The American Society of Hematology (ASH) will recognize Nancy Speck, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, and Karl Welte, MD, of Hannover Medical School, with the 2015 Henry M. Stratton Medal for their seminal contributions in the areas of basic and...
New research shows that paired primary tumor and brain metastases share a common ancestor, but as the metastases develop in the brain, they exhibit novel genetic alterations that can activate a number of signaling pathways. More than half of the mutations represent potential therapeutic targets....
Kara Kelly, MD, has been appointed as the new leader of the joint program in pediatric hematology/oncology, a partnership of Women & Children’s Hospital of Buffalo (WCHOB), Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI), UBMD Pediatrics, and the University at Buffalo (UB). WCHOB, RPCI, and UB have...
Patients with early-stage HER2-positive breast cancer who received neratinib as extended adjuvant therapy demonstrated improved invasive disease–free survival, with an absolute benefit of 2.3% at 2 years.1 However, these results of the ExteNET trial, previously presented at the 2015 ASCO Annual...
Treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) with tyrosine kinase inhibitors is “the golden child success story of targeted treatment,” Jerald P. Radich, MD, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, Seattle, Washington, told attendees at the National...
Oncology nurse practitioner Mary Pazdur, RN, MSN, spent her professional life bettering the clinical care and outcomes of cancer patients, culminating in her career at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), in the Laboratory of Tumor Immunology and Biology, working with patients on cancer vaccine...
Bookmark Title: The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients’ Lives Author: Theresa Brown, RN Publisher: Algonquin Books Publication date: September 22, 2015 Price: $15.59; hardcover, 272 pages If health care were looked at through an architect’s eyes, nurses would be the girders holding the...
My diagnosis of pleural mesothelioma early in 2015 couldn’t have been more surprising. In one day, I went from being a healthy, vibrant woman with a busy career and the excitement of launching a promising new business venture to a woman facing the greatest challenge of her life. The fact that my...
The Mayo Clinic Board of Trustees named Bobbie Gostout, MD, Vice President of the Mayo Clinic. Dr. Gostout will be the physician leader for Mayo’s community practice in the Midwest, including Mayo Clinic Health System in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and Mayo Clinic’s Minnesota-based community...
Bookmark Title: Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book Author: Susan M. Love, MD Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books Publication date: September 8, 2015 Price: $24.00; paperback, 704 pages For more than 25 years, Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book has been the best source of information for women with breast...
Elizabeth Blackburn, PhD, has been named President of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Dr. Blackburn will join the Salk Institute from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where she is Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. She will assume her new role...
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,...
BookmarkTitle: Heal: The Vital Role of Dogs in the Search for Cancer CuresAuthor: Arlene WeintraubPublisher: ECW PressPublication date: October 13, 2015Price: $16.95; paperback, 240 pages Comparative oncology, a fairly recent addition to the ever-evolving world of cancer research, studies the...
Bookmark Title: Last Night in the OR: A Transplant Surgeon’s OdysseyAuthor: Bud Shaw, MDPublisher: Plume, division of Penguin GroupPublication date: September 15, 2015Price: $16.00; paperback, 304 pages Surgery has a distinct place in medicine. Surgeons cut deep into our bodies amid clusters of...
Valerie W. Rusch, MD, FACS, was elected Chair of the Board of Regents of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) during the College’s Annual Clinical Congress, held October 4–8 in Chicago. In her role as Chair of the Board of Regents, Dr. Rusch will work closely with the ACS Executive Director and...
Over the past few decades, the oncology community has incorporated new evidence-based therapies to address the psychosocial needs of patients with cancer, especially those with advanced disease. To bring a global perspective to this evolving discipline, The ASCO Post recently spoke with Monika...
The Los Angeles County Medical Association (LACMA) awarded the Hospital Physician Leadership Award to Alexandra M. Levine, MD, MACP, Chief Medical Officer of City of Hope. Dr. Levine received the award in recognition of her exemplary contributions to the medical profession, including her leadership ...
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Foundation has appointed three new representatives to its Board of Directors: Heather Kopecky, PhD, MBA; Marc Samuels, JD, MPH; and Susan Stein, MPH. There are currently 15 members of the Board of Directors, responsible for the strategic direction...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Catherine Van Poznak, MD, and colleagues, ASCO has issued a clinical practice guideline on the use of biomarkers to guide decisions on systemic therapy in women with metastatic breast cancer.1 The statement is based on an ASCO expert panel review...
Amy K. Hara, MD, has been named Chair of Diagnostic Radiology at Mayo Clinic’s Arizona campus. Dr. Hara, Professor of Radiology, joined Mayo Clinic in 2001. Her main research interests include computed tomography (CT) colonography, also known as virtual colonoscopy; CT enterography; CT radiation...
Tough initial treatment decisions have “long-lasting ramifications and affect the entire treatment paradigm” for women with ovarian cancer, according to Bradley J. Monk, MD, FACS, FACOG, of the University of Arizona Cancer Center, Phoenix. In a true collaborative presentation at the Annual JADPRO...
The University of Michigan (U-M) Comprehensive Cancer Center has appointed Bhramar Mukherjee, PhD, as Associate Director for Population Science Research. Dr. Mukherjee is John D. Kalbfleisch Collegiate Professor of Biostatistics and Professor of Epidemiology at the U-M School of Public Health. She...
Nonpharmacologic approaches to managing pain have a fairly robust base of science and research supporting their use but are not as widely accepted and understood as drug therapy in the realm of cancer care. In a breakout session at the 2015 Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium in Boston, experts...
The investigational agent anamorelin significantly increased lean body mass, body weight, total body mass, and fat mass in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and cachexia, according to Jennifer S. Temel, MD, who presented the results of two phase III studies at the 2015...
We have a responsibility to develop better treatment for inflammatory breast cancer,” Massimo Cristofanilli, MD, FACP, told participants at the 17th Annual Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium in Chicago. As recently appointed Associate Director of Translational Research and Precision Medicine at the ...
As we stood outside patient X’s room going over the vitals, from a distance, I saw the father of the patient by the side of her bed. I saw him standing there and looking down at his child conveying what I guess were words of reassurance and reinforcing the pillars of strength needed for her...
BookmarkTitle: Malignant Metaphor: Confronting Cancer MythsAuthor: Alanna MitchellPublisher: ECW PressPublication date: September 15, 2015Price: $24.95; hardcover, 184 pages Illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom...
Anne-Lise Børresen-Dale, DSc, Professor at the University of Oslo and Head of the Department of Genetics at the University Hospital Radiumhospitalet in Oslo, Norway, was honored with the 8th Annual American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Distinguished Lectureship in Breast Cancer Research...
Internationally renowned breast cancer surgeon Lisa A. Newman, MD, MPH, has joined Henry Ford Health System to lead its metro Detroit breast cancer program and new international breast cancer research center. She begins work in December as the Director of the Breast Cancer Program at Henry Ford....
The following essay by Kenneth R. Adler, MD, FACP, 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....
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,...
Studies demonstrate that patients with advanced cancer who are not actively engaged in planning their end-of-life care often receive overly aggressive, physically taxing, costly and unnecessary treatment toward life’s end. Recent findings indicate that African Americans appear to be more apt to...
Bookmark Title: The Laws of Medicine: Field Notes From an Uncertain Science Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee Publisher: TED Books/Simon & Schuster Publication date: October 13, 2015 Price: $16.99; hardcover, 96 pages The Emperor of All Maladies, written by the Indian-born American oncologist...
Although formal mentoring programs in medical education were not launched in the United States until the late 1990s,1 today they are regarded as playing an essential role in the career development of medical trainees and have been associated with improvements in research, teaching, and patient...
Suleika Jaouad was diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome and acute myeloid leukemia at age 22, shortly after her graduation from Princeton University. She is a columnist for The New York Times Well blog, “Life Interrupted,” which chronicles her journey as a young woman living with cancer. Ms....
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) named Marilena Ciciarello, PhD, of the University of Bologna, the inaugural recipient of the ASH Giuseppe Bigi Memorial Award for Achievement in Hematopoiesis and Stem Cells for her research on the role of stem cells in leukemia initiation and progression....
Sometimes, cancer treatments that initially appear promising begin to lose their effectiveness. This is due to the ability diseases like cancer have to develop resistance to treatments over time and, essentially, outsmart them. But what if there were ways to ensure this didn’t happen? What if...
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) has become home to The Cancer Imaging Archive of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), with the transfer to UAMS of more than 40 terabytes of data from the archive’s former home at Washington University in St. Louis. Cancer researchers can use...
Cancer clinical trials in three distinct phases, as they have been conducted for decades, are probably no longer the best way to bring a drug or biologic agent to market. This was the consensus of three panels at the 8th Annual Conference on Clinical Cancer Research convened by Friends of Cancer...
City of Hope recently announced the following new staff additions. Bart O. Roep, PhD Internationally recognized immunologist Bart O. Roep, PhD, has joined City of Hope as Chair of the Department of Diabetes Immunology within the Diabetes & Metabolism Research Institute. An expert in the...
First-line treatment with the Bruton’s tyrosine kinase inhibitor ibrutinib (Imbruvica) significantly reduced the risk of dying or disease progression compared with chlorambucil (Leukeran) in older treatment-naive patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) in the RESONATE-2 trial. At the time...
There is good news about denosumab (Prolia). The primary analysis of the ABCSG-18 trial showed that adjuvant denosumab (given at low doses) reduces the risk of clinical fracture by 50% in postmenopausal women with early breast cancer who are taking an aromatase inhibitor.1 More good news is that...
Alysa M. Fairchild, MD, of the Cross Cancer Institute and the University of Alberta, discusses her study on the use of dexamethasone to reduce pain flare in patients receiving palliative radiotherapy for bone metastases (Abstract LBA6663).
Judy E. Garber, MD, MPH, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, gives her expert perspective on this vital and timely topic.
A new study led by Johns Hopkins researchers shows wide racial and economic disparities in access to minimally invasive hysterectomies for early uterine cancer in the United States. This is despite years of accumulating evidence that the procedures to remove the uterus are linked to fewer...
Analysis of patient-reported outcomes, a secondary endpoint of the phase III NSABP B-35 clinical trial, in which anastrozole and tamoxifen were compared in postmenopausal women with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) who underwent lumpectomy plus radiotherapy, found that there were no differences in...
University of Southern California (USC) researchers have developed a mathematical model to forecast metastatic breast cancer survival rates using techniques usually reserved for weather prediction, financial forecasting, and surfing the Web. For decades, medical schools have taught doctors that...
In a retrospective analysis of data from 130 patients with pancreatic cysts, scientists at Johns Hopkins have used gene-based tests and a fixed set of clinical criteria to more accurately distinguish precancerous cysts from those less likely to do harm. The findings may eventually help some...
A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published by Bradley et al in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment showed that patients with breast cancer whose health insurance plans included prescription drug benefits were 10% more likely to start important hormonal therapy than patients who did not ...
Women who have ovarian cancer often develop a condition called ascites, which is a buildup of fluids in the abdomen. The most common treatment for ascites is puncturing the abdomen and manually draining the fluid, which is painful, risky, and must be repeated every few weeks. University of...