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Showing 3151 - 3200Olaparib Shows Robust Progression-Free Survival Benefit in Patients With BRCA Mutations
Maintenance therapy with olaparib extended progression-free survival and the time to disease progression after a second subsequent therapy in patients with platinum-sensitive relapsed serous ovarian cancer and a BRCA mutation, according to an updated analysis of Study 19 presented at the 2013 ASCO...
Will Funding for Lung Cancer Ever Improve?
Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer-related death in the world. In the United States alone, an estimated 228,190 new cases of lung cancer and 159,480 deaths from lung cancer will occur in 2013. These are alarming statistics when compared to the next four common causes of cancer-related...
The Oncologist as Author: On Guiding Patients Through Cancer
When Tumor Is the Rumor and Cancer Is the Answer is the guidebook to cancer that Kevin P. Ryan, MD, FACP, COL, USAF (ret) wished his patients had during his 30 years of practicing oncology. The book, recently published by AuthorHouse, is an authoritative, inspiring, and even philosophical guide for ...
ASCO Congratulates QOPI-Certified Practices
QCP™: Recognizing Excellence The QOPI® Certification Program (QCP™) recognizes medical oncology and hematology/oncology practices that are committed to delivering the highest quality of cancer care. QCP evaluates an individual practice’s performance in areas that affect patient care and safety. The ...
Tamoxifen in Women With BRCA1 and BRCA2 Mutations: Another Option?
In analyses of pooled information from cohorts of women with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations who have had a prior breast cancer diagnosis, Phillips and colleagues examined the association between tamoxifen use compared to nonuse on contralateral breast cancer risk.1 Tamoxifen use was associated with...
Sorafenib Granted Priority Review for Differentiated Thyroid Cancer
Bayer HealthCare and Onyx Pharmaceuticals recently announced that the FDA has granted priority review designation to the supplemental new drug application of sorafenib (Nexavar) tablets for the treatment of locally advanced or metastatic radioactive iodine-refractory differentiated thyroid cancer....
VeriStrat Assay Helps Select NSCLC Patients for Second-Line Therapy
VeriStrat, a serum-based protein assay, can help select which patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) not known to have epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations might benefit from an EGFR-targeted agent, according to a study presented at the ASCO Annual Meeting by Vanesa Gregorc, ...
Platinum Agents in Triple-Negative Breast Cancer: Encouraging New Data
For the treatment of triple-negative breast cancer, there is renewed interest in investigating the role of platinum chemotherapy, according to Melinda L. Telli, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Stanford University, Palo Alto. At the Best of ASCO meeting in Los Angeles, Dr. Telli reviewed the...
Cisplatin Plus Radiation Therapy for Advanced Cervical Cancer Improves Disease-Free Survival vs Radiotherapy Alone
Adding the chemotherapy drug cisplatin to a treatment plan of radiation therapy and high–dose rate brachytherapy for patients with stage IIIB cervical cancer is beneficial, according to research presented recently at the American Society for Radiation Oncology’s 55th Annual Meeting.1 Study Details...
Protecting Hippocampus During Whole-Brain Radiation Substantially Reduces Rate of Cognitive Decline
Protecting the stem cells that reside in and around the hippocampus substantially reduces the rate of cognitive decline in patients during whole-brain radiotherapy without a significant risk of recurrence in that area of the brain, a new study shows. Results of the phase II clinical trial of...
Long-Term Androgen Deprivation in Patients With Intermediate-Risk Prostate Cancer Does Not Improve Overall Survival
Men with advanced prostate cancer typically receive hormonal therapy to reduce the level of androgens in their bodies. Although hormone therapy alone will not cure prostate cancer, lowering androgen levels can reduce the size of prostate tumors or stall their growth. A secondary analysis of the...
New President and CEO of Fox Chase Cancer Center Reflects on Challenges and Opportunities Ahead
On October 8, 1904, a group of Philadelphia physicians and businessmen who were concerned about the escalating incidence of cancer in the city signed a charter that established the American Oncologic Hospital, one of the nation’s first hospitals solely devoted to cancer care. Seven decades later—2...
More Active Physician Intervention Needed to Keep Patients From Smoking
More active support and interventions by physicians are required to get patients who still smoke to stop, according to two articles published online by the Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP),1,2 and to prevent school-aged children and adolescents from starting to use tobacco, according to a U.S....
Challenging and Changing the Standard of Care for Cervical and Ovarian Cancers
“It was a very exciting session this year, particularly for cervical cancers,” said Paul Haluska MD, PhD, of the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, in speaking of the 2013 ASCO Annual Meeting’s gynecologic oncology session and the abstracts highlighted recently at Best of ASCO in Chicago. In one...
Important Findings in Metastatic Colorectal Cancer Studies Address Treatment, Management Options
At the Best of ASCO Meeting in Los Angeles, Tony Reid, MD, PhD, Director of the Early Phase Clinical Research Program and Professor of Hematology/Oncology at the University of California, San Diego, reviewed important findings in metastatic colorectal cancer presented at the 2013 ASCO Annual...
Pathologic Complete Response as a Test Bed for Novel Therapies: Proceed—With Caution!
Pathologic complete response as assessed surgically after neoadjuvant treatment is being touted by some researchers as a stand-alone endpoint justifying early drug approval for breast cancer. They argue that it provides a more efficient means of testing the value of agents that might be useful in...
SIDEBAR: Expect Questions About Contralateral Prophylactic Mastectomy: Carefully Review Risks and Alternatives
Physicians were considered the most important source of information about contralateral prophylactic mastectomy in a survey of 123 women who were diagnosed with cancer in one breast and chose to have the contralateral procedure. While 80% of the women reported that they spoke with their physicians...
Better Risk Communication Strategies Needed to Ensure Decision to Have Contralateral Prophylactic Mastectomy Is Evidence-Based
Overestimating the risk that cancer in one breast will affect the other breast may cause many young women with breast cancer to choose contralateral prophylactic mastectomy even though most know it does not clearly improve survival. In a survey of 123 women who were diagnosed with cancer in one...
Roswell Park Cancer Institute, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, Receive $11 Million Spore Grant for Joint Research in Ovarian Cancer
The National Cancer Institute has awarded more than $11 million in funding to Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI), in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI), to begin an aggressive, multipronged search into preventing and treating ovarian cancer. Distributed over 5 ...
The AVEX Trial
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Cunningham and colleagues and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, the AVEX trial was an open-label randomized phase III trial limited to patients over the age of 70 years with previously untreated, unresectable metastatic colorectal cancer who were not...
'Clear and Consistent Protective Effect of Marriage' Found in Patients With 10 Most Clinically Significant Cancers
A clear and consistent protective effect of marriage among patients harboring one of the 10 most clinically significant malignancies affecting Americans” was found in a study analyzing Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEE) data for 734,889 patients diagnosed with lung, colorectal,...
Omega-3
Common Name: Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) Brand Names: Omegaven, Max-EPA The use of dietary supplements by patients with cancer has increased significantly over the past 2 decades despite insufficient evidence of safety and effectiveness. Finding reliable sources of information about...
NIH Announces 15 Clinical and Translational Science Awards
Translating basic discoveries into new treatments that tangibly improve human health requires innovative collaborations and resources, as well as a diverse, highly trained workforce. To help meet these needs, the National Institutes of Health recently announced more than $79 million in fiscal year...
Multicenter Analysis of Outcomes of Lymphoma in Pregnancy
Lymphoma is the fourth most frequent cancer to occur in pregnant women. In a multicenter retrospective analysis reported in Journal of Clinical Oncology, Andrew M. Evens, DO, MSc, Chief of Hematology/Oncology at Tufts University Medical Center, Boston, and colleagues examined treatment,...
Neoadjuvant Treatment of Early Breast Cancer
INSIDE THE BLACK BOX is an occasional column providing insight into the FDA and its policies and procedures. In this first installment, FDA Clinical Reviewers Laleh Amiri-Kordestani, MD, and Suparna Wedam, MD, discuss FDA’s recent approval of pertuzumab (Perjeta) for the neoadjuvant treatment of...
Pemetrexed Improves Progression-Free Survival vs Gefitinib in Second-Line Setting for EGFR Wild-Type Nonsquamous NSCLC
Both pemetrexed (Alimta) and gefitinib (Iressa) are standard second-line treatments for advanced nonsquamous non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in East Asia. In a phase II trial (CTONG 0806) reported at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer’s 15th World Conference on Lung...
Important News Briefs: New Data Reported in Breast, Renal Cell, Head and Neck, and Lung Cancer
The 2013 European Cancer Congress (ECC), held September 27 to October 1 in Amsterdam, was jointly sponsored by the European Society of Medical Oncology, the European Cancer Organization, and the European Society of Radiation Oncology. With the Congress theme being “Reinforcing Multidisciplinarity,” ...
Evaluation of Breast Cancer MRI Screening Strategies
Recent years have witnessed much heated debate about the benefits of breast cancer screening and optimal screening strategies. Unlike with mammography, no randomized data are available to determine whether screening with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) reduces mortality from breast cancer....
German Analysis in Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma: Hypothesis-Generating Rather Than Definitive?
In their retrospective analysis of German High-Grade Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma Study Group trials reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, Held and colleagues assessed the effects of rituximab (Rituxan) and radiotherapy in patients with aggressive B-cell...
Amy P. Abernethy, MD, PhD, to Chair CancerLinQ™ Advisory Committee
ASCO has announced that Amy P. Abernethy, MD, PhD, FACP, has agreed to chair a new CancerLinQ™ Advisory Committee within the Institute for Quality, an ASCO affiliate dedicated to innovative quality improvement programs, that will guide this multiphase effort. The advisory committee consists of...
Long-Term CONKO-001 Results: Adjuvant Therapy Improves Survival
From 12% to 15% of the approximately 45,000 patients diagnosed with pancreas adenocarcinoma undergo a potentially curative resection each year in North America, translating into roughly 5,000 to 7,000 patients who are candidates for adjuvant therapy. About 80% of these patients will relapse and...
Benefits and Controversies in Survivorship Care Plans
Since the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM’s) 2005 report, From Cancer Patient to Cancer Survivor: Lost in Translation,1 survivorship plans have received growing attention. In short, a survivorship care plan is the record of a patient’s cancer history and recommendations for follow-up care. At ASCO’s...
Cetuximab Confers Survival Benefit in All-RAS Wild-Type Colorectal Tumors
The FIRE-3 study compared the two epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) antibodies, on top of chemotherapy, in the first-line treatment of metastatic colorectal cancer. A preplanned analysis of KRAS wild-type patients without RAS mutations, ie, “all-RAS wild-type,” showed overall survival to be...
SIDEBAR: Addition of Novel Agents May Improve Outcomes With ABVD
In North America, the standard front-line treatment for advanced Hodgkin lymphoma is ABVD (doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine, dacarbazine), but this regimen is not effective in all patient subsets. To improve upon the regimen’s efficacy, researchers are evaluating new combinations, said Stephen...
What Does ‘Myeloma’ Mean?
Over the centuries it has become clear that, as physicians, what we say and how we say it can have a major impact on those who seek our help. Our pronouncement that a patient is in remission or harbors a serious illness carries with it a large number of spoken and unspoken implications. So when we...
Response-Guided Neoadjuvant Therapy for Breast Cancer: A Promising Model Warranting Additional Investigation
GeparTrio was an innovative phase III trial conducted by the German Breast Group, enrolling over 2,000 women with early breast cancer who were candidates for neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Patients with evidence of early response, defined as reduction in clinical tumor size by 50% or more, following two ...
Promoting Timely Referral to Reproductive Specialists for Patients Concerned About Fertility
Updated clinical guidelines published this year by ASCO “give oncology care providers an opportunity to partner with their reproductive specialist colleagues to ensure that the clinical and psychosocial needs of patients with cancer are addressed as close to the time of diagnosis as possible,”...
Ginkgo biloba
The use of dietary supplements by patients with cancer has increased significantly over the past 2 decades despite insufficient evidence of safety and effectiveness. Finding reliable sources of information about dietary supplements can be daunting. Patients typically rely on family, friends, and...
FDA Grants Regular Approval to Crizotinib for ALK-Positive NSCLC
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted regular approval for crizotinib (Xalkori) for the treatment of patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors are anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-positive as detected by an FDA-approved test. The approval was based...
Adjuvant Trastuzumab Duration: When Is Enough, Enough?
The duration of adjuvant systemic chemotherapy for breast cancer has been a subject of investigation, scrutiny, and meta-analysis.1,2 With the appreciation that prolonged regimens of cytotoxic chemotherapy of, for example, 1 to 2 years in duration were not superior in reducing breast cancer...
Global Oncology 2013: Disparities in Cancer Care
While much progress has been made against cancer over the last century, a new report1 presented at the 2013 European Cancer Congress brings together evidence that not every patient benefits from it, nor even has the opportunity to benefit. The economics of cancer are daunting and the current model...
Transplant Now or Later for High-Risk Aggressive Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma?
The use of high-dose chemotherapy and autologous hematopoietic blood or marrow transplantation for high-risk aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma has been extensively evaluated over the past few decades. This treatment was originally used only for patients with relapsed aggressive lymphoma. However, as...
Call for Expanded Genetic Profiling in Colorectal Cancer
Testing for codons 12 and 13 on the KRAS gene and BRAF testing can predict whether patients with colorectal cancer will respond to anti–epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) therapies. However, genetic alterations not captured by testing for KRAS codon 12 and 13 mutations may play an important...
Pamela M. McInnes Named Deputy Director of National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences
Pamela M. McInnes, DDS, has been named deputy director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), part of the National Institutes of Health. McInnes currently serves as director of the Division of Extramural Research at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial...
Adjuvant Gefitinib in Patients With NSCLC: Bad Idea or Wrong Patient Selection?
Despite optimal surgical resection and adjuvant chemotherapy with cisplatin-based doublets, the 5-year overall survival for patients with early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remains suboptimal. In the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) staging project, the...
ASCO Honors New Group of Members With FASCO Distinction
Formerly called the ASCO Statesman Award, the Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (FASCO) distinction recognizes ASCO members for their extraordinary volunteer service, dedication, and commitment to ASCO. Their efforts benefit ASCO, the specialty of oncology, and, most importantly,...
Cautious Comments on the TARGIT-A Trial
Numerous randomized trials have demonstrated that whole-breast irradiation plays an important role after breast-conserving surgery for invasive breast cancer. A recent meta-analysis of these trials indicated that whole-breast irradiation decreased the risk of total breast cancer relapse events and...
Tivozanib Improves Progression-Free but Not Overall Survival vs Sorafenib in Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma
The investigational agent tivozanib is a selective tyrosine kinase inhibitor of vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR)-1, -2, and -3. In a phase III trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Robert J. Motzer, MD, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), and...
HER2-Positive Breast Cancer Patients With Small Tumors Benefit From Low-Toxicity Regimen
There may be a benefit for treating small HER2-positive tumors—a breast cancer subset for whom treatment recommendations have not been established but for whom there is still risk of recurrence—and this can be done with little toxicity, according to a multicenter study presented at the 2013 San...
Seven Studies at SABCS Make Dr. Jame Abraham's List of 'Practice-Changing' Talks
From December 10 to 14, the American Association for Cancer Research, the Cancer Therapy & Research Center at The University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio, and Baylor College of Medicine once again hosted the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), presenting...
