In the phase II CONCERT-1 trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Mesía et al found that adding the EGFR inhibitor panitumumab (Vectibix) to standard cisplatin chemoradiation provided no benefit in previously untreated patients with unresected stage III to IVB head and neck squamous cell...
Inhibiting the action of a particular enzyme dramatically slows the growth of tumor cells tied to BRCA1 and BRCA2 genetic mutations that are closely tied to breast and ovarian cancers, according to researchers at New York University (NYU) Langone Medical Center. Senior investigator Agnel Sfeir,...
In a systematic review and meta-analysis reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Teulings et al found that development of vitiligo in patients receiving immunotherapy for stage III or IV melanoma was a significant predictor of improved progression-free and overall survival. The study...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Perez et al found that an immune function gene profile was associated with significantly improved relapse-free survival among patients with early-stage HER2-positive breast cancer who had trastuzumab (Herceptin) added to adjuvant chemotherapy ...
In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Ng et al found consistent trends suggesting benefit of aspirin use and COX-2 inhibitor use on recurrence-free, disease-free, and overall survival in patients with stage III colon cancer. Study Details This prospective...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted accelerated approval to palbociclib (Ibrance) in combination with letrozole for the treatment of postmenopausal women with estrogen receptor–positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer who have not yet received an endocrine-based therapy. ...
A new study involving researchers at The University of Nottingham has revealed how children with an aggressive cancer predisposition syndrome experience a never-before- seen flood of mutations in their disease in very short periods of time. The findings were published by Shlien et al in Nature...
In patients with iodine-refractory papillary thyroid cancer, the addition of dabrafenib (Tafinlar) therapy was shown to stimulate radioiodine uptake in thyroid cancer cells, according to a report by Rothenberg et al in Clinical Cancer Research. This approach has the potential advantage of requiring ...
In a retrospective analysis reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Costa et al found that crizotinib (Xalkori) treatment resulted in high systemic and intracranial disease control rates in patients with ALK-rearranged non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who had asymptomatic brain...
Pancreatic cancer affects approximately 46,000 people each year in the United States, and ranks fourth among the leading causes of cancer-related deaths. Only about 6% of individuals with pancreatic cancer will live 5 years after their diagnosis. One reason for this high mortality rate is the lack...
Janssen Research & Development, LLC, announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Priority Review for the New Drug Application (NDA) for trabectedin to treat patients with advanced soft-tissue sarcoma, including liposarcoma and leiomyosarcoma subtypes, who have...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Breakthrough Therapy designation to Genentech’s investigational cancer immunotherapy MPDL3280A for the treatment of PD-L1–positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) that has progressed during or after platinum-based...
Ten months after California legislators enacted a controversial law mandating that radiologists notify women if they have dense breast tissue, University of California (UC), Davis researchers have found that half of primary care physicians are still unfamiliar with the law, and many don't feel...
As reported by Stitzenberg et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, a study examining the effect of travel distance on inpatient readmission and outcome after major cancer surgery found that predictors of readmission included discharge to somewhere other than home, longer length of stay,...
In a phase III trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Vannucchi et al found that the JAK1/JAK2 inhibitor ruxolitinib (Jakafi) produced significantly better hematocrit control and reduction in spleen volume than standard treatment in patients with polycythemia vera with inadequate...
In a European open-label noninferiority trial (German Hodgkin Study Group [GHSG)] HD13) reported in The Lancet, Behringer et al found poorer outcomes with omission of dacarbazine or bleomycin from treatment with ABVD (doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine) in patients with...
A large retrospective cohort study of diabetic patients taking metformin, a first-line treatment for type II diabetes, has found that while metformin use was not associated with lower lung cancer risk overall, the risk was 43% lower among diabetic patients who had never smoked. In addition, the...
Some data suggest that migraine is associated with reduced risk of breast cancer. In a prospective cohort study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Winter et al found no association between migraine and breast cancer risk or endogenous sex hormone levels. A meta-analysis...
Targeted biopsy using new fusion technology that combines magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with ultrasound is more effective than standard biopsy in detecting high-risk prostate cancer, according to a study by Siddiqui et al published in JAMA. More than 1,000 men participated in the research at the ...
Researchers at University of North Carolina School of Medicine have created the first mouse model of the most aggressive form of ovarian cancer and found a potential route to better treatments and much-needed diagnostic screens. Led by Terry Magnuson, PhD, the Sarah Graham Kenan Professor and Chair ...
In a phase II study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Farooqui et al found that single-agent ibrutinib (Imbruvica) had good activity in patients with previously untreated or relapse/refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) with TP53 aberrations. Study Details In this single-arm trial, 51...
Scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have discovered about 10% of young leukemia patients of East Asian ancestry inherit a gene variation that is associated with reduced tolerance of a drug that is indispensable for curing acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common childhood ...
Chemotherapy resistance is one of the most formidable obstacles to treating acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common form of childhood cancer. Now researchers at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) have designed and developed a new protein-based therapy that may prove highly...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today expanded the approved use of ibrutinib (Imbruvica) for patients with Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia, a rare, indolent type of B-cell lymphoma. Ibrutinib is the first therapy indicated specifically for Waldenström’s...
In a Danish retrospective population-based study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Bertelsen et al found that complete mesocolic excision resulted in better disease-free survival compared with conventional colon resection in patients with stage I to III colon cancer. Study Details The study...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Bradley and colleagues, the phase III Radiation Therapy Oncology Group 0617 trial showed no survival benefit of high- vs standard-dose radiotherapy or for addition of cetuximab (Erbitux) to concurrent paclitaxel-carboplatin chemoradiation in patients with...
People who worry a lot about cancer are more likely to want to get screened for colon cancer—perhaps due to a desire for reassurance—but having a more visceral negative response to thinking about cancer acted as a deterrent to actually getting screened, according to a British study by...
Investigators with The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Research Network have discovered genomic differences—with potentially important clinical implications—in human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated head and neck cancers. These findings were reported in Nature. The researchers also uncovered ...
In the final analysis of overall survival in the COU-AA-302 trial, reported in The Lancet Oncology by Ryan et al, the addition of abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) to prednisone significantly prolonged survival in chemotherapy-naive patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer. Abiraterone had...
According to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, testosterone, which is generally thought to be a feeder of prostate cancer, has been found to suppress some advanced prostate cancers. The hormone may also reverse resistance to testosterone-blocking drugs used to treat prostate...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Arem et al found that increased leisure-time physical activity prior to and increased activity after colorectal cancer diagnosis were associated with improved overall survival, as was less television watching prior to diagnosis. Study ...
Amgen and its subsidiary Onyx Pharmaceuticals, Inc, announced the submission of a supplemental New Drug Application (sNDA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for carfilzomib (Kyprolis) to seek approval for the treatment of patients with relapsed multiple myeloma who have received at...
In a study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Jaiswal et al found somatic mutations associated with hematologic cancers at increasing frequency with increasing age, with presence of the mutations being associated with increased risk of hematologic cancers, all-cause mortality,...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by McCormick et al, the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) 9804 trial showed that radiotherapy after breast-conserving surgery reduced local failure vs observation in women with good-risk ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). The study was designed...
A population-based study of women who had undergone surgery for breast cancer has found that many lacked understanding of the basic characteristics of their disease, including stage, grade, and tumor characteristics. Minority patients were less likely than white patients to have the correct...
In a study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Genovese et al found that clonal hematopoiesis with somatic mutations is increasingly common with greater age and is associated with increased risk of hematologic cancer. The presence of such clonal hematopoiesis in apparently healthy...
A new analysis opens the door to the discovery of thousands of potential new cancer biomarkers, according to a recent study by Iyer et al published in Nature Genetics. Long Noncoding RNA Researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center analyzed the global landscape of long...
A new breast imaging technique developed at Mayo Clinic nearly quadruples detection rates of invasive breast cancers in women with dense breast tissue, according to the results of a study published by Rhodes et al in the American Journal of Roentgenology. What Is MBI? Molecular breast imaging...
In an Italian Sarcoma Group phase II study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Grignani et al found that the combination of sorafenib (Nexavar) and everolimus (Afinitor) was active in unresectable high-grade osteosarcoma progressing after standard treatment, but did not produce the study goal of ≥...
As reported by Pisansky et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) 9910 trial showed no benefit of extending the duration of pre–radiation therapy androgen suppression on survival or disease control among patients with localized prostate cancer....
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Mittendorf et al found no differences in recurrence-free, disease-specific, or overall survival between patients with American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) stage IA breast cancer and those with stage IB disease. Estrogen receptor status...
Data from 25 case-control studies and separate analyses show that head and neck cancers in young adults are more likely to occur as a result of inherited factors rather than lifestyle factors, such as smoking or drinking alcohol, according to a new study by Toporcov et al published in the...
Researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center and Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have identified a potential treatment targeting a pathway by which several aggressive tumors maintain their ability to proliferate, according to a study by Flynn et al published...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Chubb et al found that genetic diagnosis of high-penetrance susceptibility to colorectal cancer can be achieved in a sizeable proportion of familial colorectal cancer cases via exome sequencing for germline mutations. Study Details The...
In a Chinese study reported in JAMA, Huang et al found that treatment with entecavir (guanosine analog reverse transcriptase inhibitor) reduced hepatitis B virus (HBV)-related hepatitis and HBV reactivation compared with lamivudine (cytidine analog reverse transcriptase inhibitor) in HBV-positive...
Taking a hormonal contraceptive for at least 5 years is associated with a possible increase in women’s risk of developing a glioma, according to a study by Andersen et al published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. Study Details While little is known about the causes of...
In the phase III SEARCH trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Zhu et al found no overall survival benefit of adding erlotinib (Tarceva) to sorafenib (Nexavar) in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma. Study Details In this double-blind trial conducted in 26 countries in...
A genomic study of cancer patients previously treated with chemotherapy or radiation therapy found that TP53 mutations may play a role in the development of treatment-related acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and myelodysplastic syndrome, according to a report by Wong et al in Nature. However, the...
In a study in the Childhood Cancer Survivor Cohort reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Hudson et al found that poor health status was more common in survivors than in siblings, with an age-related increase in prevalence particularly evident in female survivors. In the study, 22,568...
A somatic mutation in the ATRX gene has recently been identified as a potential molecular marker for gliomas, neuroblastomas, and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors. Now, researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have found that the same mutated gene may serve...