (PR) expression and estrogen receptor (ER) expression were associated with significantly improved...
Bayer HealthCare and Onyx Pharmaceuticals recently announced that the FDA has granted priority review designation to the supplemental new drug application of sorafenib (Nexavar) tablets for the treatment of locally advanced or metastatic radioactive iodine-refractory differentiated thyroid cancer....
With exciting targeted and immunotherapeutic agents now part of the arsenal for metastatic melanoma, which drug should move to the head of the line? Mario Sznol, MD, Professor of Medicine at Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, has been involved in key clinical trials of the...
There have been three “game-changers” in the treatment of melanoma, Mark R. Albertini, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, contended at the Best of ASCO Chicago meeting. The first, he explained, was the recognition of different genetic driver...
VeriStrat, a serum-based protein assay, can help select which patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) not known to have epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations might benefit from an EGFR-targeted agent, according to a study presented at the ASCO Annual Meeting by Vanesa Gregorc, ...
For the treatment of triple-negative breast cancer, there is renewed interest in investigating the role of platinum chemotherapy, according to Melinda L. Telli, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Stanford University, Palo Alto. At the Best of ASCO meeting in Los Angeles, Dr. Telli reviewed the...
On September 10, Jane Carrie Weeks, MD, MSc, a prominent researcher at Dana-Farber Cancer Center, died of cancer in her Boston home. She was 61. At the time of her death, Dr. Weeks was Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School...
“I’ve seen a lot of puzzled people,” Alexander V. Prokhorov, MD, PhD, said, referring to people who see others using electronic or e-cigarettes. That puzzlement can go beyond wondering why people are smoking in public places and whether they are breaking the law, or just being annoying, to...
Recently the American Psychosocial Oncology Society (APOS) and the International Psycho-Oncology Society (IPOS) held a fundraising event, Cruise for a Cause: Improving Psychosocial and Supportive Cancer Care, to raise money to advance the science and practice of psychosocial care for patients with...
Guest Editor Integrative Oncology is guest edited by Barrie R. Cassileth, MS, PhD, Chief of the Integrative Medicine Service and Laurance S. Rockefeller Chair in Integrative Medicine at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York. The Integrative Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering...
In a trial (ALSYMPCA trial) reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Chris Parker, MD, from Royal Marsden Hospital in Surrey, UK, and colleagues compared the alpha emitter radium-223 dichloride (Xofigo) with best standard of care in men with castration-resistant prostate cancer and bone...
1945: Hugh J. Creech, PhD, begins his 31-year career at the Institute. Dr. Creech would become widely recognized for pioneering work in developing chemotherapy agents. 1959: Peter C. Nowell, MD, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and his research fellow David A. Hungerford, Fox Chase...
On October 8, 1904, a group of Philadelphia physicians and businessmen who were concerned about the escalating incidence of cancer in the city signed a charter that established the American Oncologic Hospital, one of the nation’s first hospitals solely devoted to cancer care. Seven decades later—2...
“It was a very exciting session this year, particularly for cervical cancers,” said Paul Haluska MD, PhD, of the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, in speaking of the 2013 ASCO Annual Meeting’s gynecologic oncology session and the abstracts highlighted recently at Best of ASCO in Chicago. In one...
At the Best of ASCO Meeting in Los Angeles, Tony Reid, MD, PhD, Director of the Early Phase Clinical Research Program and Professor of Hematology/Oncology at the University of California, San Diego, reviewed important findings in metastatic colorectal cancer presented at the 2013 ASCO Annual...
A “new kind of pathology,” with anatomy and histology being supplemented by molecular etiology, has been emerging over the past decade and promises better response rates among patients with cancer, as genomic alterations continue to be identified and treated with targeted therapies. “The list of...
Pathologic complete response as assessed surgically after neoadjuvant treatment is being touted by some researchers as a stand-alone endpoint justifying early drug approval for breast cancer. They argue that it provides a more efficient means of testing the value of agents that might be useful in...
In an e-mail interview, E. Shelley Hwang, MD, an expert who has coauthored several papers on ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), weighed in on the two abstracts about management of DCIS featured in this issue of The ASCO Post—one presented by Melissa L. Pilewskie, MD (perioperative MRI in DCIS, page...
Perioperative MRI for patients with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) was not associated with a reduction in locoregional recurrence or contralateral breast cancer development in a large single-center study reported at the 2013 ASCO Breast Cancer Symposium. The study also was presented at a...
Ten cancer programs that have developed pioneering solutions to address the challenges of treating cancer patients have received the Association of Community Cancer Centers’ (ACCC) 2013 Innovator Awards. Established in 2011, ACCC’s Innovator Awards are sponsored by GE Healthcare. The award...
This recent paper in The New England Journal of Medicine outlines the details of the clinical outcomes with two incidence screens that were conducted as part of the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST).1 In the wake of the positive review of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) draft...
Medullary thyroid cancer is derived from parafollicular C cells in the thyroid gland. The disease is sporadic in about 75% of cases and hereditary in the remaining 25%.1 Oncogenic mutations in the gene for tyrosine kinase receptor rearranged during transfection (RET) are driver genetic alterations...
Cost of Care and Federal Funding How can ASCO address the high cost of cancer care and diminishing federal resources for basic and translational research? In answer to the first part of this question, the rising cost of cancer care has certainly become a focus of national conversation given the...
Zhe-Bin Liu, MD, PhD, of Shanghai Cancer Center, Fudan University, China, is the recipient of the 2013 Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO Long-Term International Fellowship (LIFe) in Breast Cancer, generously supported by The Breast Cancer Research Foundation. The LIFe provides early-career...
Although upfront therapy can achieve remission in multiple myeloma, most patients will ultimately relapse. Newer targeted therapies and genomic analysis are moving the management of relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma forward, according to Kenneth C. Anderson, MD, Director, Jerome Lipper Multiple...
S1-01. Piccart-Gebhart M, Holmes AP, de Azambuja E, et al: The association between event-free survival and pathological complete response to neoadjuvant lapatinib, trastuzumab or their combination in HER2-positive breast cancer. Survival follow-up analysis of the NeoALTTO study (BIG 1-06) S1-02....
The Co-Directors of the 2013 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, which will be held December 10–14, 2013, have highlighted what they consider to be the most important abstracts to be presented at the Symposium. In a telebriefing in advance of the December meeting, C. Kent Osborne, MD,...
The good news about HER2-positive breast cancer is that recurrent disease is plummeting, owing to the impact of adjuvant trastuzumab [Herceptin]. Hopefully, first-line metastatic treatment is becoming a thing of the past,” said Harold Burstein, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston....
The engineered monoclonal antibody MPDL3280A achieved encouraging and durable responses in a phase I study in metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in both smokers and nonsmokers, as well as in cancers of squamous and adenocarcinoma histology. Responses were more robust in smokers than...
“Varying risk factor associations between inflammatory and noninflammatory breast cancer suggest a distinct etiology for [inflammatory] breast cancer,” according to a study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. High body mass index was shown to increase risk of inflammatory breast cancer ...
Common Name: Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) Brand Names: Omegaven, Max-EPA 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...
Impaired sleep quality is a concerning problem for many patients with cancer, and pharmacologic treatments come with many negative effects. Several small studies indicate that yoga improves persistent fatigue, sleep disturbance, anxiety, and quality of life, in addition to reducing the need for...
The worldwide data from prospective studies of the relationship between levels of endogenous sex hormones and breast cancer risk in postmenopausal women show multiple and complex relationships.1 Nine prospective studies (different from those reported here) of women not taking exogenous sex hormones ...
A psychiatrist for more than 40 years, Jimmie C. Holland, MD, Attending Psychiatrist and Wayne E. Chapman Chair at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Professor of Psychiatry, Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York, is internationally recognized as the founder of the...