Stephen J. Schuster, MD, of the University of Pennsylvania, discusses the findings of a study of chimeric antigen receptor modified T cells directed against CD19 in patients with relapsed or refractory disease (Abstract 183).
Laurie H. Sehn, MD, MPH, of the British Columbia Cancer Agency, discusses a study that showed patients with advanced-stage classical Hodgkin lymphoma, with a negative PET-scan following ABVD chemotherapy, have excellent outcomes without the need for consolidative radiotherapy, regardless of disease ...
John Leonard, MD, of Weill Cornell Medical College, discusses this phase II study of R-CHOP with or without bortezomib in patients with untreated non-germinal center B-cell-like subtype diffuse large cell lymphoma (Abstract 811).
S. Vincent Rajkumar, MD, of the Mayo Clinic, summarizes his education session on the evolving diagnostic criteria for myeloma, which focused on smoldering disease and when it becomes an “open flame.”
David Henry, MD, of Pennsylvania Hospital, discusses the exciting developments in multiple myeloma treatment, including the three new drugs approved for the disease in November 2015.
Andrew J. Davies, MRCP, PhD, of the Cancer Research UK Centre, University of Southampton, discusses a study of targeted treatment for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma based on real-time gene-expression profiling (Abstract 812).
Andrew D. Zelenetz, MD, PhD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Stephan Stilgenbauer, MD, PhD, of the University of Ulm, discuss this late-breaking abstract on venetoclax monotherapy and deep remissions in ultra-high risk relapsed/refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia with 17p...
Julie Vose, MD, MBA, of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and David Straus, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discuss the initial results of the U.S. Intergroup Trial of response-adapted chemotherapy or chemotherapy/radiation therapy based on PET for nonbulky stage I and II...
Julie Vose, MD, MBA, of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and Rafat Abonour, MD, of Indiana University Simon Cancer Center, discuss the session that he chaired on the question of whether researchers can design therapy that addresses the heterogeneity of the disease and eradicate most if...
Outgoing ASH President, David A. Williams, MD, of the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Hospital, gives an overview of this year’s Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology.
Andrew D. Zelenetz, MD, PhD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses a late-breaking abstract on the superiority of this three-drug combination compared to bendamustine and rituximab alone in patients with relapsed/refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia (Abstract LBA5).
Julie Vose, MD, MBA, of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, discusses a retrospective analysis of data on the overall survival of patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia when initial therapy is given in academic hospitals vs nonacademic hospitals (Abstract 268).
Sébastien Maury, MD, of the Hôpital Henri Mondor, discusses in French this study in which adding rituximab improved the outcome of adult patients with CD20-positive, Ph-negative B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (Abstract 1).
Sébastien Maury, MD, of the Hôpital Henri Mondor, discusses this study in which adding rituximab improved the outcome of adult patients with CD20-positive, Ph-negative B-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (Abstract 1). To see the French language version of this newsreel, please click here.
James N. Kochenderfer, MD, of the National Cancer Institute, discusses a clinical trial of allogeneic T cells expressing an anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor, which caused remissions of B-cell cancers after stem cell transplant, without causing graft-vs-host disease (Abstract LBA1).
Julie Vose, MD, MBA, of the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and Cameron J. Turtle, MBBS, PhD, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, discuss anti-CD19 chimeric antigen receptor-modified T-cell therapy and clinical outcome (Abstract 184).
Jonathon B. Cohen, MD, of the Winship Cancer Institute, discusses a study that used the National Cancer Data Base to study the impact on overall survival of deferring treatment in patients with newly diagnosed mantle cell lymphoma (Abstract 2717).
Richard M. Stone, MD, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses this international prospective study on the survival impact of midostaurin, a multikinase inhibitor, in newly diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia with FLT3 mutations (Abstract 6).
Olivier Casasnovas, MD, of Hôpital Le Bocage, discusses in French a phase III study comparing an early PET-driven treatment de-escalation to a not PET-monitored strategy in patients with advanced Hodgkin lymphoma (Abstract 577).
Olivier Casasnovas, MD, of Hôpital Le Bocage, discusses a phase III study comparing an early PET-driven treatment de-escalation to a not PET-monitored strategy in patients with advanced Hodgkin lymphoma (Abstract 577). To see the French language version of this video, please click here.
More patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) could benefit from pembrolizumab (Keytruda), said Roy Herbst, MD, PhD, Chief of Medical Oncology at Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven. Dr. Herbst presented promising results from the pivotal phase...
Five percent of cancer patients and their families were pushed into poverty in Southeast Asia between March 2012 and September 2013 because of high disease-related costs, a study (Abstract 52O) by Bhoo-Pathy et al at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Asia 2015 Congress in Singapore...
Novel strategies are being explored for difficult-to-treat and advanced head and neck cancer—the most heterogeneous group of malignancies that are generally associated with poor survival—and encouraging results have been presented in two trials at the first European Society for Medical...
Patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-activating mutations in advanced lung cancer seem to benefit more from afatinib (Gilotrif) than gefitinib (Iressa) as first-line treatment, Park et al reported in a study (Abstract LBA2) presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology...
On December 18, 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expanded the pembrolizumab (Keytruda) label to include approval of the drug for the treatment of patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma. This expansion now includes the initial treatment of patients with unresectable or...
Sarat Chandarlapaty, MD, PhD, of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses results from this study that showed patients with ER-positive metastatic breast cancer who had a D538G and/or a Y537S mutation in the ESR1 gene had significantly worse median overall survival (Abstract S2-07).
Michael Gnant, MD, of the Medical University of Vienna, discusses a study in which denosumab was added to adjuvant aromatase inhibitor therapy to improve disease-free survival in postmenopausal patients with early-stage, hormone receptor–positive breast cancer (Abstract S2-02).
Benjamin D. Smith, MD, of the MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the higher complication rates and economic burdens of mastectomy plus reconstruction vs lumpectomy plus radiation in early breast cancer (Abstract S3-07).
A large prospective study of postmenopausal women investigating an association between periodontal disease and breast cancer risk has found that among all women in the study, the risk of breast cancer was 14% higher in women who had periodontal disease. Among women who had quit smoking within the...
Follow-up times of abnormal screening exams were shorter for breast cancer than they were for colorectal and cervical cancers, according to a recent study involving more than 1 million individuals who underwent these screenings. Recently published by Tosteson et al in the Journal of General...
A patient's mental health prior to surgery can influence postoperative outcomes. Removal of the bladder, or radical cystectomy, is an effective treatment for locally advanced bladder cancer, but complications occur in as many as 66% of patients. In a study published by Sharma et al in The Journal...
In a study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Shain et al identified the order of occurrence of mutations in the progression of melanoma as well as characterized point mutation burden and chromosomal instability during disease evolution. Study Details The study involved sequencing...
In an analysis of the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER)–Medicare database reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Wang et al found that use of preoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was associated with overdiagnosis of contralateral breast cancer among older...
In a Swedish study reported in The Lancet Oncology (Stockholm 3 study), Grönberg et al found that a screening model including prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and other plasma protein markers, genetic polymorphisms, and clinical variables improved the accuracy of detecting prostate cancer with...
A recent study at Houston Methodist Hospital proved that multiple small doses of highly focused radiation therapy is safer and more effective than a single larger dose of radiation at destroying pituitary gland tumors. The findings on the use of fractionated stereotactic radiotherapy were published ...
Each year, about 1.38 million women worldwide are diagnosed with breast cancer. Advances in treatment have facilitated a 90% 5-year survival rate among those treated. Given the increased rate and length of survival following breast cancer, more and more survivors are facing a lifetime risk of...
Unlike a number of other cancers in which young age at diagnosis is understood to represent distinct disease biology, the genomics and clinical characteristics of non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in young patients are poorly understood. A study by Sacher et al investigating the relationship ...
Bruce E. Johnson, MD, FASCO, has been elected President of ASCO for the term beginning in June 2017. He will take office as President-Elect during the ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago in June 2016. Additionally, four new members were elected to the ASCO Board of Directors, as well as three new...
A new study led by Johns Hopkins researchers shows wide racial and economic disparities in access to minimally invasive hysterectomies for early uterine cancer in the United States. This is despite years of accumulating evidence that the procedures to remove the uterus are linked to fewer...
Using information gleaned from more than 20,000 men, researchers at Johns Hopkins have affirmed the value of their alternative system for assessing the likelihood of growth and spread of prostate cancer. The new grading system, they said, is not only easier to use and understand, but also more...
In the phase III HELIOS trial, reported in The Lancet Oncology, Chanan-Khan et al found that adding the Bruton’s tyrosine kinase inhibitor ibrutinib (Imbruvica) to bendamustine (Treanda)/rituximab (Rituxan) increased progression-free survival in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia or...
Findings in an early-terminated German phase III trial (ESPATUE), reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Eberhardt et al, indicate similar outcomes with surgery vs definitive concurrent chemoradiotherapy after induction chemotherapy and chemoradiotherapy in patients with resectable stage...
Thyroid cancer survivors report poor quality of life after diagnosis and treatment compared with other patients who are diagnosed with more lethal cancers, according to new research from the University of Chicago Medicine. The findings, published by Aschebrook-Kilfoy et al in the journal Thyroid,...
Among patients undergoing major cancer operations, the preoperative use of blood-thinning drugs such as heparin does not increase rates of major bleeding or transfusions, and is associated with a decreased risk of blood clots, according to new study results published by Selby et al in the Journal...
As reported by Murphy et al in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, an analysis of Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) data from patients with stage II or III colorectal cancer indicated that the use of adjuvant chemotherapy in colon cancer declined slightly between 2005 and ...
Previously published reports from the randomized phase III Gynecologic Oncology Group (GOG) protocol 240 clinical trial showed that adding bevacizumab (Avastin) to a chemotherapy regimen of paclitaxel plus cisplatin or topotecan significantly increased overall survival and progression-free survival ...
A class of drugs used increasingly to help fight cancer may have the additional benefit of protecting the kidneys when packaged with the powerful chemotherapy agent cisplatin. These findings were published by Ranganathan et al in Kidney International. The nearly 40-year-old cisplatin can be a...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cleared the first cooling cap to reduce hair loss in female breast cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy for marketing in the United States. Hair loss is a common side effect of certain types of chemotherapy, commonly associated with the treatment of...
In a systematic genetic study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Moriyama et al found that germline ETV6 variations identified in a small proportion of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) were associated with a novel syndrome predisposing carriers to disease. Recent data indicated that...
As reported by Spagnolo et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, women receiving anastrozole in the International Breast Cancer Intervention Study II (IBIS-II) had a higher incidence of carpal tunnel syndrome compared with those receiving placebo. A higher incidence of carpal tunnel syndrome...