Adam Bass, MD, a physician-scientist in the field of cancer genomics and gastrointestinal cancer, will join the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at Columbia University and NewYork-Presbyterian as the founding Director of the Center for Precision Cancer Medicine and Director of...
New Jersey Brain and Spine has announced that Timothy Vogel, MD, PhD, Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery, has cofounded a new laboratory for pediatric neuro-oncology with Derek Hanson, MD, at the Center for Discovery and Innovation at Hackensack University Medical Center. Dr. Vogel also serves as ...
On November 17, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for the first COVID-19 diagnostic test for self-testing at home. The Lucira COVID-19 All-In-One Test Kit, which provides rapid results, is a molecular (real-time loop mediated amplification...
Fatigue could be an important baseline stratification factor for cancer treatment, according to data presented during the 2020 ASCO Quality Care Symposium.1 An analysis of four SWOG treatment trials has found an association between patient fatigue and outcomes in advanced cancer. Data from the...
The National Academy of Medicine recently announced the election of 90 regular members and 10 international members during its annual meeting. Election to the Academy is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine and recognizes individuals who have demonstrated...
Drawing on several lines of ongoing research, David A. Tuveson, MD, PhD, has created a theoretical framework to consider while developing clinical trials in pancreatic cancer. In his keynote lecture at the 2020 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Special Conference on Pancreatic Cancer, ...
A strategy for giving intermittent, high doses of the tyrosine kinase inhibitor sunitinib seemed to be well tolerated by patients with advanced cancer and increased drug concentrations in solid tumors, which was associated with improved survival. This research was presented by Gerritse et al at the ...
Skin cancers are the most common malignancy in the United States and worldwide. Between 1994 and 2014, the diagnosis and treatment of melanoma and nonmelanoma skin cancers in the United States increased by 77%.1 The cost of treating melanoma and nonmelanoma skin cancers to the health-care system...
Oral cancer may be more likely to spread in patients experiencing high levels of pain, according to a team of researchers who found genetic and cellular clues as to why metastatic oral cancers are so painful. These findings were published by Bhattacharya et al in Scientific Reports. Researchers...
Thirumala-Devi Kanneganti, PhD, Vice Chair of the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital Department of Immunology, has received a National Cancer Institute (NCI) Outstanding Investigator Award to build on her discoveries related to the innate immune system, inflammation, and cell death in health and ...
City of Hope scientists have combined two immunotherapies—an oncolytic virus and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy—to target solid tumors that are otherwise difficult to treat with CAR T-cell therapy alone, according to a recent study in Science Translational Medicine.1 In preclinical...
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 a paper published by Banerjee et al in JAMA Network Open, researchers reported that genetic testing is cost-effective and beneficial for newly diagnosed patients with metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST), a type of soft-tissue sarcoma that develops in specialized nerve cells in the...
Most of the newer systemic treatments for breast cancer can be safely and effectively paired with radiation therapy—although there are some exceptions, according to Mylin A. Torres, MD, the Louisa and Rand Glenn Family Chair in Breast Cancer Research and Associate Professor of Radiation Oncology at ...
As a young girl growing up in central New Jersey, Joyce F. Liu, MD, MPH, a medical oncologist specializing in gynecologic cancers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, dreamed of becoming an astronaut. However, she realized her fear of heights and propensity for motion sickness didn’t jive with...
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many stem cell transplant centers (including guidance from the National Marrow Donor Program [NMDP]) recommend that stem cell products be frozen for preservation. However, findings from a study by Duncan Purtill, MD, and colleagues in Blood Advances suggest that the...
Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) announced the beginning of construction on its South Lake Union campus to add a six-story, 150,000 square-foot outpatient cancer treatment clinic. The largest single construction project in SCCA history, the new building will feature a patient-centered design,...
Invited discussant of the CheckMate 743 trial, Dean A. Fennell, FRCP, PhD, Director of the Mesothelioma Research Program and Chair of Thoracic Oncology at The University of Leicester and University Hospitals of Leicester, United Kingdom, noted the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab has been...
Earlier this year, as the COVID-19 pandemic was spreading across the United States, federal health officials and cancer societies urged Americans to delay routine cancer screenings and other elective procedures to keep them out of clinics to avoid potential exposure to the coronavirus and to...
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies are a major advance in the treatment of hematologic malignancies and are making inroads in solid tumors, but there is room for improvement in their design, since not all patients respond, and those who do may relapse. Researchers are studying...
Daniela Matei, MD, Diana, Princess of Wales Professor of Cancer Research at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, grew up Sibiu, a picturesque Romanian city situated at the foothills of the Cindrel Mountains in historic Transylvania. “Both of my parents were physicians, and some of my ...
The Cancer Research Institute and The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research have launched an innovative clinical trial that aims to demonstrate the utility of liquid biopsy in assessing responses of patients with lung cancer to immunotherapy (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT04093167). If the trial...
Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, MD, PhD, Professor and Chair of Radiology at the Stanford School of Medicine and an internationally recognized pioneer in molecular imaging, died on July 18, 2020, of cancer. He was 57. The Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Research, Dr. Gambhir dedicated his career...
A vaccine for COVID-19 is currently the Holy Grail, but even if an effective vaccine were developed on a fast-track timetable, it may be effective in only a percentage of people, judging by existing flu vaccines, which show efficacy rates of approximately 45% and vary year by year. Until we have a...
Neuroendocrine tumors are rare malignancies that arise in neuroendocrine cells, which can occur throughout the body but are most commonly found in the gastrointestinal tract, lungs, and pancreas. Although most neuroendocrine tumors are indolent and take years to grow, some are aggressive and grow...
For this installment of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, spoke with noted neurosurgeon Keith L. Black, MD, Chair of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Department of Neurosurgery and Director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute. During his career, Dr. Black has...
After years of development, engineering, and enhancement, researchers at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis have made available a software system that enables better detection of gene fusions. The system, called CICERO, offers additional insights into cancers as well as new targets...
Mustafa Raoof, MD, MS, a surgical oncologist and researcher specializing in gastrointestinal cancers at City of Hope, was recently awarded a Pancreatic Cancer Action Network Career Development Award (PanCAN) and a Young Investigator Award from the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN). “I’m ...
Ludwig Cancer Research recently welcomed Juanita L. Merchant, MD, PhD, to the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. Dr. Merchant is a practicing clinician and an accomplished researcher at the University of Arizona, Tucson, where she is Professor and Chief of...
Considered the “guardian of the genome,” TP53 is the most commonly mutated gene in patients with cancer. TP53's normal function is to detect DNA damage and prevent cells from passing this damage on to daughter cells. When TP53 is mutated, the protein made from this gene, called p53, can no longer...
Carolyn J. Anderson, PhD, has been named the 2020 recipient of the Paul C. Aebersold Award. Dr. Anderson is a Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Radiology, Bioengineering, Chemistry, and Pharmacology and Chemical Biology at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. The award was...
Joann Sweasy, PhD, who has served as Interim Director for the past 9 months, has been named Director of the University of Arizona Cancer Center and the inaugural holder of the Nancy C. and Craig M. Berge Endowed Chair for the Director of the Cancer Center. As Director, Dr. Sweasy will establish the ...
Yang Shi, PhD, recently joined the Oxford Branch of the United Kingdom’s Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. Dr. Shi, who comes to Ludwig from Harvard University, is a leader in the field of epigenetics, which explores how chemical modifications made to chromatin control the organization and...
Kicking off the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Virtual Meeting: COVID-19 and Cancer earlier this week, Anthony Fauci, MD, gave the keynote lecture, “Coronavirus Infections: More Than Just the Common Cold.” As Dr. Fauci told listeners, “[COVID-19]—and other infectious...
Beth Levine, MD, Professor of Internal Medicine and Microbiology, Director of the Center for Autophagy Research, and Charles Cameron Sprague Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Sciences at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center (UT Southwestern), and an investigator at the Howard Hughes ...
In this edition of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, interviewed his colleague Brian J. Bolwell, MD, FACP, Chairman of the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute and Professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. Among other things, Dr. Bolwell discussed his...
At the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting, Nathalie LeVasseur, MD, BSc, FRCPC, received the Annual Meeting Merit Award for a project titled, “Whole-Genome Sequencing in Metastatic Breast Cancer: Lessons Learned From the BC Cancer Personalized Oncogenomics Program.” Along with her clinical work, Dr....
The world is grappling with a pandemic and we are all adjusting to a new reality. Fewer handshakes, more masks. Fewer hugs, more fear. COVID-19 has tested us, challenged us, changed us. It’s changed the way we look, the way we work, the way we socialize. It’s changed us, but it can’t stop us. It...
The Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) has announced three recipients of the 2020 Richard V. Smalley, MD, Memorial Award and Lectureship, the society’s highest honor: they include Lieping Chen, MD, PhD, Gordon Freeman, PhD, and Arlene Sharpe, MD, PhD. The research conducted by Drs....
Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (SCCA) announced the opening of a Gastrointestinal (GI) Care Neighborhood, a new cancer clinic aimed at improving the experience for patients with GI cancers, which features dedicated GI-related cancer care services on one floor of SCCA’s South Lake Union campus. “We...
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) and Hackensack Meridian Health recently announced they have formed an Immunology Research Collaboration. Through this joint initiative, researchers can apply for funding to support innovative investigations exploring the power of the immune system and...
Baylor College of Medicine recently announced that Ganesh Rao, MD, has been named the new Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery. In this role, he also will hold the Marc J. Shapiro Endowed Chair at Baylor and will serve as the Neurosurgery Service Line Chief across the Catholic Health...
In an article published in JCO Oncology Practice, David Waterhouse, MD, MPH, of Oncology Hematology Care, Cincinnati, Ohio, and colleagues presented the results of a recent ASCO survey of clinical programs on the early impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the performance of oncology clinical...
The global toll of breast cancer on women is staggering. In 2018, nearly two million new breast cancer cases were diagnosed, an increase of more than 20% since 2008,1 and mortality rates have increased by 14%, bringing the annual number of deaths worldwide from the cancer to more than 611,625.2...
The Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center—Jefferson Health (SKCC) recently announced that Andrew E. Aplin, PhD, was being recognized with the Melanoma Research Foundation Humanitarian Award. Dr. Aplin is the Kalbach-Newton Professor in Cancer Research, Enterprise Associate Director for Basic Research, and...
Geneticist and physician Francis Collins, MD, PhD, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and career-long advocate for the integration of faith and reason, was recently announced as the 2020 Templeton Prize Laureate. Dr. Collins was selected as the 2020 Laureate by the prize judges...
The 2019 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine was jointly awarded to three researchers. Their discoveries paved the way for promising new strategies to treat anemia, cancer, and many other diseases. One of the three Nobel Laureates is William G. Kaelin, Jr, MD, who continues his research at his...
The Revolutions of 1989 that resulted in the end of communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe and beyond began in Poland. Perhaps if not for that social upheaval, the career of internationally renowned oncologist Jacek Jassem, MD, PhD, would have taken a very different path. Dr. Jassem had fled...
F. Stephen Hodi, MD, Director of the Melanoma Center and the Center for Immuno-Oncology at Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center, was born in Framingham and grew up in the town of Acton, a western suburb of Boston. “My dad was an engineer, and I was influenced by puzzle-solving and using...
Internationally recognized immune-oncology melanoma expert Jedd D. Wolchok, MD, PhD, FASCO, was born and reared in Staten Island, not far from where he would shape his noted career at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) in New York, New York. “I went to Princeton University and, during my ...