As of this writing, no drugs have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of COVID-19, although several have received emergency use authorization and many others are being used off-label during the pandemic. In addition to searching for novel therapies, David...
New research published by van Seventer et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network has found that muscle mass was correlated with survival, while muscle radiodensity was associated with symptom burden, health-care use, and survival in patients with advanced cancer undergoing ...
ASCO and Friends of Cancer Research (Friends) jointly issued new recommendations to further efforts to broaden eligibility criteria in cancer clinical trials with the goal of making clinical trials more accessible to patients.1 The joint recommendations are detailed in a series of articles...
Rachel Adams Greenup, MD, MPH, FACS, has been appointed Associate Professor of Surgery (Oncology) and Section Chief of Breast Surgery for the Department of Surgery at Yale School of Medicine. In her new role, Dr. Greenup will provide breast surgical oncology leadership across the Smilow Cancer...
Neoadjuvant treatment with single-agent atezolizumab in patients with stage IB to IIIB lung cancer resulted in a major pathologic response rate of 21% and a pathologic complete response rate of 7%, in the primary analysis of the Lung Cancer Mutation Consortium 3 (LCMC3) study.1 The findings were...
Belantamab mafodotin-blmf combined with pomalidomide and dexamethasone led to a very good partial response or better in approximately three-quarters of patients with multiple myeloma that was double-class or triple-class refractory, according to Suzanne Trudel, MSc, MD, FRCPC, of Princess Margaret...
Ana Maria Lopez, MD, Professor and Vice Chair of Medical Oncology and Chief of Cancer Services for the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, Jefferson Health New Jersey, commented on Dr. Reid’s presentation. “Dr. Reid presented a report about a robust cancer program that addresses the needs of rural...
Pediatric neurosurgeon Moise Danielpour, MD, Director of the Cedars-Sinai Pediatric Neurosurgery Program, was recently appointed Editor-in-Chief of the journal Pediatric Neurosurgery. “I am delighted and honored to take over the helm of the journal, following in the footsteps of previous editors...
The results from a recent study showcase the disturbing prevalence of sexual dysfunction as a treatment side effect of cancer and gender disparity in how the problem is addressed by physicians.1 The study, conducted by James Taylor, MD, MPH, Chief Resident in the Department of Radiation Oncology at ...
The holistic benefits derived from exercise in preventing and ameliorating chronic health conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes are well documented. However, less is known about the salutary effects exercise may have across the cancer setting, especially during treatment....
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) has announced the newly established Nicholls-Biondi Chair for Health Equity. This permanently endowed chair is dedicated to improving outcomes for patients from medically underserved communities and building a base of knowledge to facilitate health...
When the COVID-19 pandemic limited in-person medical checkups last year, Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center offered video visits for the first time for long-term follow-up appointments for childhood cancer survivors. Due to the pandemic, virtual visits were adopted...
Type I collagen produced by cancer-associated fibroblasts may not promote cancer development, but instead, may play a protective role in controlling pancreatic cancer progression. This new understanding supports novel therapeutic approaches that bolster collagen rather than suppress it, according...
A study by Salerno et al published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention investigating the association of a cancer diagnosis and poor ambulatory function of survivors and subsequent mortality has found that cancer survivors with poor ambulatory function had a two to three times...
Researchers have created a new technique that may help to uncover mechanisms cancer cells use to evade immunotherapies, which could lead to the development of more effective treatments. Investigators tested their new technique with cancer cells and matching immune cells from patients with melanoma...
A specific type of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) that contains a rearrangement in the MLL gene (also known as KMT2A) might be made more sensitive to chemotherapy using an antibiotic currently available to treat diarrhea, according to new research published by Zeisig et al in Science Translational...
As reported in a letter to the editor in The New England Journal of Medicine by Elise A. Chong, MD, and colleagues, long-term follow-up of a single-center trial of tisagenlecleucel showed maintained responses in a high proportion of patients with relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma ...
Patients with lymphoma hospitalized for severe COVID-19 infection were at higher risk for prolonged hospital stay and death if they were treated with B-cell–depleting therapies (eg, rituximab, obinutuzumab) within the previous 12 months. The risk of persistent COVID-19 infection was also higher in...
Although guidelines exist for the use of several clinical prediction models based on logistic regression to help estimate the risk of lung cancer before treatment decision-making, they almost all focus on solitary pulmonary nodules, and have not shown accuracy in predicting malignancy in multiple...
In 2020, ASCO established the Steering Group on Cancer Care Delivery and Research in a Post-Pandemic Environment to evaluate the changes made in oncology care delivery, clinical research, and regulatory oversight in response to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as to make recommendations on how to...
At the 2021 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, Motzer et al presented the clinical results of the CLEAR trial, adding a novel regimen, lenvatinib plus pembrolizu-mab, to the growing armamentarium of first-line treatments for patients with metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma (RCC). The...
Each year, following the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS), The ASCO Post asks Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, to offer his picks of the most important and most clinically relevant research presented at this meeting. The following are summaries of studies that caught Dr. Abraham’s attention from ...
When advising the younger members of our medical community on career decisions, I always list “access to the best mentorship” as the most important priority. By the time we hit residency, we have all proven ourselves able to extract from a book or a journal the facts essential to the practice of...
In an updated analysis of the pivotal phase III KEYNOTE-177 trial in microsatellite instability–high (MSI-H) metastatic colorectal cancer, the benefit of first-line pembrolizumab continued beyond disease progression on the subsequent line of treatment, despite a high crossover to immunotherapy for...
This week, we’re continuing our coverage of results presented at the 2021 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, focusing on research findings in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) and bladder cancer.
Molecular profiling allows clinicians to identify the molecular and genetic signatures that help to deliver treatments that are highly specific to a tumor. This tool has made possible a number of advances in the past year that are improving care for patients with gastrointestinal cancers. In...
In case you missed these while attending the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, below is a sampler of highlights that were not included in our first round of meeting coverage. Many of these reports are on early-phase clinical trials of agents that may raise...
I had my first experience with cancer when I was just 3 or 4 years old and complained to my mother that my “tummy hurt.” I was diagnosed with Wilms tumor, the same cancer my 18-month-old brother died of before I was born. I remember being in the hospital for weeks at a time and being known by...
Pan-Chyr Yang, MD, PhD, Chair Professor at the National Taiwan University Hospital and Academician of Academia Sinica, Taiwan, received the Joseph W. Cullen Prevention/Early Detection Award from the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) at the virtual IASLC 2020 World...
Invited discussant of KEYNOTE-598,1Yun Fan, MD, Director of Thoracic Tumor Center at Zhejiang Cancer Hospital in Hangzhou, China, suggested that patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with low PD-L1 expression and those with high tumor mutational burden may, in fact, derive the most...
The risk of developing or dying of a new primary cancer, particularly those cancers associated with smoking and obesity, was greater among survivors of adult-onset cancers than the expected risk in the general population, according to an analysis of data from more than 1.5 million cancer...
An imposing painting of sailing ships graced the wall behind the desk in the office of Professor Gordon McVie, BSc (Hons), MBChB, MD, FRCP, FRCPEd, FRCPS (Glas), FMedSci, DSc. It was a gift from one of his patients with cancer, a long-term survivor who said the painting reminded her of him, walking ...
John Bartlett, MD, a visionary physician-scientist and pioneer in HIV/AIDS study and treatment who built the infectious diseases division at The Johns Hopkins, died on January 19, 2021, in New York. He was 83 years old. “Over his long and illustrious career, John Bartlett epitomized the best of...
COVID-19 has caused 475,000 deaths in America, disproportionately among communities of color, poverty, immigrants, and older age. It has exposed a variety of inequities within our health-care system. However, the patients at greatest risk of death from COVID-19 are those with cancer. While 1.8% of...
Invited study discussant Rachna T. Shroff, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Arizona, and Chief of GI Medical Oncology at the University of Arizona Cancer Center, said the study presented by Dr. Javle1 showed the FGFR2 inhibitor infigratinib to be active in FGFR2 fusion–positive...
The ripple effects of the coronavirus pandemic have been felt in every area of health care. In our medical specialty, oncology, clinical trials of new treatments were upended by COVID-19. In the early months of the pandemic, widespread interruptions in trial enrollment prevented some patients...
Although optimal regimens are still being determined, checkpoint inhibition has clearly established itself in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma, as judged by the number of abstracts on the topic at the 2021 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium. The ASCO Post brings readers short summaries of ...
The registrational phase II CodeBreak 100 trial has validated the power of KRAS inhibition with sotorasib (AMG 510) in advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).1 In a follow-up to the groundbreaking findings of the phase I trial, the phase II cohort has now shown a durable response rate of...
On February 22, President Joseph R. Biden issued remarks to proclaim that over 500,000 Americans have now died from COVID-19 infection. He and Vice President Kamala Harris held a moment of silence and ordered flags be lowered to half-mast at federal buildings for the next 5 days to honor those who...
Research published by Martel et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network examined body mass index (BMI) data for patients with HER2-positive early breast cancer—and found a 5% weight loss in patients over 2 years was associated with worse outcomes. Weight gain over the same...
Researchers have identified a cellular resilience mechanism through which acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells survive cancer treatment and repopulate, leading to disease relapse. The research, published by Cihangir Duy, PhD, MS, and colleagues in Cancer Discovery, also suggests that certain drugs...
The randomized phase II NEOSTAR trial, which examined single-agent and combined neoadjuvant immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy in patients with stage I to III non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), found combination therapy produced a significant clinical benefit (as assessed by major pathologic...
Recommendations designed to address the underrepresentation of Black patients in clinical trials for multiple myeloma were recently released. Details about the initiative, published by Gormley et al in Blood Cancer Discovery, form a road map for designing multiple myeloma clinical trials to...
Stem cell transplants are not frequently offered to older patients with high-risk myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). According to a study from the Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network (BMTCTN 1102), these patients may indeed achieve a survival benefit from stem cell transplant. As...
Belantamab mafodotin-blmf combined with pomalidomide and dexamethasone led to a very good partial response (VGPR) or better in approximately three-quarters of patients with multiple myeloma that was double-class or triple-class refractory, according to Suzanne Trudel, MSc, MD, FRCPC, of Princess...
Results from a phase II study presented by Nicholas J. Short, MD, and colleagues at the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition showed that first-line treatment with a regimen of chemotherapy combined with the monoclonal antibody blinatumomab resulted in increased...
The world of hematologic malignancies continues to move forward at a robust pace despite the challenges of the COVID era. Although some areas of clinical trials and basic research suffered short-term stoppages or delays due to the pandemic, the studies presented at the 2020 American Society of...
Men who have had treatment for early-stage testicular cancer may benefit from fewer monitoring scans, freeing them from some of the harmful radiation that comes from computerized tomography (CT) imaging, according to results from the phase III TRISST clinical trial presented by Joffe et al at the...
Cisplatin is one of the most effective chemotherapy agents, used in just under half of pediatric cancer cases. Permanent hearing loss is a common side effect of this medication, but previous studies have been too small and too varied to accurately characterize this risk. In a new study published by ...
Breast cancer death rates have stopped declining for women in the United States younger than age 40, ending a trend that existed from 1987 to 2010, according to a report published by Hendrick et al in Radiology. Breast cancer is the most common nonskin cancer and the second most common cause of...