On May 28, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted accelerated approval to the chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah) for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory follicular lymphoma after two or more lines of systemic therapy....
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Thomas Bachelot, MD, PhD, and colleagues, the phase III UNIRAD trial showed no improvement in disease-free survival with the addition of everolimus to adjuvant endocrine therapy for patients with high-risk hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative...
In analyses from a Spanish phase II trial (NADIM) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Provencio et al found a high rate of 3-year overall survival in patients with operable stage IIIA non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who received neoadjuvant nivolumab plus chemotherapy. Survival was...
In a phase II trial (CITYSCAPE) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Byoung Chul Cho, MD, and colleagues found that the addition of tiragolumab, an inhibitor of the immune checkpoint molecule TIGIT, to atezolizumab improved objective response rate and progression-free survival in first-line treatment...
On a warm summer afternoon, I stood in front of tables at the local farmers market loaded with my favorite fruits and vegetables: peaches, tomatoes, corn, peppers, melons, kale. I practically drooled thinking about what I could make that week: corn and tomato salad, kale and mushroom quesadillas,...
The availability of numerous new agents for treating multiple myeloma has created some “conundrums” for clinicians, said Sergio Giralt, MD, Deputy Head of the Division of Hematologic Malignancies at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the Melvin Berlin Family Chair in Myeloma Research and...
With the rapid acceleration of the spread of the COVID-19 virus in the United States in March 2020, telemedicine visits became more common for cancer care. However, in an evaluation of telemedicine inequities among patients with 21 common cancers, there were distinctly lower levels of telemedicine...
In a German phase IIb trial (GeparX) reported in JAMA Oncology, Jens-Uwe Blohmer, MD, PhD, and colleagues found that the addition of denosumab to neoadjuvant chemotherapy did not improve pathologic complete response rate in patients with breast cancer. They also found that weekly vs less frequent...
A retrospective analysis of the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST) by Pinsky et al, summarized in the April 25, 2022, issue of The ASCO Post, found high rates of incidental respiratory abnormalities on low-dose computed tomography (CT) examinations.1 Specifically, the findings of emphysema and...
ASCO recently announced six additional medical schools will participate in the second year of the Oncology Summer Internship (OSI) program, an immersive, 4-week summer internship for rising second-year medical students from groups underrepresented in medicine (UIM).1 In 2022, ASCO and a total of 11 ...
A rapid update to the ASCO Guideline on neoadjuvant therapy for breast cancer adds a recommendation on the use of pembrolizumab in patients with high-risk early-stage triple-negative breast cancer.1 The update follows a recent analysis from the randomized phase III KEYNOTE-522 trial that showed a...
As every patient diagnosed with cancer knows, the disease affects not just your physical well-being, but your emotional well-being, too. I was just 35 years old when I was diagnosed with early-stage classical Hodgkin lymphoma this past summer, and the news came at a time when I was feeling in top...
The North Star of an organization is its mission statement. At ASCO, no initiative gets the green light unless it can fulfill the Society’s mission. ASCO updated its mission statement in 2020 specifically to reinforce our goal of reducing disparities, changing it to read: “Conquering cancer through ...
The combination of neoadjuvant nivolumab plus chemotherapy achieved statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in event-free survival vs chemotherapy alone (P = .005) in patients with resectable non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC, stage IB–IIIA), according to the results of the ...
Lung cancer mortality rates have declined by more than 50% in men since 1990 and more than 30% in women since 2002. These declines in mortality are largely due to increases in smoking cessation. However, in recent years, clinical treatment advances, such as targeted therapies and immunotherapy,...
Esophageal cancer is associated with significant morbidity and mortality worldwide, with more than 600,000 new cases and 540,000 deaths in 2020. The squamous cell histology comprises nearly 90% of cases globally, despite its steady decline in the United States over the past 40 years. Historically,...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by David R. Spigel, MD, of Sarah Cannon Research Institute/Tennessee Oncology, and colleagues, long-term follow-up of the phase III PACIFIC trial has shown maintained progression-free and overall survival benefits with consolidation durvalumab (a...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Yuichiro Doki, MD, of Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan, and colleagues, the phase III CheckMate 648 trial has shown improved overall survival with nivolumab combined with chemotherapy or ipilimumab vs chemotherapy alone in...
Despite studies showing the benefits of early palliative care in improving the quality of life of patients with advanced cancer (including reducing symptoms of depression),1 a recent survey of oncologists found there is broad variation in the appropriate utilization of this care.2 Conducted by...
Although most oncology program directors and associate or assistant program directors consider themselves clinician-educators, they receive little to no formal medical education training to nurture trainees into clinician-educator careers and do not have a clinician-educator track for their...
Just days after Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, ASCO, together with its partners the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center–Jefferson Health, began assembling resources to establish a network of oncology professionals to help Ukrainian patients with cancer find...
Several recent studies examining the global burden of cancer on adolescents and young adults (AYAs) show the growing magnitude of the disease’s impact on the lives of individuals between the ages of 15 and 39. Although considered a rare occurrence, cancer in this age group has risen by...
On March 21, 2022, pembrolizumab was approved for patients with advanced endometrial carcinoma that is microsatellite instability–high (MSI-H) or mismatch repair–deficient (dMMR), as determined by a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved test, who have disease progression following prior...
On April 1, 2022, axicabtagene ciloleucel was approved for adults with large B-cell lymphoma that is refractory to first-line chemoimmunotherapy or relapses within 12 months of first-line chemoimmunotherapy.1 It is not indicated for the treatment of patients with primary central nervous system...
The toll of cancer on children, especially those living in low-resource countries, is staggering. Each year, an estimated 400,000 children and adolescents worldwide develop cancer,1 and despite improved survival rates, the global 5-year net childhood cancer survival rate is only 37.4%,2 making...
Use of multiple immune pathway inhibitors appears to be superior to checkpoint inhibitor therapy alone as neoadjuvant therapy for resectable non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to the results of the phase II NeoCOAST trial presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)...
A triplet regimen consisting of the PARP (poly [ADP-ribose] polymerase) inhibitor olaparib, metronomic (the chronic administration of low, equally spaced doses of) cyclophosphamide, and metformin demonstrated activity in elderly, heavily pretreated patients with recurrent, advanced endometrial...
Radiation segmentectomy may be an effective treatment for very early– to early-stage hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) that cannot be treated surgically or thermally. The findings from a multidisciplinary study by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai were published by Kim et al...
A sizable proportion of patients with advanced melanoma will experience disease progression on anti–PD-1 therapy, and the optimal treatment of such patients represents an unmet need. Two studies presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2022 explored separate...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by François-Clément Bidard, MD, PhD, and colleagues, the phase III EMERALD trial has shown prolonged progression-free survival with the oral selective estrogen receptor (ER) degrader elacestrant vs standard endocrine therapy among patients with...
In a phase II study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Zauderer et al found that the EZH2 inhibitor tazemetostat was active in patients with relapsed or refractory BRCA-associated protein 1 (BAP1)-inactivated malignant pleural mesothelioma. As noted by the investigators, high expression of EZH2 has...
On May 20, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved azacitidine (Vidaza) for pediatric patients with newly diagnosed juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia (JMML). AZA-JMML-001 Efficacy was evaluated in AZA-JMML-001 (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT02447666), an international, multicenter,...
Two oncologists who are now heads of oncology development for pharmaceutical companies discussed the future of cancer drugs at the Community Oncology Alliance’s 2022 Community Oncology Conference. They were Johanna Bendell, MD, Global Head of Oncology, Pharma Research, and Early Development at...
ASCO and the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) have jointly released recommendations that address the lack of equity, diversity, and inclusion in cancer clinical trials. Published by Randall A. Oyer, MD, and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the research statement details ...
In a systematic review and meta-analysis reported in JAMA Network Open, Khoury et al found that SARS–CoV-2 infection was associated with a higher risk of mortality among patients with cancer vs those without cancer. Risk vs those with no cancer was increased with younger age, and patients with...
In an ancillary study of the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group E4112 study reported in JAMA Network Open, Fazeli et al found that patient preference of type of surgery and type of surgery received for ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) were influenced by preoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)...
In 1996, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) published its first set of Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology® covering eight tumor types. Guidelines are now published for more than 60 tumor types, subtypes, and topics. During the NCCN’s 27th Annual Conference, which was again...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Debu Tripathy, MD, and colleagues, the phase III ATTAIN trial has shown no difference in overall survival with etirinotecan pegol vs physician’s choice of chemotherapy for patients with metastatic breast cancer and brain metastases. As noted by the investigators,...
In a Dutch nationwide trial reported by Smits et al in The Lancet, researchers in the Dutch Pancreatic Cancer Group found that algorithm-based early postsurgical care was associated with a reduced risk of the composite outcome of bleeding requiring invasive intervention, organ failure, and 90-day...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Foerster et al, the African Breast Cancer–Disparities in Outcomes prospective cohort study has shown that a high proportion of women with newly diagnosed nonmetastatic breast cancer in sub-Saharan Africa did not initiate, did not fully complete, or abandoned...
CoVac-1, a multipeptide COVID-19 vaccine candidate, elicited immunogenicity in patients with cancer and disease-related or treatment-related immunoglobulin deficiency in a phase I/II trial reported at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2022.1 These patients are...
Recent research underlines the importance of following up with a colonoscopy exam after a positive result on an at-home stool test to screen for colorectal cancer. The test, known as the fecal immunochemical test (FIT), checks for traces of blood in patient-collected stool samples, which can be an...
In a phase III trial (NRG Oncology/RTOG 0534 SPPORT) reported in The Lancet, Alan Pollack, MD, PhD, and colleagues found that both the addition of short-term androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) and the addition of ADT and pelvic lymph node radiotherapy (PLNRT) to salvage prostate bed radiotherapy...
In a French phase I/II trial (VICTORIA) reported in JAMA Oncology, Heudel et al found that the addition of the mTOR inhibitor vistusertib to anastrozole improved outcomes in women with hormone receptor–positive recurrent or metastatic endometrial cancer. As stated by the investigators, “Endometrial ...
In an analysis from the GLIOMAP study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Gerritsen et al found that awake craniotomy for glioblastoma in eloquent brain areas (essential areas for carrying out basic neurological functions) was associated with reduced risk of neurologic deficits and improved survival...
Delays in surgery for esophageal cancer did not appear to have much impact on patients’ relative survival for early-stage cancer compared with patients who had surgery early, but they did reduce the relative survival rate by almost half for patients with more advanced disease, according to an...
In a phase II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Garcia-Aguilar et al found that total neoadjuvant therapy followed by a watch-and-wait strategy vs total mesorectal excision based on response allowed for organ preservation in approximately half of patients with rectal...
On this episode, we’ll be discussing an updated overall survival analysis from the MONALEESA-3 trial presented at the ESMO Breast Cancer Congress 2022. Then, we’ll hear from a researcher about the current state of cancer research and anticipated trends in the field.
In a study reported in the British Journal of Haematology, Staron et al found that the prevalence of plasma cell and lymphoproliferative disorders among blood relatives of probands with light chain (AL) amyloidosis was low overall and varied according to proband AL amyloidosis subtype. Despite...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Yoshino et al, the final analysis of survival and safety of the Japanese phase III ACHIEVE trial (part of the IDEA Collaboration) has shown no difference in disease-free or overall survival with 3 vs 6 months of adjuvant mFOLFOX6 (fluorouracil,...