Researchers have identified a range of genetic mutations in gliomas that may help them understand how different mutations in the BRAF gene interact with other gene mutations—and which ones are more susceptible to targeted treatments in adults—according to a new study published by Schreck et al in...
The invited discussant of the DeFi trial was Jean-Yves Blay, MD, PhD, General Director of the Center Bérard, Lyon, France, and President of Unicancer, the French Federation of Cancer Centers. He called the DeFi study a “rigorous trial” in a “representative population” that “introduces a new class...
Patients with rare desmoid tumors may finally have an effective treatment. A first-in-class gamma secretase inhibitor, nirogacestat, led to an improvement in progression-free survival in the phase III DeFi trial. The results were presented during the Presidential Symposium at the European Society...
The results of SWOG S18011 were met with enthusiasm by attendees at the Presidential Symposium of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2022. The ASCO Post captured the thoughts of several melanoma experts, who had somewhat different ideas about the immediate clinical...
In resectable stage III to IV melanoma, three cycles of neoadjuvant pembrolizumab followed by adjuvant pembrolizumab was significantly more beneficial than adjuvant pembrolizumab alone, based on the results of the phase II SWOG S1801 trial presented in a Presidential Symposium at the European...
Robin Kate Kelley, MD, Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, was invited to discuss the results of LEAP-002.1 She said the main take-away is that lenvatinib monotherapy is active as a preferred first-line agent for fit patients who have contraindications to ...
In a pragmatic trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Bretthauer et al, on behalf of the Nordic-European Initiative on Colorectal Cancer (NordICC) Study Group, found a reduced risk of colorectal cancer diagnosis but no significant reduction in disease-specific mortality among...
Invited discussant James Larkin, PhD, a clinical researcher at the Royal Marsden Hospital, London, commented on the findings from NICHE-2.1 “These striking data are consistent with the recent report in locally advanced mismatch repair–deficient [dMMR] rectal cancer from Memorial Sloan Kettering.2...
Three negative phase III trials presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2022 may dampen enthusiasm for immunotherapy as adjuvant therapy for renal cell carcinoma (RCC). None of the three trials—CheckMate 914, IMmotion010, and PROSPER—met its primary endpoint.1-3 The...
The addition of 24 months of androgen-deprivation therapy to postoperative radiotherapy after radical prostatectomy provided a metastasis-free survival benefit and improved the time to salvage therapy in patients with prostate cancer, according to the preliminary results from the RADICALS-HD trial...
The addition of cabozantinib to nivolumab plus ipilimumab prolonged progression-free survival in untreated intermediate-risk patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC), according to the first results of the phase III COSMIC-313 trial. These findings were presented as a Presidential Symposium ...
Formal discussant Mary O’Brien, MD, Head of the Lung Unit, the Royal Marsden Hospital, NHS Foundation Trust, London, commented on the POSEIDON trial. “The POSEIDON trial is the largest data set we have on KRAS-mutated [non–small cell lung cancer], with a positive signal in picking up some patients...
After 4 years, a limited course of five cycles of tremelimumab added to durvalumab plus chemotherapy extended overall survival in patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) compared with chemotherapy alone, according to an updated exploratory analysis of the phase III POSEIDON...
In platinum-ineligible patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), first-line treatment with the PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitor atezolizumab improved overall survival by an absolute value of about 1 month but almost doubled the rate of 2-year overall survival compared with chemotherapy...
“CodeBreaK 200 clearly establishes sotorasib as the new standard of care, replacing docetaxel as second- or third-line therapy for advanced KRAS G12C–mutated lung cancer,” stated invited discussant Natasha Leighl, MD, of the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto. “Sotorasib improved...
The KRAS G12C inhibitor sotorasib doubled the rate of progression-free survival at 12 months and reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 34% compared with standard second-line docetaxel for patients with previously treated non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and KRAS G12C mutations....
Colorectal cancer ranks third among cancer deaths in both men and women in the United States, with an estimated 106,000 new cases and 52,000 deaths anticipated in 2022.1 Colorectal cancer rates have declined by approximately 2% per year from 2014 to 2018 in people over the age of 50 years, which is ...
“Adjuvant osimertinib has been adopted widespread as a standard of care as a result of the primary results of ADAURA,” said formal discussant Sanjay Popat, FRCP, PhD, medical oncologist and lung specialist at the Royal Marsden Hospital, NHS Foundation Trust, London. “We have more granularity about ...
With longer-term follow-up, adjuvant treatment with osimertinib led to a 77% reduction in the risk of disease recurrence or death following complete resection vs placebo-treated patients with EGFR-mutated, stage II to IIIA non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Disease-free survival was improved...
At this year’s European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress, we experienced an eagerly awaited return to normality (or almost), and the quality of the science on display was anything but disappointing: from molecular medicine to treatment de-escalation, from early cancer detection and...
Researchers discovered a differential clinical response to pembrolizumab in patients with Lynch-like (mutated) vs methylated microsatellite instability–high endometrial cancer, outlining characteristics of patients who may derive benefit from immune checkpoint blockade antibodies, according to new...
This is Part 2 of Updates in Hepatobiliary Cancer, a four-part video roundtable series. Scroll down to watch the other videos from this Roundtable. In this video, Drs. Ghassan Abou-Alfa, Richard Finn, and Rachna Shroff discuss second-line therapy and beyond in hepatocellular carcinoma. The...
In addition to, or instead of, receiving therapies that are the standard of care, patients with cancer sometimes request to receive complementary (therapies used in conjunction with standard cancer treatment) and alternative (nonstandard treatments used in place of standard cancer treatment)...
The combination of immune checkpoint inhibitors relatlimab and nivolumab for patients with stage III melanoma given before surgery was safe and completely cleared all viable tumor in 57% of patients in a phase II study, according to findings published by Amaria et al in Nature. In addition to...
A new study identified both common and rare genetic mutations that may impact radiation resistance and sensitivity, an important step toward providing more individualized and effective radiotherapy for patients with cancer, according to findings published by Gopal et al in Clinical Cancer ...
A new study has revealed significant racial disparities in how quickly minority patients with non–small cell lung cancer receive radiation therapy compared with their White counterparts, according to findings published by Rekulapelli et al in Health Equity. Researchers reviewed data from more than...
Researchers have developed a new swab test that can identify origins of potentially dangerous cervical cell changes up to 4 years before they happen, according to a new study published by Barrett et al in Genome Medicine. Scientists found that the new cervical screening method was more sensitive...
In an international, multicenter phase II clinical trial, almost two-thirds of patients with stage II to IV cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma had tumors nearly or completely eradicated by neoadjuvant treatment with cemiplimab-rwlc, an agent targeting PD-1. The results were presented at the European ...
Do patients with breast cancer and a low 21-gene recurrence score need regional node irradiation to reduce their risk of locoregional recurrence? An analysis of RxPONDER trial data suggests only a randomized clinical trial devoted to this question can provide a decisive answer. An analysis of data...
NRG Oncology investigators analyzed clinical and digital histopathology data from five phase III prostate cancer trials (NRG/RTOG 9202, 9408, 9413, 9910, and 0126) to develop and validate multimodal artificial intelligence models (MMAI) that could outperform the National Comprehensive Cancer...
Overall cancer death rates continued to decline among men, women, children, adolescents, and young adults in every major racial and ethnic group in the United States from 2015 to 2019, according to the latest Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer. From 2014 to 2018, overall cancer...
In a single-center, small phase Ib trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Spinazzi et al found that repeated and prolonged convection-enhanced delivery of topotecan prior to surgery was feasible in patients with recurrent glioblastoma and resulted in significant reduction in proliferating tumor...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and ASCO have released a joint policy statement outlining the latest research on the use of e-cigarettes and other electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) and recommendations for regulating these products to protect public health. The...
A new study has found that sexual side effects of cancer treatment are discussed far less frequently with female patients than with male patients, even when the treatment directly affects sex organs. Among patients receiving brachytherapy for prostate or cervical cancer at a high-volume cancer...
Meeting with a medical physicist who can explain how radiation therapy is planned and delivered may reduce patient anxiety and increase patient satisfaction throughout the treatment process, according to a new study published by Burmeister et al in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology •...
Nicholas J. Vogelzang, MD, FACP, FASCO, an expert in the treatment of patients with renal cell carcinoma, died on September 20, 2022. Dr. Vogelzang was 72 years old. Son of a Preacher Dr. Vogelzang was born on December 13, 1949, in Holland, Michigan, the oldest of seven children, in a close-knit...
In 2000, the da Vinci Surgical System broke new ground by becoming the first robotic surgery system approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for general laparoscopic surgery. In its early years, robot-assisted radical prostatectomy was characterized by some in the surgical community as an...
In our continuing effort to connect and learn more about our international oncology colleagues, The ASCO Post recently spoke with Rossana Berardi, MD, Professor in Medical Oncology and Director of the Postgraduate School of Oncology at the Università Politecnica Marche, Ancona, Italy, where she is...
It is estimated that one in eight men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in his lifetime. The disease is so prevalent, and other than skin cancer, it is the most common cancer diagnosed in American men. According to the American Cancer Society, this year, about 268,490 new cases of prostate...
September 12, 2022 “President John F. Kennedy’s historic speech that inspired our nation and an entire generation of Americans to achieve manned space exploration underscored the courage and commitment it would take to accomplish this then-audacious goal: ‘We choose to go to the moon in this decade ...
The first 10 participants in the new Leadership Programme for Women in Oncology have been announced. The program, a joint endeavour from ASCO and City Cancer Challenge Foundation (C/Can), seeks to address the specific challenges and barriers faced by women leaders in oncology and strengthen the...
In this installment of the Living a Full Life series, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with William L. Dahut, MD, who is currently serving as Chief Scientific Officer for the American Cancer Society (ACS). In this role, Dr. Dahut manages all pieces of the organization’s discovery work,...
New research from Yale Cancer Center reveals a higher risk of cancer mortality in incarcerated adults, as well as among those diagnosed with cancer in the first year after release from prison. The findings were published in the journal PLoS One.1 “Cancer is the leading cause of death among people...
Three negative phase III trials presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2022 may dampen enthusiasm for immunotherapy as adjuvant therapy for renal cell carcinoma (RCC). None of the three trials—CheckMate 914, IMmotion010, and PROSPER—met its primary endpoint.1-3 The...
I continue to be struck by the creativity of medical oncologists. The reimagining of dosing, duration, or regimen composition to respond to patient symptoms or preferences is like a master chef in the kitchen. Although standardization has, with good reason, become the paragon, delivering...
In platinum-ineligible patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), first-line treatment with the PD-L1 checkpoint inhibitor atezolizumab improved overall survival by an absolute value of about 1 month but almost doubled the rate of 2-year overall survival compared with chemotherapy...
On October 21, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved tremelimumab (Imjudo) in combination with durvalumab (Imfinzi) for the treatment of adult patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common type of liver cancer. The novel dose and schedule of the...
Adding stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) to systemic therapy with sorafenib for patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) may extend overall survival and delay tumor progression without compromising patients’ quality of life, findings from the randomized phase III NRG...
An artificial intelligence (AI) model developed by researchers may assist in predicting the likelihood that a patient may have an unplanned hospitalization during radiation treatments for cancer. The machine-learning model uses daily step counts as a proxy to monitor patients’ health as they go...
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) chose Augusto Ochoa, MD, of Louisiana State University (LSU) Health, as the 2022 recipient of the Harry Hynes Award for Outstanding Contributions to Clinical Trials and Community Research. The award was presented during the NCI Community Oncology Research Program ...