“I want to make very clear that radiation is not the enemy,” Monika Metzger, MD, MSc, emphasized in discussing a study she led on the integration of brentuximab vedotin into the front-line treatment of pediatric patients with high-risk Hodgkin lymphoma. The study yielded excellent results while...
Integrating the antibody-drug conjugate brentuximab vedotin into the front-line treatment of pediatric patients with high-risk Hodgkin lymphoma “facilitated significant reduction in radiation exposure and yielded excellent outcomes,” Monika Metzger, MD, MSc, Director for the Central and South...
The pace of clinical research in metastatic renal cell carcinoma is faster than ever. Over the past 5 years, we have seen data from six phase III clinical trials evaluating combination strategies with checkpoint inhibitors. The era began with data from CheckMate 214, evaluating nivolumab with...
Atezolizumab given after chemotherapy to patients with resected stage II to IIIA non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) significantly improved disease-free survival compared with best supportive care alone in patients whose tumors expressed PD-L1.1 These results of the global phase III IMpower010 trial ...
A change in presidential administrations has implications across the health sector, including for oncology. In this column, we review some recent actions by Congress and the Biden administration and their implications for the oncology community. We focus on three areas: funding for patients and...
In a virtual visit to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) on February 3, 2021, just 2 weeks after her husband, Joe Biden, was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States, First Lady Jill Biden, EdD, recounted that, in her many years of travel across the United States, she learned that...
Invited discussant Christine Lovly, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Ingram Associate Professor of Cancer Research, Vanderbilt University Ingram Cancer Center, Nashville, discussed progress in targeted therapies for NSCLC. “We have a tremendous amount of knowledge about driver mutations in ...
In a presentation of real-world data given during the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting, Miron et al concluded that the choice of first-line platinum chemotherapy did not result in a significant difference in overall survival benefit among patients with advanced bladder cancer who were able to go on to...
The first overall survival analysis of the WSG-ADAPT HR-/HER2+ study, which evaluated neoadjuvant therapy in patients with hormone receptor (HR)-negative, HER2-positive breast cancer, showed that treatment with pertuzumab and trastuzumab plus paclitaxel—or the chemotherapy-free regimen of...
Immune checkpoint inhibition has been established as an effective treatment for patients with metastatic melanoma. A novel immunotherapeutic combination—this one targeting the LAG-3 (lymphocyte-activation gene 3) and PD-1 immune checkpoints—delayed time to disease progression significantly more...
Nearly three-quarters of patients with breast cancer (73%) reported using at least one type of complementary medicine after cancer diagnosis, while surveyed oncologists believed that less than half (43%) of patients were using these approaches during cancer care. These and other findings from a...
A large retrospective study of real-world patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) showed similar survival outcomes for patients with intermediate- or poor-risk disease regardless of whether they were treated with the combination of axitinib plus pembrolizumab or ipilimumab plus nivolumab. These...
Seeing an opportunity to safely reduce the number of opioid doses prescribed to patients with cancer, researchers proposed a new pain management guideline for all patients undergoing surgery at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. The results from the first 6 months of that effort, reported by ...
An odor-based test that detects vapors emanating from blood samples was able to distinguish between benign and pancreatic and ovarian cancer cells with up to 95% accuracy, according to a new study presented by Johnson et al during the 2021 ASCO Annual Meeting (Abstract 5544). The findings suggest...
Results from the phase II cohort of the CodeBreaK 100 study showed that treatment with the KRAS G12C inhibitor sotorasib achieved a 37.1% objective response rate and a median overall survival of 12.5 months in previously treated patients with KRAS G12C–mutated non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)....
In a study led by researchers at NYU Langone Health and its Perlmutter Cancer Center involving more than 3,000 women treated for breast cancer at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, only 64 patients, or 2% of the total study population, contracted the virus. Of this group, 10 died ...
One year of adjuvant therapy with the PARP inhibitor olaparib extended disease-free survival in patients with high-risk, early-stage, HER2-negative breast cancer with BRCA1/2 germline mutations, according to a prespecified interim analysis of the phase III OlympiA trial presented by Andrew Tutt, MB ...
The combination of ponatinib and blinatumomab was found to be safe and highly effective in patients with newly diagnosed or relapsed/refractory Philadelphia chromosome–positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The study—presented by Nicholas J. Short, MD, and colleagues during the 2021 ASCO...
A 5-year community outreach and engagement effort by the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania to increase enrollment of Black patients into cancer clinical trials more than doubled the percentage of participants, improving access and treatment for a group of patients with...
A clinical trial in a racially diverse group of postmenopausal women with early breast cancer to study severe pain in the bones, muscles, ligaments, tendons, and nerves caused by aromatase inhibitor treatment has found that the symptoms were more commonly reported in Black and Asian patients than...
Jaap Verweij, MD, PhD, FASCO, was born in 1953 in Velsen, a municipality situated on both sides of the massive North Sea Canal in the Netherlands. His father was a sea captain, and other close family members also plied the oceans for a living in the fishing or transport industries. Dr. Verweij...
Peter Marks, MD, PhD, Director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), was born in Brooklyn, New York, near Sheepshead Bay—an area named for the Sheepshead, a fish that can no longer be found in the waters that frame the neighborhood....
High-quality cancer care is a complex mixture of science and art, made even more challenging by the dizzying array of coding, billing, and data collection regulations that must be taken into account. Synthesizing all the parts into value-based, whole-patient care across the wide spectrum of the...
The term “head and neck surgery” had little meaning until the 1940s, when it was used by groundbreaking surgeon Hayes Martin, MD, in one of his publications. Dr. Martin was then Chief of Head and Neck Services at Memorial Hospital, later renamed Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), where...
Cardio-oncology focuses on the detection, monitoring, and treatment of cardiovascular disease occurring secondary to cancer treatment, and the mechanistic and epidemiologic intersection between cardiovascular disease and cancer. With the advent of targeted agents and immunotherapies,...
Peter Marks, MD, PhD, Director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), was born in Brooklyn, New York, near Sheepshead Bay—an area named for the Sheepshead, a fish that can no longer be found in the waters that frame the neighborhood....
There are few, if any, more difficult clinical challenges than pancreatic cancer, a disease that continues to confound the oncology community’s quest for cure. Yet, incremental progress and unflagging optimism drive the way forward, thanks to the researchers and clinicians who have dedicated their...
Even among a large group of cancer survivors who were mostly insured, college-educated, and had annual incomes above the national average, up to 10% delayed care in the previous 12 months because they simply could not afford out-of-pocket expenses like copays and deductibles. These findings were...
On May 27, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved piflufolastat F-18 injection (Pylarify), an F-18–labeled prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-targeted positron-emission tomography (PET) imaging agent, to identify suspected metastasis or recurrence of prostate cancer. This is...
An Australian study published by Chow et al in The Lancet Infectious Diseases found a 70% reduction in one type of human papillomavirus (HPV) in gay and bisexual men after the implementation of the school-based HPV vaccination program. The HYPER2 study found that there was a significant reduction...
Guest Editor’s Note: Healthful nutrition plays an important role throughout the cancer continuum. Given the proliferation of online dietary resources, there is a clear need for reliable information. In this article, Dr. Heather Greenlee describes the website Cook for Your Life, launched in...
Most cancer memoirs have a similar thread: life suddenly interrupted by arguably the three most dreaded words in the English language, “You have cancer.” Readers anticipate the high-drama uncertainty leading to diagnosis, treatment, and hopefully survivorship, with multiple human storylines woven...
The COVID-19 pandemic remains a global health issue, putting unprecedented stress on health-care systems, with important implications for cancer care. Although at this stage the data are fairly limited, we know that patients with cancer are far more vulnerable to worse outcomes, including a greater ...
I have had two life-threatening cancers over the past 3 decades and can say without equivocation that there is never a good time to get cancer. My first cancer diagnosis happened in 1992, just weeks after I had accepted the position of Chief Executive Officer of Hughes Electronics. The job meant a...
“Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult.” —Hippocrates To complement The ASCO Post’s continued comprehensive coverage of the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, here are several abstracts selected from the...
The U.S. right-to-die movement took root in the mid-1970s, when Derek Humphry helped his wife, who was dying of breast cancer, take her own life. Five years later, Mr. Humphry founded the Hemlock Society, the first right-to-die organization in the United States,1 and set off a firestorm of...
On March 26, 2021, idecabtagene vicleucel was approved for the treatment of adults with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma after four or more prior lines of therapy, including an immunomodulatory agent, a proteasome inhibitor, and an anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody.1,2 Idecabtagene vicleucel is...
There are an estimated 500,000 childhood cancer survivors in the United States, a number that will increase exponentially in the coming years. Over half of all childhood cancer survivors will have received cardiotoxic therapies during primary cancer treatment or relapse. For these survivors, there...
In a Dutch study reported in JACC: CardioOncology, Jan M. Leerink, PhD candidate, of Amsterdam UMC, University of Amsterdam Department of Clinical and Experimental Cardiology, and colleagues found that the addition of ejection fraction measurement at the time of first surveillance echocardiogram...
Although the National Cancer Act of 1971 has resulted in tremendous advances in cancer research, which have led to sharp declines in cancer mortality in the United States—from 1991 to 2018, there has been a 31% decrease in overall cancer death rates—and more than 17 million cancer survivors,1 much...
On January 15, 2021, the antibody-drug conjugate fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki was approved for treatment of adults with locally advanced or metastatic HER2-positive gastric or gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma who have received a prior trastuzumab-based regimen.1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data...
ASCO has issued a new guideline on the clinical management of dyspnea in adult patients with advanced cancer.1 Dyspnea—or breathlessness—is a common and distressing symptom affecting upward of 70% of patients with advanced cancer.2 “Dyspnea is a highly prevalent symptom, particularly when people...
Researchers, patient advocates, and global oncology leaders who have worked to reshape cancer care around the world are among the recipients of ASCO’s Special Awards—the Society’s highest honors—and the Women Who Conquer Cancer Mentorship Awards from Conquer Cancer, the ASCO Foundation. “The...
For this installment of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, spoke with Deborah Watkins Bruner, RN, PhD, FAAN, noted for her work in patient-reported outcomes, symptom management, and comparative effectiveness of radiotherapy modalities. Her current research is focused on...
While the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is higher among patients who have human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), it’s even higher among patients who have HIV and detectable hepatitis B, according to research published by Kim et al in Hepatology. Among patients with HIV and hepatitis B,...
In a prospective longitudinal trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Ali et al found that infants treated for central nervous system (CNS) malignancies had baseline intellectual quotient (IQ) and parent-reported working memory and adaptive functioning worse than normative expectations; ...
Although most patients with terminal cancer, 87%, have end-of-life conversations with clinicians about their goals and preferences for care, on average, these discussions happen just 1 month before death and most often occur in acute care settings with clinicians who are not their treating...
For patients with relapsed or refractory classic Hodgkin lymphoma (HL), salvage chemotherapy followed by autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) is the standard of care and can induce long-term remissions in at least 60% of patients.1,2 Patients with progression of disease after...
The 2021 Genitourinary (GU) Cancers Symposium was held in a virtual format on February 11–13 and featured the latest developments in the understanding and treatment of genitourinary cancers. The impact of prostate cancer therapies on outcomes in older adults continues to be a growing area of...
In 1996, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) published its first set of Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology®, covering eight tumor types. Guidelines are now published for more than 60 tumor types and topics. During the NCCN’s 26th Annual Conference, which was held virtually...