In a retrospective cohort study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Tilki et al found that adjuvant radiotherapy was associated with reduced risk for all-cause mortality vs early salvage radiotherapy among men at high risk for disease recurrence following radical prostatectomy. As stated...
In an updated analysis of the phase III MAIA trial, the addition of daratumumab to lenalidomide and dexamethasone resulted in a statistically significant overall survival benefit over lenalidomide/dexamethasone alone in patients with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma who are ineligible for...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and during the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting by Ingrid A. Mayer, MD, and colleagues, the phase III ECOG-ACRIN EA1131 trial investigated the use of adjuvant platinum vs capecitabine in patients with basal subtype triple-negative breast cancer and residual...
The PD-L1 inhibitor cemiplimab-rwlc has become the first immunotherapy to yield a statistically significant and clinically meaningful survival benefit in recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer progressing after first-line platinum-containing chemotherapy. Patients were enrolled irrespective of...
In a retrospective cohort study reported in JAMA Oncology, Erickson et al found that real-world use of targeted therapy after diagnosis of intracranial metastatic disease was associated with improved overall survival vs no use of targeted therapy in patients with HER2-positive breast cancer,...
In an analysis from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS) and the Dutch Hodgkin Late Effects and LATER cohorts reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Moskowitz et al developed a model for predicting the risk of breast cancer among childhood cancer survivors treated with chest...
The Lymphoseek (technetium Tc 99m tilmanocept) injection—a radiopharmaceutical agent specifically designed for targeted lymphatic mapping and guiding sentinel lymph node biopsies—has been approved for pediatric use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). "This new indication opens the door...
By now, most health-care workers have been vaccinated against COVID-19.* Physical immunity would appear to last for at least 6 months and probably longer. The physical pandemic for most oncologists is declining, with an end in sight. We are protected from the serious physical consequences of...
ASCO submitted comments to a House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee hearing titled “Charting the Path Forward for Telehealth.” The comments convey ASCO’s views on how telehealth can better serve individuals with cancer and the oncology professionals who care for them. During the COVID-19...
As reported in The Lancet by Paul Baas, MD, of The Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, and colleagues, a prespecified interim analysis in the phase III CheckMate 743 trial has shown improved overall survival with first-line nivolumab/ipilimumab vs platinum-based chemotherapy in unresectable...
Although once again, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) 2021 Annual Conference could not take place on site in Orlando, researchers presented their work virtually in the form of almost 100 posters. The ASCO Post has summarized some that we found particularly interesting. Many...
Discussant of the abstract on this novel algorithm, Thomas Herzog, MD, Deputy Director of the University of Cincinnati Cancer Institute and Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the UC College of Medicine, called the use of risk-based factors in complex ovarian cancer surgery to successfully...
A simple, risk-assessment algorithm may change practice when it comes to selecting patients with advanced ovarian who can tolerate complex primary debulking surgery, according to data presented during the virtual edition of the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) 2021 Annual Meeting on Women’s...
Clinical trial data show that adjuvant imatinib improves recurrence-free survival as well as overall survival, when administered for at least 3 years, among patients who undergo a macroscopically complete resection of a primary gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST), Chandrajit P. Raut, MD, MSc,...
“I want to make very clear that radiation is not the enemy,” Monika Metzger, MD, MSc, emphasized in discussing a study she led on the integration of brentuximab vedotin into the front-line treatment of pediatric patients with high-risk Hodgkin lymphoma. The study yielded excellent results while...
Integrating the antibody-drug conjugate brentuximab vedotin into the front-line treatment of pediatric patients with high-risk Hodgkin lymphoma “facilitated significant reduction in radiation exposure and yielded excellent outcomes,” Monika Metzger, MD, MSc, Director for the Central and South...
The CheckMate 577 trial—reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Kelly et al1 and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post—is the first global randomized controlled trial for patients with resectable esophageal cancer that showed a significant disease-free survival benefit for adjuvant...
The pace of clinical research in metastatic renal cell carcinoma is faster than ever. Over the past 5 years, we have seen data from six phase III clinical trials evaluating combination strategies with checkpoint inhibitors. The era began with data from CheckMate 214, evaluating nivolumab with...
Tampa General hospital recently announced the appointment of Eduardo M. Sotomayor, MD, as Director of its newly established Cancer Institute. A pioneer in the field of cancer immunology and immunotherapy and an expert in lymphoma research and treatment, Dr. Sotomayor will lead a team of Tampa...
A change in presidential administrations has implications across the health sector, including for oncology. In this column, we review some recent actions by Congress and the Biden administration and their implications for the oncology community. We focus on three areas: funding for patients and...
To complement The ASCO Post’s continued comprehensive coverage of the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, here are several abstracts selected from the meeting proceedings focusing on acute myeloid leukemia (AML), such as the use of venetoclax added to...
Cathy Eng, MD, of Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, discusses two abstracts from a session she co-chaired: the phase II DEEPER trial, which explored the use of FOLFOXIRI plus cetuximab vs FOLFOXIRI plus bevacizumab as first-line treatment in metastatic colorectal cancer with RAS wild-type tumors;...
The use of palliative care in hospitals in the United States has steadily risen over the past decade, with almost universal access to services in large hospitals and academic medical centers. Despite this increased access and recommendations from ASCO that all patients with advanced cancer receive...
In a single-institution study reported in the Journal of Immunotherapy and Precision Oncology, Xu et al found that the use of a Web-based lesion selection tool (LST) developed by the research team improved consistency in lesion selection for sequential biopsy. In addition, the tool improved the...
Invited discussant Christine Lovly, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Ingram Associate Professor of Cancer Research, Vanderbilt University Ingram Cancer Center, Nashville, discussed progress in targeted therapies for NSCLC. “We have a tremendous amount of knowledge about driver mutations in ...
Even though next-generation sequencing is recommended by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) for biomarker testing for patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the uptake among community oncology practices is suboptimal, and the uptake is even lower among Black patients with...
In a study reported in JCO Oncology Practice, Manali I. Patel, MD, MPH, and colleagues found that a lay health worker–led intervention was associated with improved documentation of goals of care, increased clinical trial participation, and increased use of palliative care in a population of...
In a presentation of real-world data given during the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting, Miron et al concluded that the choice of first-line platinum chemotherapy did not result in a significant difference in overall survival benefit among patients with advanced bladder cancer who were able to go on to...
A research team has found that sufficient vitamin D levels at the time of diagnosis may be associated with improved outcomes among people with breast cancer. These findings were presented by Yao et al during the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting (Abstract 10510). These findings are based on Kaiser...
The first overall survival analysis of the WSG-ADAPT HR-/HER2+ study, which evaluated neoadjuvant therapy in patients with hormone receptor (HR)-negative, HER2-positive breast cancer, showed that treatment with pertuzumab and trastuzumab plus paclitaxel—or the chemotherapy-free regimen of...
Immune checkpoint inhibition has been established as an effective treatment for patients with metastatic melanoma. A novel immunotherapeutic combination—this one targeting the LAG-3 (lymphocyte-activation gene 3) and PD-1 immune checkpoints—delayed time to disease progression significantly more...
Nearly three-quarters of patients with breast cancer (73%) reported using at least one type of complementary medicine after cancer diagnosis, while surveyed oncologists believed that less than half (43%) of patients were using these approaches during cancer care. These and other findings from a...
Vamsidhar Velcheti, MD, of New York University, discusses overall survival and exploratory subgroup analyses from the phase II CodeBreaK 100 trial, which evaluated the use of sotorasib in pretreated KRAS G12C–mutant non–small cell lung cancer (Abstract 9003).
Seeing an opportunity to safely reduce the number of opioid doses prescribed to patients with cancer, researchers proposed a new pain management guideline for all patients undergoing surgery at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. The results from the first 6 months of that effort, reported by ...
Patients with high-risk melanoma who had a course of pembrolizumab had longer recurrence-free survival than patients who received either ipilimumab or high-dose interferon after surgery. These findings of a large SWOG Cancer Research Network clinical trial, S1404, were presented by Grossmann et al...
A study by researchers at Mayo Clinic Cancer Center found that patients with cancer diagnosed with COVID-19 who received care at home via remote patient monitoring were significantly less likely to require hospitalization for their illness, compared to patients with cancer infected with the virus...
Lutetium-177–PSMA-617 (Lu-177–PSMA-617)—an investigational radioligand therapy—significantly improved radiographic progression-free survival and overall survival when added to standard of care compared with standard of care alone for men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer whose...
One year of adjuvant therapy with the PARP inhibitor olaparib extended disease-free survival in patients with high-risk, early-stage, HER2-negative breast cancer with BRCA1/2 germline mutations, according to a prespecified interim analysis of the phase III OlympiA trial presented by Andrew Tutt, MB ...
According to the results from the phase III JUPITER-02 study, the addition of toripalimab, a humanized IgG4K anti–PD-1 monoclonal antibody, to standard gemcitabine/cisplatin chemotherapy as first-line treatment for patients with advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma provided superior progression-free...
Peter Marks, MD, PhD, Director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), was born in Brooklyn, New York, near Sheepshead Bay—an area named for the Sheepshead, a fish that can no longer be found in the waters that frame the neighborhood....
High-quality cancer care is a complex mixture of science and art, made even more challenging by the dizzying array of coding, billing, and data collection regulations that must be taken into account. Synthesizing all the parts into value-based, whole-patient care across the wide spectrum of the...
In the face of old school mores, self-motivation and perseverance were needed to build a career as a nationally regarded blood and bone marrow transplant expert. “I was born and reared in Brooklyn, New York, the oldest of seven children of Irish-Italian parents who did not espouse professional...
Peter Marks, MD, PhD, Director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), was born in Brooklyn, New York, near Sheepshead Bay—an area named for the Sheepshead, a fish that can no longer be found in the waters that frame the neighborhood....
Over the past year (May 2020–May 2021), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved and expanded indications for many drugs related to the treatment of different types of cancers and adverse events. The new approvals and accelerated approvals are listed below. PEMBROLIZUMAB (KEYTRUDA) in...
Doctors and scientists across America at National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated cancer centers and other organizations recently issued a joint statement urging the nation’s health-care systems, physicians, parents, children, and young adults to get human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination back on ...
Even among a large group of cancer survivors who were mostly insured, college-educated, and had annual incomes above the national average, up to 10% delayed care in the previous 12 months because they simply could not afford out-of-pocket expenses like copays and deductibles. These findings were...
In an MSK Team Ovary–led phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Zivanovic et al found that use of hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) with carboplatin during secondary cytoreduction followed by chemotherapy did not improve 24-month progression-free survival in...
In a single-institution phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Olson et al found that high rates of response were achieved with third-party BK virus–specific cytotoxic T-lymphocyte therapy (BKV-CTL) in patients with BK virus–associated hemorrhagic cystitis after allogeneic...
In a retrospective cohort study reported in JCO Oncology Practice, Hong et al found that prior frequent emergency department use was the strongest predictor of postdiagnosis emergency department visits among patients with a new diagnosis of cancer. Study Details The study involved data from adults...
In a secondary analysis of the Dutch phase III TRAIN-2 trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Anna van der Voort, MD, and colleagues found similar 3-year event-free and overall survival in patients with HER2-positive breast cancer receiving neoadjuvant therapy with vs without an anthracycline plus dual...