Chemotherapy- and radiotherapy-induced gastrointestinal (GI) toxicities have risen alongside improved survival rates for many cancers, according to Jervoise Andreyev, MA, PhD, Consultant Gastroenterologist in GI Consequences of Cancer Treatment at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London. “For every...
A novel anti–interleukin-1 alpha (IL-1α) antibody has shown a significant impact on symptoms and a high level of safety and tolerability in patients with advanced colorectal cancer, according to phase III data presented by Hickish et al at the European Society for Medical Oncology’s 18th World...
More imaging after thyroid cancer treatment identifies recurrence, but it does not always improve survival, a new study published by Banerjee et al in The BMJ suggests. Researchers from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center looked at 28,220 patients diagnosed with...
Research conducted at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, is moving the field of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy forward in the treatment of B-cell malignancies. At the 2016 Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference in Koloa, Hawaii, David G. Maloney, MD, PhD, Professor of...
A University of Colorado Cancer Center study compared outcomes of leukemia patients receiving bone marrow transplants from 2009 to 2014, finding that 3 years post transplant, the incidence of severe chronic graft-vs-host disease was significantly higher in patients who had received transplants from ...
The Henry and Marilyn Taub Foundation has presented a gift of $1 million to support the Shirley Sadoff Pancreatic Cancer Action Network Research Acceleration Network 2 Grant. The grant will support a large, multicenter phase II clinical trial studying an immunotherapeutic approach in patients with...
In a phase I/Ib study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Davids et al found that ipilimumab (Yervoy; at a dose of 10 mg/kg) produced responses, including complete responses, in patients with relapsed hematologic cancer after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT)....
Dean Lee, MD, PhD, has been named the Director of the Cellular Therapy and Cancer Immunotherapy Program for Nationwide Children’s Hospital’s Division of Hematology/Oncology/Blood and Marrow Transplant and Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Diseases. Dr. Lee will also serve as the Director of...
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...
In support of the President’s Precision Medicine Initiative, on July 6, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued two draft guidances. When finalized, they will provide a flexible and streamlined approach to the oversight of tests that detect medically important differences in a person’s...
As reported by Hope S. Rugo, MD, of the University of California San Francisco Comprehensive Cancer Center, and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, ASCO has released a clinical practice guideline on endocrine therapy for hormone receptor–positive metastatic breast cancer.1 The...
The liquid biopsy may be a welcome reprieve from typical biopsies. The minimally invasive test could reduce the need for the sometimes painful and risky procedures involved in sampling tumors, particularly those that reside deep within the body. However, thus far, the utility of the test has been...
Five-year survival data published by Chen et al in Blood suggest that the targeted therapy brentuximab vedotin (Adcetris) may be curative in some patients with Hodgkin lymphoma whose disease has persisted despite receiving previous therapies. This multinational phase II study examined brentuximab...
The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) has selected Haakon Ragde, MD, as its 2016 Honorary Member, the highest honor ASTRO confers on distinguished cancer researchers, scientists, and leaders in disciplines other than radiation oncology, radiobiology, or radiation physics. Dr. Ragde...
Here are several abstracts selected from the proceedings of the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting, focusing on clinical trials on therapeutics in different types of leukemia, multiple myeloma, follicular lymphoma, and central nervous system (CNS) lymphoma. For full details of these study abstracts, visit...
In February, after serving for a year as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Deputy Commissioner for Medical Products and Tobacco, Robert M. Califf, MD, MACC, was named the agency’s Commissioner of Food and Drugs. Prior to his appointment at the FDA, Dr. Califf was the Donald F....
A receptor protein that is the target of the breast cancer drug trastuzumab (Herceptin) is needed for proper heart blood vessel development, reported researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. They published their findings this month in a paper ...
A surgical procedure recommended to reduce the future risk of ovarian cancer has been successfully implemented throughout Kaiser Permanente in Northern California without a change in surgical outcomes, according to research published by Garcia et al in Obstetrics & Gynecology. Previous...
Patients who develop heart failure after their first heart attack have a greater risk of developing cancer when compared to first-time heart attack survivors without heart failure, according to a study published by Hasin et al in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Heart failure...
In support of the President’s Precision Medicine Initiative, on July 6, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued two draft guidances that, when finalized, will provide a flexible and streamlined approach to the oversight of tests that detect medically important differences in a...
A novel anti–interleukin-1 alpha antibody has shown a significant impact on symptoms and a high level of safety and tolerability in patients with advanced colorectal cancer, according to phase III data presented by Hickish et al at ESMO’s 18th World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer...
Although most patients with advanced ovarian cancer initially respond to platinum-based chemotherapy, they usually relapse. According to a study by Frances R. Balkwill, PhD, Professor of Cancer Biology at Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom, and colleagues...
Andrew L. Kung, MD, PhD, has been named the new Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). Dr. Kung most recently served as the Chief of the Division of Pediatric Hematology, Oncology, and Stem Cell Transplantation at NewYork–Presbyterian/Morgan...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) are teaming up to raise awareness and provide education about the need for new treatments for acute myeloid leukemia (AML). AML is a complex group of approximately 20 different types of blood cancers with a very...
Question 1: What is the next best step for this patient? Correct Answer: C. Determination of amyloid subtype. Expert Perspective Amyloidosis encompasses a heterogeneous group of diseases bound by the characteristic deposition of amyloid fibrils in soft tissues and bone marrow, and it could be...
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...
Recent studies on a small number of patients with leukemia treated with bone marrow transplantation have suggested that the presence of the common cytomegalovirus (CMV) in patients or their donors may protect against relapse or even death after the transplant. A large international study published...
In a study reported by Yuan et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, higher prediagnostic plasma 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels were found to be associated with prolonged overall survival in patients with pancreatic cancer. Study Details The study involved data from 493 patients from 5...
In a phase III trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Johnson et al found similar efficacy with continued ABVD (doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine, dacarbazine) chemotherapy vs omission of bleomycin (AVD) after negative interim PET-CT (positron-emission tomography–computed...
Like most pediatric hematologists/oncologists, my career has been a journey, hoping to discover ways to improve the outcomes for children and adolescents with cancer. I have been blessed to work with outstanding colleagues in the United States and throughout the world. And of equal importance, I...
The study statistics are alarming—and perplexing. According to an analysis of data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) colorectal cancer registry, colon cancer incidence among young adults aged 20 to 34 is expected to increase 90% by 2030, and the incidence of rectosigmoid...
Researchers at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) presented a molecular imaging methodology that allows the increase of the radiotherapy dose to the tumor while protecting vulnerable vital organs.1 The delicate balance of administering the...
Significant progress has been made in the past 2 decades in the care of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Recently, the therapeutic armamentarium has expanded for such patients with the introduction of new targeted agents. CLL is predominantly a disease of the elderly, with a...
People who visit their primary care physicians are more likely to get potentially life-saving colon cancer screenings and follow-up on abnormal stool blood test results—even in health systems that heavily promote mail-in home stool blood tests that don’t require a doctor visit, a study...
Myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) are the result of genetic alterations that cause blood stem cells to become abnormal, rendering bone marrow unable to create new, mature blood cells for release into the body. It is estimated that up to 15,000 new cases of MDS are diagnosed in the United States each...
On June 28, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a fixed-dose combination of sofosbuvir, 400 mg, plus velpatasvir, 100 mg (Epclusa) to treat adult patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) either with or without cirrhosis. For patients with moderate to severe cirrhosis...
In an analysis of the observational data base of the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Ghosh et al found that lymphoma patients undergoing reduced-intensity conditioning had similar outcomes with related-donor haploidentical...
Scientific Name: Cimicifuga racemosa Common Names: Black snakeroot, rattlesnake root, squawroot, bugbane, bugwort Brand Names: Remifemin, Menofem, Klimadynon Overview A perennial plant native to the eastern United States and Canada, black cohosh root was used by Native Americans to treat colds,...
Curtis Pesmen is a well-regarded writer who has authored six books of nonfiction as well as numerous articles for publications such as Esquire and The New York Times. He also has served as founding editor of LIVESTRONG Quarterly and often speaks and writes on patient advocacy. Shortly after...
A 65-year-old patient with widely metastatic pancreatic cancer was emergently transferred to our facility in the early hours of the morning with free air suggestive of a perforated viscus. The patient is from a small town several hundred miles away from our academic center, which can be quite...
The KEYNOTE-012 phase Ib trial assessed single-agent pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in patients with advanced programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1)–positive gastric cancer, triple-negative breast cancer, urothelial cancer, and head and neck cancer. The activity of pembrolizumab in study patients with...
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 ...
Five years ago, the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center and Research Institute at Christiana Care Health System in Newark, Delaware, and The Wistar Institute, a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated biomedical research center, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, joined forces to collaborate on...
Question 1: Which statement about the classification of tumors of hematopoietic and lymphoid tissues is true? Correct Answer: A. The revised WHO classification defines distant disease entities that can be reliably diagnosed using proposed criteria. Expert Perspective WHO last updated its...
WHO last updated its classification of tumors of hematopoietic and lymphoid tissues with a fourth edition of its WHO Classification of Tumours of Haematopoietic and Lymphoid Tissues, in 2008, as part of a series of WHO Classification of Tumours monographs. This year, with the support of the...
Chimeric antigen receptors (CARs), engineered from a patient's own immune cells, have been successful for treating blood cancers, but using CARs for solid tumors has been limited by side effects to normal tissues containing the protein targeted by the engineered cells. Now, in a report published...
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a common and costly disease, largely of the elderly, with nearly 25% of cases diagnosed among patients aged 75–84 years. However, but the guidelines for CRC screening of Americans aged 75 or older vary according to the source. In a study published by Klabunde et al...
As reported in JAMA, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) has issued new recommendations for colorectal cancer screening. In brief, the USPSTF recommends colorectal cancer screening starting at age 50 years and continuing until age 75 years (grade A recommendation = “The USPSTF...
Sumanta K. Pal, MD, an ASCO spokesperson who moderated a press briefing at the 2016 ASCO Annual Meeting, commented that the data provide key insights into the feasibility of “liquid biopsy.” “We’re increasingly using genomic data from day to day in our clinics to guide therapies,” said Dr. Pal....
So-called liquid biopsy identified cancer mutations in 85% of all advanced tumors, in the largest-ever evaluation of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) in the blood.1 In 49% of the cases, these biomarkers were associated with an approved targeted drug, Philip C. Mack, PhD, reported at the 2016 ASCO...