On September 30, 2022, futibatinib was granted accelerated approval for adults with previously treated, unresectable, locally advanced, or metastatic intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma harboring fibroblast growth factor receptor 2 (FGFR2) gene fusions or other rearrangements.1 Supporting Efficacy ...
Chemotherapy-induced hair loss affects 65% of patients with cancer,1 and the psychosocial impact on these patients can be profound; it may include anxiety, depression, a negative body image, lowered self-esteem, and a reduced sense of well-being.2 In some instances, the fear of hair loss from...
Invited discussant Erica Michelle Stringer-Reasor, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of the Breast Cancer Program at the O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Alabama at Birmingham, said the exploratory analysis of KEYNOTE-522 established the value of using residual...
An exploratory analysis of KEYNOTE-522, which established the benefit of neoadjuvant pembrolizumab plus chemotherapy in triple-negative breast cancer, has now provided data to further describe prognosis and possibly guide treatment.1 In the study, presented at the 2022 ASCO Annual Meeting,...
The invited discussant of the phase I/II study of patritumab deruxtecan (HER3-DXd) was Véronique Diéras, MD, of the Eugène Marquis Centre, Rennes, France. She commented that HER3-DXd showed promising activity across breast cancer subtypes with heavily pretreated metastatic breast cancer. She...
The HER3-directed antibody-drug conjugate patritumab deruxtecan (HER3-DXd) showed activity in patients with heavily pretreated HER3-expressing metastatic breast cancer in a phase I/II study. Ian E. Krop, MD, PhD, Associate Director, Yale Cancer Center, New Haven, Connecticut, presented these...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Patrick M. Forde, MB, BCh, of Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, and colleagues, the phase III CheckMate 816 trial has shown improved pathologic complete response rate and event-free survival with the addition of nivolumab to platinum-based...
Routine monitoring in the real world may help to identify patients with cancer who are experiencing challenging symptoms, without significantly disrupting clinical workload, according to data presented during the 2022 ASCO Quality Care Symposium.1,2 The analysis of nearly 40,000 patient-reported...
Remote interventions, particularly a mailed tailored DVD plus telephonic patient navigation, improved adherence to breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer screenings among women living in rural counties in the United States, according to the results of a randomized controlled clinical trial...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Paolo A. Ascierto, MD, and colleagues, the second interim overall survival analysis of the phase III IMspire150 trial has shown a numeric but statistically nonsignificant improvement with the addition of first-line atezolizumab to vemurafenib and cobimetinib in ...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Sonneveld et al, the final overall survival analysis of the phase III CASTOR trial has shown a significant overall survival benefit with daratumumab plus bortezomib/dexamethasone (D-Vd) vs bortezomib/dexamethasone alone (Vd) in patients with...
A silicone-based polyurethane film dressing (known as Mepitel® Film) appears to be beneficial in reducing skin toxicities caused by radiation treatment, according to data presented during the October 2022 ASCO Plenary Series.1 The results of a phase III trial showed that this film dressing may be...
Second-line treatment with fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) led to significantly longer overall survival compared with ado-trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1) in patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer, according to updated results from the DESTINY-Breast03 phase III clinical trial...
Iris C. Gibbs, MD, FACR, FASTRO, of Stanford Medicine in California and Chair of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Council on Health Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, was an invited discussant for this study on physician assessment of sexual dysfunction in women vs men receiving...
Patients with localized, hormone receptor (HR)-positive, HER2-low breast cancer treated with fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) in the neoadjuvant setting had an overall response rate of 75% without combining the agent with anastrozole and 63% in combination with anastrozole, according to...
Stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) given prior to sorafenib improved overall survival, progression-free survival, and time to disease progression in patients with unresectable advanced hepatocellular cancer vs sorafenib alone, including those with macrovascular invasion, according to the...
According to a recent article published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, cancer care in the United States exceeded $208 billion in 2020 and is expected to surpass $240 billion by 2030.1 These estimates are driven largely by a growing and aging population. The expenditures...
The statistics are grim: Worldwide, pancreatic cancer is the 12th most common cancer and the seventh leading cause of cancer mortality.1 In the United States, the malignancy has the highest mortality rate of all major cancers. It is currently the third leading cause of cancer-related death after...
Formal discussant of the PCS5 trial, Sophia C. Kamran, MD, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Department of Radiation Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology at Harvard Medical School, said the goal of trials like this one is to optimize...
According to the results of the phase III randomized Prostate Cancer Study 5 (PCS5), a noninferior trial, 5 weeks of radiation therapy may be equivalent to 8 weeks for men with high-risk prostate cancer on androgen-deprivation therapy. These findings were presented at the 2022 American Society for...
Residual tumors from Black patients with estrogen receptor–positive/HER2-negative primary breast cancer treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy had a higher risk score associated with a biomarker of distant metastatic recurrence compared with tumors from White patients, according to new findings...
Among premenopausal patients with hormone receptor–positive, early-stage breast cancer enrolled in the SOFT trial, those with a high score on the Breast Cancer Index genomic assay had an increased risk of distant recurrence—and those with a low score on the Breast Cancer Index may have benefited...
Non-Hispanic Black patients with lymph node–positive, hormone receptor (HR)–positive/HER2-negative breast cancer experienced worse outcomes compared with the outcomes of non-Hispanic White, Asian, and Hispanic patients—despite similar 21-gene recurrence scores—according to new findings presented by ...
In a retrospective analysis reported in JAMA Network Open, Magliocco et al found that among patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer receiving bladder-preserving trimodality therapy, those with a lower expression of the DNA repair protein MRE11 had significantly poorer disease-specific...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Laetsch et al, the 3-year update of the phase II ELIANA trial showed durable responses and a manageable safety profile with tisagenlecleucel for the treatment of pediatric and young adult patients with relapsed or refractory B-cell acute...
In a cohort study reported in JAMA Network Open, Chen et al found that postmenopausal breast cancer survivors with exercise patterns categorized as active or moderately active had significantly reduced risk for all-cause mortality compared to those with patterns categorized as insufficiently...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Zhang et al found that U.S. counties with greater deprivation as measured by residential racial and economic segregation using the Index of Concentration at the Extremes (ICE) had higher cancer mortality rates vs less deprived counties. Study Details The study...
In a Chinese study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Xu et al found that a test for epigenetic imprinted biomarkers was highly accurate in distinguishing malignant vs benign thyroid nodules. Study Details The multicenter study involved 550 consecutively enrolled patients with nodules...
In a U.S. cross-sectional study reported in JAMA Oncology, Oakes et al found that as of December 2021, breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer screening rates remained below pre–COVID-19 pandemic levels, despite initial rebounds in some rates. Reduced screening rates were accompanied by reduced...
New research has shed light on how skewed X chromosome inactivation may be linked to the development of cancer and cardiovascular disease, according to a novel study published by Roberts et al in eLife. Background Because the X chromosome has so many more genes than the Y chromosome, in every cell...
Research shows that all beverage types containing ethanol, including wine, beer, and hard liquor, increase cancer risk, and that the risk increases with higher alcohol consumption. Even light drinking—no more than one drink per day—increases the risk for some cancers, including esophageal and...
In an Australian phase IIb trial (MedCan1-CBD) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Hardy et al found that use of cannabidiol (CBD) oil did not improve symptom distress vs placebo in adult patients with advanced cancer receiving palliative care. Study Details The double-blind multicenter...
In a study reported as a research letter in JAMA, Shahmoradi et al found that the incidence of cervical cancer decreased or remained stable in U.S. women between 2001 and 2019, except for an increase in the 30- to 34-year-old age group in more recent years. As stated by the investigators, “A recent ...
A novel artificial intelligence (AI) blood testing technology—known as DELFI (DNA evaluation of fragments for early interception)—may successfully detect more than 80% of hepatocellular carcinomas, according to a new study published by Foda et al in Cancer Discovery. The findings were also...
More than 1.4 million patients were diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2020 globally, but the molecular characteristics of the disease remain unexplored for the majority of patients around the world. In the final days of the Movember campaign, which every year in November aims to raise awareness of...
In a retrospective cohort study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Mustafa Raoof, MD, MS, and colleagues found that California Medicare Advantage beneficiaries undergoing elective inpatient cancer surgery were less likely than traditional Medicare beneficiaries to have surgery at...
In a phase I dose-escalation and expansion study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Funda Meric-Bernstam, MD, and colleagues found that zanidatamab, a novel bispecific monoclonal antibody directed against two nonoverlapping domains of HER2, showed activity in locally advanced or metastatic...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Yamaguchi et al, an exploratory cohort analysis in a Japanese/South Korean phase II trial (DESTINY-Gastric01) indicated that fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (TDX-d) showed activity in previously treated—but anti-HER2 treatment–naive—patients with...
As reported in JAMA Oncology by Schram et al, the phase IIb tumor-agnostic JAVELIN BRCA/ATM trial has shown that the combination of avelumab and talazoparib did not meet the prespecified objective response rate goal among patients with advanced BRCA1/2-altered or ATM-altered solid tumors. The...
Using intraoperative ultrasound to guide surgery for patients with ductal carcinoma in situ may yield better results than the standard technique of using a wire inserted into the breast, according to a new study published by Esgueva et al in the European Journal of Cancer. The findings were also...
In a secondary analysis of the Geriatric Assessment for Patients 70 Years and Older (GAP70+) trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Eva Culakova, PhD, MS, and colleagues found that providing geriatric assessment–based recommendations to community oncologists was associated with reduced ...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Botta et al, the population-based EUROCARE-6 study has shown an improvement in 5-year survival rates and estimated cure fractions across patients with childhood cancers diagnosed between 2010 and 2013 vs previous years. Findings differed among cancer types and...
Lori Wilson, MD, FACS, was the first woman to hold the surgical oncology division chief position at Howard University Hospital and the first woman to be promoted to full professor in surgery at Howard University College of Medicine. Known as a fierce advocate for patients with cancer in underserved ...
There is a 2-decades-long separation between the time I was diagnosed with oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma in 1996 and my laryngectomy in 2016. The surgery was necessary because of the long-term damage to my larynx from the radiation therapy I received. In 1996, I had a low-grade sore throat...
JAMES TURKSON, PhD, Professor in the Division of Medical Oncology in the Department of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai, is uniquely positioned for a new role developed at Cedars-Sinai Cancer: Director for Diversity, Inclusion, and Strategy. “I have great confidence that Dr. Turkson will provide superb...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Living a Full Life series, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with C.S. Pramesh, MS, FRCS, Director of the Tata Memorial Hospital and Professor and Head of Thoracic Surgery at the Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai, India. Dr. Pramesh is the Convener of the...
Myeloma expert Sarah A. Holstein, MD, PhD, was born and reared in Iowa City, a college town in eastern Iowa along the banks of the Iowa River. “The town itself is small, but it doubles in population when all the college students are present. Both my parents had a PhD in humanities, so I had no...
An ASCO guideline rapid update is revising guidance for the use of poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor therapy for the management of ovarian cancer to include updated considerations for the use of several different PARP inhibitor therapies based on recent phase III clinical trial data.1...
“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...