Women who recently used birth control pills containing high-dose estrogen and a few other formulations had an increased risk for breast cancer, whereas women using some other formulations did not, according to data published in Cancer Research. “Our results suggest that use of contemporary...
A study reported by Gragert et al in The New England Journal of Medicine indicates that most candidates for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in the United States will have a suitable adult donor on the basis of HLA matching, although many will not have optimal donors. Few will have optimal...
Nearly half of adult patients with lung-only metastases from Ewing sarcoma who received whole-lung irradiation were free of pulmonary relapse at 3 years, according to the results of a retrospective study in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology • Biology • Physics. With few...
Early surveillance imaging (< 6 months) after stereotactic body radiation therapy for early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) seems to be of limited benefit, resulting in definitive intervention in only 3% of patients, according to the findings of a study in Practical Radiation...
The routine use of a molecular testing panel developed at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center greatly increases the likelihood of performing the correct initial surgery for patients with thyroid nodules and cancer, reported researchers from the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. The ...
As reported in The Lancet by Robert et al, the anti–programmed death receptor-1 (PD-1) antibody pembrolizumab produced responses and was well tolerated at two dose levels in an expansion cohort of a phase I trial in patients with ipilimumab (Yervoy)-refractory advanced melanoma. In this...
A new analysis has found that rates of testicular cancer have been rising dramatically in recent years among young Hispanic American men, but not among their non-Hispanic counterparts. Published early online in Cancer, the findings indicate that greater awareness is needed concerning the increasing ...
The phase II Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG) S0802 trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Allen et al showed that adding ziv-aflibercept (Zaltrap) to topotecan improved 3-month progression-free survival, but increased toxicity and had no effect on overall survival, in patients...
Surgical resection markedly improved survival among metastatic melanoma patients whose disease is isolated to a few areas in the liver, according to new study findings published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. These results mark a departure for melanoma, which is most often...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) voted 11 to 2 that current evidence from clinical studies does not support an accelerated approval for use of olaparib as a maintenance treatment for women with platinum-sensitive relapsed ovarian cancer who have...
In an online report in the journal Cancer, a team of University of Chicago cancer specialists have described the first tool—11 questions, assembled and refined from conversations with more than 150 patients with advanced cancer—to measure a patient’s risk for, and ability to...
Extended colectomy in patients with sporadic colorectal cancer who were younger than age 50, in comparison with segmental resection, did not improve the risk of tumor recurrence or disease-free survival, according to the results of a retrospective study presented by Klos et al in the Journal of...
Used as a conditioning regimen for allogeneic transplantation in patients with acute leukemia, reduced-intensity total-body irradiation yielded similar overall and relapse-free survival rates to those seen with myeloablative total-body irradiation but with shorter hospital stays and fewer intensive ...
A unique public-private collaboration among the National Cancer Institute (NCI), SWOG Cancer Research, Friends of Cancer Research, the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health (FNIH), five pharmaceutical companies (Amgen, Genentech, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and AstraZeneca’s global...
Stopping statin therapy is safe for patients with cancer who have a life expectancy of less than 1 year, according to a randomized study reported at the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago (Abstract LBA9514). Discontinuing statins did not shorten survival and provided a number of important...
Introducing a palliative care support program for caregivers of patients with advanced cancer at or near the time patients are diagnosed provides greater benefits than delayed palliative care services, according to results of the ENABLE III study reported at the 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago...
According to a phase II study, customizing radiation doses based on response to induction chemotherapy and other prognostic factors may allow lower doses of radiation therapy to be administered to some patients with human papillomavirus (HPV)-positive oropharyngeal cancer without compromising...
Elevated circulating tumor cells are associated with poor prognosis in metastatic breast cancer. In the phase III Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG) S0500 trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Smerage et al assessed whether changing chemotherapy after one cycle of first-line treatment in ...
A large phase III study, ALTTO (Adjuvant Lapatinib and/or Trastuzumab Treatment Optimisation), found no statistically significant differences in 4-year disease-free survival among women with early HER2-positive breast cancer who received adjuvant treatment that combined the HER2-targeted drugs...
In a recent study in Annals of Internal Medicine, Vater et al analyzed the content of 409 unique clinical advertisements on television and in magazines placed by 102 cancer centers in 2012. The researchers assessed each ad for types of clinical services promoted, information provided about...
Current treatment options for relapsed/refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML), which carries a very poor prognosis, are generally ineffective. In a phase III trial (CLAVELA) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Roboz et al found that elacytarabine, a novel elaidic acid ester of...
Patients deciding to undergo contralateral prophylactic mastectomy as part of initial treatment for breast cancer is a growing challenge in the management of the disease. Removing the unaffected breast has not been shown to increase survival, and the more aggressive procedure is associated with...
In patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), preoperative positron-emission tomography (PET) has been shown to limit the number of unnecessary surgeries, according to the results of a study presented by Zeliadt et al in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Besides its value in accurate...
Few options are available to treat pain from bone metastases in patients refractory to drug and radiation therapy. In a phase III study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Hurwitz et al found significant pain relief using magnetic resonance–guided focused ultrasound...
There are few treatment options for breast cancer patients with progressive disease after two or more HER2-directed regimens for recurrent or metastatic disease. In the open-label phase III TH3RESA trial reported in The Lancet Oncology by Krop and et al, ado-trastuzumab emtansine (Kadcyla)...
Patients with locally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck treated with hyperfractionated radiation therapy experienced improved local-regional control and, with patients censored at 5 years, improved overall survival with no increase in late toxicity, according to a study...
Noncompliance appears to be a major challenge for active surveillance, according to the results of long-term follow-up of patients with prostate cancer presented at the European Association of Urology 29th Annual Congress in Stockholm. Over a quarter of men dropped out of the active surveillance...
The St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital–Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project has identified new mutations in pediatric high-grade gliomas. The findings by Wu et al were published in Nature Genetics and may lead to improved outcomes for children with these brain...
In women with non–small cell lung cancer, long-term hormone therapy, particularly estrogen plus progesterone, is associated with improved survival, according to the results of a retrospective study presented by Katcoff et al in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology. This finding may lead to...
The investigational, oral drug BGJ398, which blocks the activity of fibroblast growth factor receptors (FGFRs), showed promising anticancer activity in patients with various types of cancer driven by FGFR genetic alterations, according to the results of a phase I clinical trial presented at the...
Patients with cancer of the throat and who are positive for the human papillomavirus (HPV) have a good prognosis, but until now the effect of being HPV-positive on the prognosis of tumors located elsewhere in the head and neck was unknown. A new study presented at the 33rd Conference of the...
A new genetic signature to identify prostate cancer patients who are at high risk of their cancer recurring after surgery or radiotherapy has been developed by researchers in Canada, according to a study presented at the 33rd Conference of the European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology in...
The recently reported open-label phase III AURELIA trial showed that the addition of bevacizumab (Avastin) to chemotherapy resulted in significant improvements in progression-free survival, the primary study endpoint, and objective response rate in women with recurrent platinum-resistant ovarian...
A review by ASCO’s Update Committee of new data from randomized clinical trials has led to a change in recommendations for the use of sentinel lymph node biopsy in patients with early-stage breast cancer. The updated guideline will enable more women with early-stage breast cancer to avoid the ...
Both obesity and diabetes have adverse effects on outcomes in breast cancer patients who receive neoadjuvant chemotherapy, according to research presented at the 9th European Breast Cancer Conference. Although a high body mass index (BMI) is known to have a negative impact on cancer development and ...
Women whose breast cancer has spread to just a few lymph nodes under their arm are less likely to have their disease recur or to die from it if they have radiotherapy after mastectomy, according to new research presented today at the European Breast Cancer Conference in Glasgow and published in The ...
The members of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) have elected José Baselga, MD, PhD, Physician-in-Chief at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, as their President-Elect for 2014–2015. Dr. Baselga is an internationally recognized physician-scientist...
In a pilot trial (PediQUEST) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Wolfe et al assessed the effects of use of the PediQUEST electronic patient-reported feedback survey on health-related quality of life in children with advanced cancer. Although few significant improvements were observed,...
A new clinical study has found that erlotinib (Tarceva) has promising potential to improve treatment for cervical cancer. Published in Cancer, the findings by Nogueira-Rodrigues et al indicate that larger trials are warranted to determine whether the drug should become part of standard therapy for...
Little is known about how fertility concerns affect treatment decisions or fertility preservation strategies at the time of initial diagnosis of breast cancer. In an ongoing multicohort study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Ruddy et al found that most young women with breast cancer...
In a cohort study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Baldur-Felskov et al found that there has been a significant reduction in cervical lesions among Danish girls and women receiving the quadrivalent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine during the first 6 years of its...
In a recent study published in Science Translational Medicine, Davila et al found that 88% of patients with relapsed or refractory B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) who were treated with genetically modified versions of their own immune cells achieved overall complete response. Most...
The St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital–Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project has identified the most common genetic alteration ever reported in the brain tumor ependymoma and evidence that the alteration drives tumor development. The findings were published online in...
In response to FDA's approval earlier this week of ibrutinib (Imbruvica) to treat patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) who had received at least one prior therapy, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) issued the following statement: "After the FDA designated ibrutinib as a...
Cancer experts from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medical College are collaborating to understand the link between obesity and cancer. Most recently, their research has yielded an interesting association: Obesity prior to diagnosis is associated with a fivefold increase...
In the randomized, phase III CA184-043 trial, ipilimumab (Yervoy) improved progression-free survival and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) response compared with placebo, but failed to improve overall survival significantly in postdocetaxel metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer....
The addition of PCV (procarbazine [Matulane], lomustine [CeeNu], vincristine) chemotherapy to radiotherapy improves progression-free survival in patients with grade 2 glioma, but the potential effect of treatment intensification on cognitive function is a concern in this group of patients with good ...
ALK and ROS1 gene rearrangements, which are known to drive subsets of lung cancer, appear to be present in some colorectal cancers as well, according to the results of a study published in Molecular Cancer Research. The findings by Aisner et al suggest that therapies used to target these two...
A National Cancer Institute–funded survey of general internists asking about their attitudes and knowledge about the care of adult childhood cancer survivors has found that few internists are comfortable caring for these patients. Moreover, many are unfamiliar with the Children’s...
A study of human bronchial epithelial cells carrying mutations in the TP53 and KRAS genes has found that e-cigarette vapors enhanced the cells’ cancerous behaviors. The study suggests that e-cigarette exposure may contribute to lung cancer in individuals at high risk for the disease. The...