Cleveland Clinic researchers have shown that diet-associated molecules in the gut may be associated with aggressive prostate cancer, suggesting dietary interventions may help reduce risk. These findings were published by Reichard et al in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. While...
The incidence of pancreatic cancer—which historically has been higher in men than in women—has increased among both men and women during the past decade, with a significantly greater relative increase observed in women younger than age 55 years, and especially among those aged 15 to 34 years. These ...
Patients with multiple myeloma lacking an antibody response to COVID-19 vaccine may also fail to mount a T-cell response, according to research from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Concerningly, this scenario was most common among patients actively treated with anti-CD38 and...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Ademuyiwa et al, a survey of U.S. breast oncologists showed that physicians believe that Black women with breast cancer face more barriers to genetic counseling and testing compared to White women with breast cancer. Study Details The study...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Courtney D. DiNardo, MD, and colleagues, an interim analysis of the phase II portion of a phase Ib/II trial (AG221-AML-005) showed that the addition of the oral mutant IDH2 protein inhibitor enasidenib to azacitidine significantly improved overall response rate ...
Both dose-escalated radiation therapy and short-course androgen-deprivation therapy (SADT) have been shown to improve outcomes in patients with intermediate-risk prostate cancer. Researchers then posed a new question—is giving both modalities upfront to newly diagnosed patients of benefit? Findings ...
The novel WEE1 inhibitor adavosertib, given after induction chemotherapy, yielded a 65% reduction in the risk of disease progression or death compared with active monitoring in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer and TP53/RAS mutations, according to the randomized phase II FOCUS4-C trial....
Part 2 of the latest Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer—provided by the American Cancer Society, National Cancer Institute, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and North American Association of Central Cancer Registries—has found that patients with cancer in the United...
“KRAS G12C inhibitors as monotherapy yield a relatively low overall response rate, but when you combine them with an EGFR [epidermal growth factor receptor] inhibitor, the response rate is nearly double,” said Federica Di Nicolantonio, MD, PhD, Professor of Oncology at the University of Turin in...
The time required to secure prior authorization approvals for radiation therapy equates to a financial impact of more than $40 million annually for academic medical centers, according to a new study presented by Bingham et al at the 2021 American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual...
Moderator of the session on oncology drug pricing, Arjun Gupta, MBBS, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School, observed that generics alone may be insufficient to slow the astronomical rise of drug prices. “The general thinking has always been that generics...
A study presented by Manning et al at the 2021 American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) Annual Meeting (Abstract 53) showed that interventions to help Black patients overcome obstacles to completion of treatment can impact disparities in survival outcomes between Black and White patients...
A 22-gene genomic classifier (the Decipher score) may be able to predict the course of disease in men with high-risk prostate cancer, according to a patient-level meta-analysis of three randomized clinical trials presented by Paul L. Nguyen, MD, at the 2021 American Society for Radiation Oncology...
Data from a new study showed that those who started to smoke at earlier ages have an elevated likelihood of dying from cancer. Those who began at the youngest ages (before age 10 years) had four times the cancer mortality rates in adulthood than those who had never smoked. However, individuals who...
Although overall cancer cases are declining, they are on the rise in older adolescents and young adults (AYAs). Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) recently announced the establishment of the Lisa and Scott Stuart Center for Adolescent and Young Adult Cancers (the Stuart Center), expanding ...
Guest Editor’s Note: Cancer-related cognitive difficulties, experienced by many cancer survivors, include perceived or objective deficits in memory, attention, and concentration, which can negatively impact quality of life. Given the important role that healthful sleep plays in cognitive processes, ...
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the Art of Oncology as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
The number of deaths related to breast cancer are increasing at an alarming pace worldwide. According to a World Health Organization (WHO) 2020 report, approximately 2,088,849 new cases and 627,000 deaths related to breast cancer occurred in 2018.1 More than 55% of these deaths occurred in low- to ...
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) recently announced a $25 million gift from Louis V. Gerstner, Jr, to create the Louis V. Gerstner, Jr Physician Scholars Program. Designed to support the innovative research of physician-scientists who are early in their career at MSK, the program will...
In this installment of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, spoke with Robert A. Winn, MD, Director of VCU Massey Cancer Center, Richmond, Virginia. In 2020, he became the first Black physician to lead a National Cancer Institute–designated cancer center. Among other...
According to the National Cancer Institute, cases of colorectal cancer in patients younger than age 50 have grown by more than 50% since the 1990s. Cleveland Clinic has addressed this trend with the establishment of a center focused on the diagnosis, care, and research of young-onset colorectal...
On September 22, 2021, ruxolitinib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor of JAK1 and JAK2 was granted approval for treatment of chronic graft-vs-host disease after failure of one or two lines of systemic therapy in adult and pediatric patients aged ≥ 12 years.1 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was...
ASCO is calling on Congress to continue its bipartisan support of federally funded research. Robust, sustained, and predictable funding growth for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) baseline budgets is critical in advancing our nation’s work toward...
The leading causes of mortality in the United States are cardiovascular disease (23%) and cancer (21%), accounting for more than 40% of total deaths reported.1,2 The increasing rise in health-care expenditures over the past several decades has driven the need for metrics to further evaluate the...
Study discussant Bruna Pellini, MD, of the Department of Thoracic Oncology, Moffitt Cancer Center, Florida, noted that, regardless of PD-L1 or tumor mutation burden status, the NADIM trial demonstrated improved progression-free and overall survival for patients with resectable, stage IIIA non–small ...
Heather A. Wakelee, MD, FASCO, President of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), who moderated a press briefing where the results of the Atezo-Brain trial were presented, called the study “beautiful work designed specifically” for patients with non–small cell lung...
Patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and brain metastasis derived significant benefit from treatment with the monoclonal antibody atezolizumab plus chemotherapy, according to the multicenter phase II Atezo-Brain trial.1 The study was presented at the International Association for the...
Deb Schrag, MD, FASCO, MPH, has been named the new Chair of the Department of Medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). Dr. Schrag has a deep familiarity with MSK, having previously spent 8 years at the institution as a physician and faculty member. She joins MSK from the...
“Population-based screening for prostate cancer reduces prostate cancer mortality,” noted J. Kellogg Parsons, MD, MHS, FACS, Professor of Urology, UC San Diego Health, who commented on the study. “Effective screening programs focus on the early detection of aggressive but curable tumors, minimize...
Aakash Desai, MPH, MD, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, talks about the urgent need for drug pricing reform, given the average expenditure of Medicare part D, and the ultimate out-of-pocket costs for patients with cancer. The promise of precision oncology will fail, says Dr. Desai, if we ...
Florian Lordick, MD, PhD, Professor of Oncology and Director of the University Cancer Center Leipzig, Germany, applauded the positive finding for nivolumab plus chemotherapy in CheckMate 6491 and questioned why nivolumab plus ipilimumab did not meet its endpoint. “I’m calling this a big step...
Patients with untreated, metastatic BRAF-mutated melanoma may benefit from receiving immunotherapy first, moving to targeted therapy in the second line, data from the updated overall survival analysis of the randomized, phase II SECOMBIT trial suggest.1 The study aimed to define the optimal...
Barbara Pistilli, MD, of the Breast Cancer Group at Gustave Roussy Cancer Center, Villejuif, France, said the results of the TULIP trial, showing the progression-free survival benefit for vic-trastuzumab duocarmazine (SYD985), help to establish antibody-drug conjugates as key components of the...
Invited study discussant, Johnie Rose, MD, PhD, noted that screening is a complex problem that requires balancing the risks of avoidable metastatic prostate cancer with the serious complications associated with treatment. Dr. Rose is Assistant Professor at the Center for Community Health...
New study results suggest that to maximize effects of digital support tools for cancer survivors, it is essential to personalize information and increase engagement efforts. The report, published by Leach et al in the journal Cancer, demonstrated significant improvement in the ability to manage...
The National Cancer Act of 1971 established a national priority to address the widely shared dread of a cancer diagnosis. The goal of the National Cancer Act was to strengthen the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to more effectively carry out the national effort against cancer. After the Act was...
Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is a B-cell lymphoproliferative disorder defined by a specific phenotype and the presence of more than 5,000 clonal B cells in the peripheral blood.1 In the absence of this number of circulating cells, its soft-tissue/bone-marrow counterpart is semantically...
The invited discussant of the MONALESSA-2 trial was Gonzalo Gomez-Abuin, MD, a medical oncologist who is Head of the Clinical Research Unit at Hospital Alemán in Buenos Aires. According to Dr. Gomez-Abuin, phase III trials of three different CDK4/6 inhibitors—ribociclib, palbociclib, and...
“We know that molecular alterations on gene mutations such as EGFR and ALK can lead to better prognosis, better response rates, and, more important, better quality of life for patients,” said Joshua K. Sabari, MD, of NYU Langone Health Perlmutter Cancer Center, who discussed the abstract at the...
In a study reported in JAMA Oncology, Kwan et al found that preexisting TP53 clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential (CHIP) variants were associated with increased risk of secondary myeloid neoplasms in patients receiving poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor therapy with rucaparib...
Individuals diagnosed with cancer who live in low-income and rural areas may face an increased risk of suicide compared with patients living in high-income and urban areas, according to a study published by Suk et al in JAMA Network Open. The research focused on determining whether the risks and...
New research published by Shaverdian et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network assessed patient satisfaction and preferences associated with telemedicine. Researchers found 45% of people with cancer undergoing radiotherapy preferred telemedicine, whereas 34% preferred...
Rechallenge with the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor olaparib in patients with platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer led to significant improvement in progression-free survival, in patients with either BRCA1/2-mutated or nonmutated (ie, wild-type) disease compared with placebo, according ...
Breast cancer risk increases with age, but while scientists have long studied cellular changes that take place in the body over time, a new study published by Bahcecioglu et al in Advanced Science examined how the extracellular matrix—an underlying network of molecules and proteins that provide the ...
In a phase II clinical trial, the drug 4-demethyl-4-cholesteryloxycarbonylpenclomedine (DM-CHOC-PEN) improved survival for some adolescent and young adult patients with cancers involving the central nervous system, according to results presented by Morgan et al at the AACR-NCI-EORTC Virtual...
In preclinical models, combining an investigational Aurora kinase A (AURKA) inhibitor with a KRAS inhibitor or a WEE1 inhibitor showed efficacy against lung cancer cells with intrinsic or acquired resistance to KRAS inhibition, according to results presented by Lee et al at the AACR-NCI-EORTC...
In a perspective article published in The New England Journal of Medicine entitled “The Drug-Dosing Conundrum in Oncology—When Less Is More,” four authors from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) argue for the need to jettison the “more is better” paradigm in dose selection for oncology...
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, MD, honored the late Henrietta Lacks with a WHO Director-General’s award, recognizing her world-changing legacy. Ms. Lacks, a Black American woman, died of cervical cancer 70 years ago, on October 4, 1951. While she...
The invited discussant of GeparNuevo,1 Melinda L. Telli, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, Director of the Breast Cancer Program at the Stanford Cancer Institute, and Associate Director of the Stanford Women’s Cancer Center, welcomed the additional data...
Invited discussant Giuseppe Curigliano, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medical Oncology at the University of Milan, Italy, and Head of the Division of Early Drug Development at the European Institute of Oncology, said the “clear” findings of KEYNOTE-5221 are “practice-changing.” However, the ideal ...