Some years after successful treatment of a childhood cancer, a 16-year-old survivor required surgery to replace both hip joints, which were damaged from therapy containing steroids. An x-ray of the teenager’s destroyed joints is a stark reminder of the serious health challenges faced by cancer...
Cyrus Ghajar, PhD, a metastatic breast cancer researcher at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, has received a $4.1 million Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program (BCRP) “Era of Hope” Scholar Award. The Department of Defense’s BCRP is the second biggest funder of breast cancer...
The following new appointments were recently announced at Cleveland Clinic’s Taussig Cancer Institute. James Stevenson, MD Dr. Stevenson has been appointed Vice Chairman of the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology. As Vice Chairman, Dr. Stevenson will assist the Chairman and Department...
At the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting, both ASCO and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) unveiled details of new precision medicine trials that will greatly expand the number of patients with cancer who are benefiting from targeted agents. The trials will match a patient’s tumor molecular profile with an ...
Daniel G. Coit, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and Chair of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Melanoma Guidelines Panel, discussed the findings reported by Lewin et al at the ASCO Annual Meeting. “This is a small retrospective study examining a prospective...
In monitoring patients with melanoma at high risk for relapse, surveillance imaging with 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose–positron-emission tomography (FDG-PET)/computed tomography (CT) can detect asymptomatic metastases and thus facilitate early treatment, according to Australian investigators who presented ...
Wendy Stock, MD, of the University of Chicago, was the formal discussant of these three studies presented at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting. Commenting on the first study on acute myeloid leukemia (AML) by Dr. Gerber and colleagues, she said, “This work can improve understanding of the leukemia stem...
Refinements in the classification and risk stratification for leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes were reported by three different investigators at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting. The first study showed that leukemia stem cell phenotypes are associated with outcomes in acute myeloid leukemia...
Commenting on the EF14 study was Martin J. van den Bent, MD, of The Brain Tumor Center at Erasmus MC Cancer Institute in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, who was reticent to predict that tumor treating fields will become a standard of care. He noted that 57% of patients are still alive; therefore, the...
A novel treatment modality that applies electric forces to brain tumors via scalp electrodes improved outcomes in a study reported at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 In the first report of the full dataset, tumor treating fields significantly and consistently prolonged both progression-free...
Keith T. Flaherty, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Director of the Termeer Center for Targeted Therapy, Boston, was interviewed by The ASCO Post for his thoughts on the findings from Atreya and colleagues. He believes the study’s outcomes are sufficient for...
Triplet therapy that inhibits the BRAF, MEK, and EGFR pathways appears promising in BRAF-mutated colorectal cancer, a malignancy that typically does not respond to BRAF inhibition alone.1 At the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting, Chloe Evelyn Atreya, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco,...
Kevin Fitzpatrick has been named CEO of CancerLinQ LLC, a wholly owned nonprofit subsidiary of ASCO. Mr. Fitzpatrick, who is currently the Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer of the American College of Cardiology (ACC), will begin his new role on August 3. CancerLinQ LLC was...
Jonathan D. Licht, MD, has been appointed Director of the University of Florida (UF) Health Cancer Center, Gainesville. His appointment will go into effect on October 1. Dr. Licht comes to UF Health from Northwestern University. He is currently Associate Director for Clinical Sciences at the...
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center is pleased to announce the appointment of George Wilding, MD, as Vice Provost for Clinical and Interdisciplinary Research, effective September 1. Prior to joining MD Anderson, Dr. Wilding served on the institution’s external advisory board. He also...
Kenneth Yu, MD, MSc, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, called investigational PEGPH20 “a very promising tumor microenvironment-targeted approach” that appears to be well tolerated. “The results are preliminary but there appears to be a biomarker ...
Patients with stage IV pancreatic cancer who received a novel enzyme along with standard chemotherapy experienced a doubling in progression-free survival, compared to those given chemotherapy alone, in a study presented at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting.1 Response rates and median duration of...
Commenting on the pembrolizumab (Keytruda) phase Ib study, Noah Hahn, MD, of Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, Baltimore, called the overall response rate of 28% with pembrolizumab “pretty impressive. Nearly two-thirds of patients had some response or tumor reduction, and overall survival...
Two immunotherapy agents show promise in preliminary studies of advanced urothelial bladder cancer: the anti–PD-1 (programmed cell death protein 1) antibody pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and the anti–PD-L1 (programmed cell death ligand 1) antibody atezolizumab. Separate phase I studies of each drug...
Jeffrey L. Wolf, MD, Director of the Myeloma Program at the University of California, San Francisco, formally discussed the ENDEAVOR study at the ASCO Annual Meeting. He commented that the “doubling” in progression-free survival is “impressive” and said that “time will tell if this difference...
In the first head-to-head study comparing two proteasome inhibitors in relapsed multiple myeloma, carfilzomib (Kyprolis)/dexamethasone provided a doubling in progression-free survival, compared with bortezomib (Velcade)/dexamethasone.1 Results of the phase III ENDEAVOR trial of the two regimens in...
ASCO’s endorsement of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) guidelines on the role of radiotherapy in locally advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is an important summary of the best evidence on the appropriate role and techniques for radiotherapy in this disease.1 These...
We’ve seen how dramatically patients’ lives can change when they are matched with the right treatment at the right time in their disease course. Although this is still an exception and not the rule, we believe collaborative research approaches will make this kind of precision medicine a reality for ...
Jeremy Abramson, MD, Clinical Director of the Center for Lymphoma at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, agrees that obinutuzumab is an advance over rituximab. Like rituximab, obinutuzumab targets CD-20, but rituximab does not directly induce cell death. Obinutuzumab is a type 2 antibody and...
The addition of obinutuzumab (Gazyva) to standard bendamustine (Treanda) chemotherapy followed by obinutuzumab maintenance therapy delays the progression of indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), almost doubling progression-free survival in rituximab (Rituxan)-refractory patients, according to the...
Nearly 20% of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma “wait more than 3 months from presentation to diagnosis, which can contribute to interval tumor growth,” Nishant Patel, MD, and colleagues concluded in the Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. They based their conclusions on a...
Collaboration between surgeons and medical oncologists “is associated with lower mortality without increased cost among patients with stage III colon cancer,” according to a study by Tanvir Hussain, MD, MSc, and colleagues from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, and the...
In a breakthrough proposal announced on July 8, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) plans to reimburse physicians for end-of-life counseling, a move that the oncology community has long been lobbying for. Arriving just as the presidential election cycle begins to heat up, the CMS ...
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital has named Charles W.M. Roberts, MD, PhD, Executive Vice President and Director of the St. Jude Comprehensive Cancer Center in Memphis, the first and only National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children. Dr....
It is a humbling experience to reach 90 and to have a party and to have friends of the caliber I have. I think what keeps me going is the pleasant activities I have with Drs. Beatriz Pogo [MD, DMSc, Professor of Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology at Mount Sinai] and Stella Melana [PhD,...
On May 14, 2015, over 160 colleagues, family members, friends, and patients of James F. Holland, MD, FASCO, gathered in the Goldwurm Auditorium in the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York to honor Dr. Holland for the contributions he has made during his remarkable career in ...
AUGUST 6th Annual Pain Management Symposium: From Evidence to Clinical PracticeAugust 20-21 • Pasadena, California For more information:http://www.keck.usc.edu/events/6th-annual-pain-management-symposium-from-evidence-to-clinical-practice/ World Congress on Cancer and Prevention MethodsAugust 27-29 ...
Janssen Biotech, Inc, announced the opening of a daratumumab expanded access program for eligible patients in the United States. Daratumumab is an investigational human anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody being evaluated in clinical trials as a treatment for patients with multiple myeloma. The...
An 80-year-old patient with metastatic prostate cancer asked me to discontinue his treatments, which were costing him more than $1,000 every 3 months. Although he had Medicare, he did not have secondary insurance. I told him that I would seek compassionate-care payment from the pharmaceutical...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) is pleased to announce the launch of the AACR NextGen Grants for Transformative Cancer Research, a new funding initiative to stimulate highly innovative research from young investigators. This new grant mechanism is intended to promote and...
Three years ago, a study of adolescents and young adults aged 16 to 28 with metastatic or recurrent cancer or HIV/AIDS compared the usefulness of two previously developed advance care planning guides—one prepared specifically for adolescents and young adults and one specifically for adults. The...
Charles M. Rubin, MD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Chicago Medicine, a highly respected specialist in the care of children with cancer, died on July 17. He was 62. An authority on all aspects of pediatric cancers, Dr. Rubin had a particular interest in brain tumors and...
When Emil J Freireich, MD, retires from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center on September 1, he will have spent 50 years at the institution and a total of 60 years in the pursuit of curing childhood leukemia as well as other cancers and in the educational development of young...
An advisory board of renowned experts in oncology and patient engagement is actively engaged in survey assessment for relevance to real-world issues and will be reviewing and interpreting the survey data. The members of the advisory board follow: Walter Baile, MD: Professor, Department of...
CancerCare, a national nonprofit organization that provides free psychosocial support, education, and financial assistance to anyone affected by cancer, has announced the launch of a bold, new research initiative. Through surveys among a nationally representative sample of thousands of people with...
Carrie Kitko, MD, has joined Monroe Carell Jr Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt as Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Pediatric Stem Cell Transplant Program in the Division of Hematology/Oncology. Dr. Kitko was previously Assistant Professor of the Blood and Marrow...
Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University has named Timothy L. Lash, DSc, MPH, Professor of Epidemiology in the Rollins School of Public Health and Winship member, as the new Leader for the Winship Cancer Prevention and Control (CPC) Research Program. His position takes effect immediately....
“Between animal and human medicine there is no dividing line—nor should there be. The object is different but the experience obtained constitutes the basis of all medicine.” — Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) Everyone has seen photographs of people who look like their dogs: the young woman with long...
The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Alexander and Margaret Stewart Trust announced the newest class of Pew–Stewart scholars for cancer research on June 11. Five standout scientists, nominated by the country’s leading cancer research institutions, will receive 4 years of flexible funding to pursue...
Stephen L. Lessnick, MD, PhD, has joined the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, Ohio as Director of the Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Disorders. As Director, Dr. Lessnick leads a team of pediatric researchers in the Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood...
Michael Allen Pulsipher, MD, joined the Children’s Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases and the Division of Hematology, Oncology, and Blood and Marrow Transplantation at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) as Head of the Section of Blood and Marrow Transplantation (BMT) and as BMT Clinical...
In a paper published in Annals of Internal Medicine1, the American College of Physicians (ACP) issued advice for screening average risk adults without symptoms for five common cancers: breast, colorectal, ovarian, prostate, and cervical. In a companion piece also published in Annals2, ACP outlined...
Stephen S. Grubbs, MD, a community oncologist and managing partner at Medical Oncology Hematology Consultants, PA, in Newark, Delaware, has been named the Senior Director of ASCO’s new Clinical Affairs department. Dr. Grubbs is a longtime ASCO member and volunteer and the Principal Investigator of...
Direct your patients to www.cancer.net/blog to get important information on traveling with cancer, including getting medical clearance before they book their flight. This information includes questions to ask the doctor, how to get permission from the airline to fly, and information on packing...
Registration is open for the Community Research Forum (CRF) 2015 Annual Meeting, which will be held September 20–21, at ASCO Headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. Join fellow physician investigators and research staff from all types of community-based research sites and programs to discuss barriers ...