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Showing 301 - 350Soy
Scientific Name: Glycine max Common Names: Soybean, soya, tofu, miso, tempeh Overview An annual herb indigenous to East Asia, soy was domesticated more than 3,000 years ago for its pods and edible seeds. It is now the world’s most important legume crop and is grown in diverse climates. Foods...
Bright Future for Osimertinib in EGFR T790M–Positive Lung Cancer
The AURA3 study—reported by Mok and colleagues and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post—confirms the dramatic activity of osimertinib (Tagrisso) in patients with advanced epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-mutant non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and acquired resistance to prior EGFR...
On the Horizon: New Tools for Prostate Cancer
The field of prostate cancer is being energized by discoveries in genetics, novel imaging techniques, and the potential of checkpoint inhibitors in the treatment of prostate cancer. Not all of these advances are currently clinically actionable, but all have the potential to change clinical...
What Have We Got to Lose?
Tuesday morning was the regular time for the departmental meeting—an opportunity to discuss cases, troubleshoot, debrief, and expedite the necessary allied health referrals. As usual, patient cases were being discussed in alphabetical order of the attending oncologist. We were already three...
An Insider’s Account of the AIDS Epidemic
On June 5, 1981, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) describing cases of a rare lung infection in five young gay men in Los Angeles. The men had other unusual infections as well, indicating their immune systems were compromised....
Addressing Discrimination and Bias in Medical Education
“As a medical student, I often felt marginalized from my medical community. I have been told that my name is ‘not American,’ fallen prey to being confused for support staff such as a janitor (even while wearing my white coat) and been asked questions like, ‘Where are you really from?’ or ‘How old...
A Lesson From David
The following essay by Jeremy K. Hon, 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. As physicians, ...
Women in Oncology: Breaking Down Barriers and Looking to the Future
There has been no better time than the present for women in the field of oncology: Women at all stages of their careers are finding more opportunities and avenues to excel. At the time of the last ASCO workforce survey, women made up 28.4% of the oncologist workforce, and that proportion is rising...
A Gleason 6 Tumor: Is It Cancer, and Should It Be Treated?
The diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer have long been a source of controversy among the oncology community, the political sector, and patient advocacy groups. Most notably, the decision to biopsy a man’s prostate gland rests largely on his prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test numbers, the...
Pioneer in Cancer Immunology, Richmond T. Prehn, MD, Dies
Until 1957, the prevailing thought was that since cancers develop in normal patients, they are not recognized as foreign by the immune system. That changed when Richmond T. Prehn, MD, and his laboratory assistant, Joan Main, showed that tumors induced by chemical carcinogens in mice could...
NCCN Launches Campaign to Eradicate Fatal Vincristine Errors
It is uniformly fatal and impossible to undo. When the chemotherapy drug vincristine is placed in a syringe and injected intrathecally—into the spinal fluid—the patient always dies. And despite safety guidelines and labels, deaths continue to occur. Now the National Comprehensive Cancer Network®...
Dave, Dave, Dave
It was 1983, and I was in my third year as an attending physician at a major East Coast university medical center and just 5 years out of fellowship. As was common at the time, I saw and treated all malignancies except leukemia and gynecologic cancers. In the middle of a typically busy day at the ...
Fulminant, Fatal Myocarditis Reported in Two Patients After Starting Combined Immune Checkpoint Blockade Treatment
In an article in The New England Journal of Medicine, Johnson et al reported the occurrence of fulminant, fatal immune-related myocarditis in two patients who received combined ipilimumab (Yervoy) and nivolumab (Opdivo) for metastatic melanoma. Patient Courses One patient was a 65-year-old woman...
NCCN Challenges Medical Community to ‘Just Bag It’ to Eradicate Deadly Medical Error
As part of its mission to improve the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of cancer care so that patients can live better lives, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) has announced the launch of Just Bag It: The NCCN Campaign for Safe Vincristine...
When Breath Becomes Air: Dr. Lucy Kalanithi Reflects on Dr. Paul Kalanithi’s Life and Writing
Perhaps more than any other book in recent memory, When Breath Becomes Air has struck a chord among readers, both inside the medical community and among the public, desiring an honest and philosophical consideration of death. The autobiographical account of Paul Kalanithi, MD, a physician diagnosed ...
A Space to Heal
We pass them every day on our way to the hospital, the street dwellers of our town in India. Their home consists of a plastic sheet suspended between four poles on the pavement. One day, two women sat under the plastic sheet in happy conversation. It had rained heavily the previous night, and I...
Friendship
Mr. C is almost 90 now, but every summer the boxes of squash, pumpkins, tomatoes, and other vegetables from his truck farm still arrive like clockwork at our door. The cancer that required treatment 17 years ago has never recurred. He’s now struggling with a new problem, recovering from a broken...
Susan G. Komen Announces $27 Million Initiative to Reduce Breast Cancer Deaths in African American Community
The Susan G. Komen breast cancer organization gathered philanthropic, civic, medical, and business leaders in Washington, DC, September 14 to formally launch a $27 million, 10-city initiative to reduce breast cancer death rates among African American women. “African American women are almost 40%...
Surgery and Radiation ProtecT Against Progression/Metastasis vs Active Monitoring in Prostate Cancer, but at What Cost?
The ProtecT trial showing similar 10-year survival with active monitoring, surgery, or radiotherapy for prostate-specific antigen (PSA)-detected localized prostate cancer but a greater risk of disease progression/metastasis with monitoring was recently reported by Hamdy and colleagues and is...
Risk of Metastasis With Active Monitoring in PSA-Detected Localized Prostate Cancer: The ProtectT Trial
The ProtecT study findings1 are provocative. Despite having a control arm of active monitoring with serial prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing, as compared with watchful waiting in the prior randomized trials (ie, SPCG-42 and PIVOT3), and also enrolling men with more favorable-risk disease...
Saul J. Sharkis, PhD, Stem Cell Researcher, Dies
Saul J. Sharkis, PhD, a scientist who studied the biology of blood stem cells and how they could be used to treat cancer through bone marrow transplantation, died on September 4. He was 72. Dr. Sharkis was Professor of Oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a faculty...
Nobel Laureate Roger Y. Tsien, PhD, Dies
In 2008, Roger Y. Tsien, PhD, shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry with Drs. Osamu Shimomura and Martin Chalfie for helping turn green fluorescent protein from a jellyfish into a research tool that could tag cancer cells or track the advance of Alzheimer’s disease. “Our work is often described as...
Oncologist’s Guilt
The best part of my day is hearing that little voice yell, “It’s Momma!” as my son rushes to greet me with a hug. It is humbling, and sometimes terrifying, to realize that I brought a little person into the world who is completely dependent on my husband and me for survival. Few would argue...
The Best Oncology Lesson
I was 2 months into my first-year fellowship at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington, DC, when I learned the best oncology lesson of my career. I owned a copy of DeVita, Hellman, and Rosenberg’s Cancer: Principles and Practice of Oncology and had read Cancer Treatment...
Is Human Life Worth No More Than a Text Message?
The words “cost control,” “value-based health care,” and similar iterations are floating around freely these days to make us aware of the unsustainable upward trajectory of health-care costs. We are reminded constantly about how health care in America currently costs more than $3.4 trillion...
Chamomile
Scientific Name: Matricaria recutita, Chamomilla recutita, Matricaria chamomilla Common Names: Hungarian chamomile, wild chamomile Overview An aromatic annual herb prevalent in Europe, North Africa, and Northwest Asia, chamomile has been used as a medicinal plant for several centuries. It has been ...
Internationally Renowned Geneticist, Alfred George Knudson, MD, PhD, Dies
Considered a visionary in cancer research, Alfred George Knudson, MD, PhD, was internationally recognized for his “two-hit theory” of cancer causation, which explained the relationship between hereditary and nonhereditary cancer types, predicting the existence of tumor suppressor genes. Dr. Knudson ...
Measures of Success
I was raised to be an engineer. I grew up in an industrial community, worked summer jobs in a U.S. Steel chemical plant, and was good at science and math. My career choice was straightforward: I went to an engineering university. My first semester freshman year included a mandatory introduction...
Moonshots and ‘Onco-nauts’
Where were you on July 20, 1969? I certainly remember where I was—sitting in a mess hall at summer camp watching a grainy black-and-white TV as Neil Armstrong took “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” I recall the sense of jubilation and accomplishment that all American citizens...
An Epic Medical Story by an Old-Style Doctor on the Front Lines of Care
The U.S. health-care system is a $3 trillion behemoth of dizzying complexity. Government oversight, ever-changing regulations, mountains of paperwork, electronic health records, initiative after initiative, and so forth, all of which has reshaped the delivery of care, for the good and bad. But...
Internationally Renowned Geneticist, Alfred George Knudson, MD, PhD, Dies
Considered a visionary in cancer research, Alfred George Knudson, MD, PhD, was internationally recognized for his “two-hit theory” of cancer causation, which explained the relationship between hereditary and nonhereditary cancer types, predicting the existence of tumor-suppressor genes. ...
A Concerned Physician Reflects on Today’s Doctor-Patient Relationship
Doctoring isn’t what it used to be. Like many other professions, it has gone through a multitude of changes ostensibly to improve efficiencies and lower costs. The digital age has reshaped clinical practice from the front office to the exam room. And with the advent of electronic health records...
Complexities in the Diagnosis and Management of Amyloidosis
Case Study A 70-year-old man is referred to your clinic for a consultation. Recently, a diagnosis of IgG monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) was established. Medical history is significant for essential hypertension, type II diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidemia, and atrial...
The Age of the Atomic Hematologists/Oncologists
Every longstanding culture has ages: The Minoans were followed by the Mycenaeans and, later, the Hellenistic peoples. And so it is with hematology/oncology. A descriptive age dominated predominately by histopathologists was followed by an age of experimentalists. Development of the atomic bombs...
Something Happened
Over the years, my patients have been my most important teachers. I’ve learned so much from them about human nature and the resilience of the human spirit. When my time came to pass through the fire and confront the same challenges they and their families face so bravely and with such compassion, ...
Medical Decision-Making: At the Heart of Care for Older Patients With Cancer
Although oncology has moved toward a personalized approach to care, medical decision-making within the context of multidisciplinary care has broad public health implications. To shed light on this and other relevant issues, The ASCO Post recently spoke with William Dale, MD, PhD, of the University ...
Prostate Cancer: Opinions Vary on Gleason Scores and Surgery
Diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer have been the source of heated debate for decades, most of which has centered on the clinical value of the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test. In 2012, the U.S Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) gave the PSA test a D grade, which discourages many...
Noted Gastrointestinal Oncologist Leonard Saltz, MD, Tempers Optimism With Reality and Factors Cost Into the Equation of Value in Cancer Care
Leonard Saltz, MD, was born in New York, New York, and reared in Westchester County, in the suburbs of the City. Terrance Archer, his high-school biology teacher, whom Dr. Saltz described as a “force of nature,” a wonderful human being, and a major role model, influenced his nascent curiosity in...
With a Strong Personal Connection to His Patients, Stephen P. Hunger, MD, Strives for a Cure for All Children With Leukemia
Nationally regarded children’s cancer specialist Stephen P. Hunger, MD, was born and reared in South Windsor, a small suburb of Hartford, Connecticut. Dr. Hunger grew up in the mid-1960s and 1970s, and in his words, “South Windsor was a pretty homogeneous experience. There wasn’t really any ethnic...
International Authority on Radiation Effects, Robert Peter Gale, MD, PhD, Has Pushed Scientific Boundaries in Search of Answers
It is widely reported that the first use of sargramostim (Leukine) in humans (granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor; GM-CSF) was to treat victims of the Goiânia, Brazil, radiation accident in 1987. However, recently declassified documents show that sargramostim was first used a year...
A Toolkit for Dealing With the Trauma of a Prostate Cancer Diagnosis
This year, an estimated 180,890 men in the United States will be diagnosed with prostate cancer; about 21,120 men die of the disease each year. On top of these sobering statistics, from screening to diagnosis and treatment, prostate cancer is fraught with controversy, creating untoward anxiety...
White Knuckling
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,...
Maximizing Cancer Cure: How Do We Get There?
Is cancer really “curable,” and if so, how? For a “Cancer Dialogue” held during the 2016 American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting, half a dozen stellar participants from the research, industry, regulatory, and advocacy communities convened to debate the topic. The ASCO Post was ...
A Psychotherapist’s Approach to End-of-Life Care
BookmarkTitle: Dying: A TransitionAuthor: Monika Renz, PhD; translated by Mark Kyburz and John PeckPublisher: Columbia University PressPublication date: October 2015Price: $38.00; hardcover, 176 pages The night before Julius Caesar was assassinated, he had dinner with his friend Marcus...
Meet W. Charles Penley, MD, FASCO
A Partner at Tennessee Oncology, PLLC, W. Charles Penley, MD, FASCO, has been an ASCO member since 1988. He has served on the Conquer Cancer Foundation Board of Directors since 2005 and currently holds the role of Immediate Past Chair. What led you to oncology? WCP: While it may sound silly to say ...
Compartmentalizing Cancer
I was the last one on the oncology team to meet Mel. He was 36 years old, and by then Mel had been living with metastatic colon cancer for several years. During that time, his clinicians had never referred him to our psycho-oncology team because of his strong attitude and outlook. Mel’s outward...
A Political Activist Challenges the Drug Approval Process and the U.S. Government
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) primary concern in the drug approval process is to ensure that the drug is safe and effective. For the past several decades, the advocacy groups have vociferously painted the agency as a stodgy bureaucracy that prevents desperate patients access to...
A Cancer Patient’s Harried Survivorship Story
There are approximately 14 million cancer survivors in the United States, a number that is steadily increasing, thanks to our advances in detection and treatment. However, surviving cancer can leave a host of physical, emotional, and financial hardships for years after diagnosis and treatment. In ...
A Drop of Blood
I was a third-year internal medicine resident, rotating through the oncology service, when I was asked to perform my first circumcision. My team was rounding on Tom, a 52-year-old gentleman currently receiving third-line treatment for metastatic esophageal cancer; we were discussing at length his...
A Fight to Remember
In 2006, one of my close friends, Robert O’Connor, won the mayoral race for my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Everyone loved Robert, affectionately known as “Bob” and often referred to as “The People’s Mayor.” Bob was “Mr. Pittsburgh,” and it was his promise to reverse the city’s...
