The Association of Residents in Radiation Oncology (ARRO) has honored 57 educators with the 2014 Educator of the Year Award. The award, presented annually, recognizes outstanding teachers and mentors of radiation oncology residents. Each radiation oncology residency program may nominate one faculty ...
James P. Allison, PhD, has been bucking the status quo since he was a teenager growing up in the small agricultural town of Alice, Texas, in the 1950s and 1960s. He first butted heads with authority figures when he was in high school and learned that his biology class had omitted the teaching of...
In a study reported in JAMA and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, Friedewald and colleagues1 showed that the addition of tomosynthesis to digital mammography2 resulted in a decrease in the screening recall rate3 and an increase in the cancer detection rate.4,5 This retrospective analysis of...
Although a do-not-resuscitate (DNR) order does not mean “do not treat,” that is how it is often interpreted, according to a study examining the level of care oncology inpatients at a tertiary care hospital received.1 The study found that the interpretation of DNR orders among oncology nurses and...
Over the past decade, ASCO has launched multiple initiatives on cancer genetics that complement the rapid progress in the field. These initiatives have resulted in educational offerings and policy recommendations that have improved both preventive and therapeutic options for patients with cancer...
We read the letter to the editor in the July 24, 2014, issue of The New England Journal of Medicine entitled, “A Randomized Trial of Robot-Assisted Laparoscopic Radical Cystectomy,” with great interest.1 Provocative Results In the letter, reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, Bochner and...
Postoperative radiation therapy, given after adjuvant chemotherapy, significantly increased overall survival in non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) compared to chemotherapy alone, according to a study reported at ASCO’s 2014 Annual Meeting.1 That study, an analysis of records in the National Cancer...
The updated results of the European Randomised Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC)—reported in The Lancet by Fritz H. Schröder, MD, of Erasmus University Medical Center, and colleagues1 and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post—show a continued decline, as predicted,2 in the number...
The three leukemia/lymphoma studies selected from the many 2014 ASCO Annual Meeting abstracts for presentation at the recent Best of ASCO meeting in Chicago “are really paradigm-shifting,” noted Lucy A. Godley, MD, PhD, of the University of Chicago. These studies, she said, “give great promise for...
Precision medicine in the management of ovarian cancer “is a work in progress, to be sure,” Steven B. Newman, MD, noted in wrapping up the session on gynecologic cancer at the recent Best of ASCO meeting in Chicago. “A list of different histologic types of ovarian cancer and potential targets are...
For the treatment of advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), combinations of targeted agents are of great research interest but have not yet been shown to improve outcomes. Single-agent treatment with tyrosine kinase inhibitors, therefore, remains the standard of care for patients with...
ASCO has announced the “Top 5 Advances in 50 Years of Modern Oncology,” based on results of worldwide voting on CancerProgress.Net—ASCO’s interactive website documenting the history of progress against cancer. The “Top 5 in 50” results identify pivotal discoveries in chemotherapy, prevention,...
The use of dietary supplements by patients with cancer has increased significantly over the past 2 decades despite insufficient evidence of safety and effectiveness. Finding reliable sources of information about dietary supplements can be daunting. Patients typically rely on family, friends, and...
Clinical depression is highly prevalent, associated with significant morbidity, often underrecognized, and inadequately treated in cancer patients. Professor Michael Sharpe and Jane Walker, PhD, and their colleagues’ seminal work on enhancing treatment of depression in cancer patients using a...
Temozolomide in combination with radiation for newly diagnosed glioblastoma was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2005—almost 10 years ago—but we have unfortunately made little progress in improving survival for this incurable brain tumor. Despite recent completion of three...
ASCO President Peter P. Yu, MD, FASCO, recently delivered a talk entitled “Learning from Every Patient” at the 2014 Stanford Medicine X Conference. Dr. Yu’s presentation focused on CancerLinQ and ASCO’s vision for using big data to drive progress in cancer care. To view Dr. Yu’s presentation, go to ...
ASCO and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) sent a joint letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) urging the agency to regulate electronic cigarettes, cigars, and all other tobacco products and to strengthen the proposed regulations for newly deemed products. The...
Oncology fellows just years away from entering the profession full time may have unrealistic expectations of their future career, according to data published recently in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The study by Tait D. Shanafelt, MD, of the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, and colleagues...
The results of the ECOG E4402/RESORT trial recently reported by Kahl and colleagues,1 and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, provide interesting new information on the use of maintenance rituximab (Rituxan) vs retreatment with rituximab at progression in patients with low–tumor burden...
The investigators and sponsors of the phase III REVEL trial should be congratulated and probably commiserated. In this large study, reported by Garon and colleagues in The Lancet and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, 1,253 patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) were...
In the phase III REVEL trial reported in Lancet, Edward B. Garon, MD, of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA/Translational Research in Oncology–US Network, Los Angeles, and colleagues found that the addition of the antiangiogenic vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR)-2...
Women who achieve a pathologic complete response (pCR) to neoadjuvant chemotherapy rarely have local or regional recurrence of breast cancer, but this largely depends on tumor subtype, which remained an independent predictor of locoregional recurrence when pathologic response was taken into account ...
Young women with early breast cancer may be more likely to resume menses and become pregnant when treated with a luteinizing hormone–releasing hormone (LH-RH) analog (also known as a gonadotropin-releasing hormone [GnRH] analog) along with chemotherapy, according to the final follow-up of...
Subcutaneous implants containing testosterone in combination with a low dose of anastrozole can relieve menopausal symptoms in breast cancer survivors, according to research presented at the 2014 ASCO Breast Cancer Symposium.1 “Menopausal symptoms can be quite severe in breast cancer survivors in...
In the neoadjuvant treatment of breast cancer, the importance of achieving a pathologic complete response (pCR) varies substantially by breast cancer subtype. Patients are increasingly interested in this outcome, but it means different things to different patients, according to two breast cancer...
The bane of treating non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with druggable mutations has been the development of resistance to targeted agents. New compounds are meeting the challenge of treating resistant disease, according to Fadlo R. Khuri, MD, FACP, Professor and Chair of Hematology and...
Antibody-drug conjugates are being tested against several types of lymphomas and for some of these agents, “activity is quite impressive,” Andrew M. Evens, DO, MSc, reported at the recent Best of ASCO meeting in Chicago. Dr. Evens, Professor of Medicine, Chief, Division of Hematology/Oncology, and...
This year’s Best of ASCO meeting held in Seattle featured topics that both riveted attendees and pushed their buttons, according to program chair Alan P. Venook, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco. “I am extremely pleased with the quality of the presentations from the faculty, but...
Optimal duration of androgen-deprivation therapy as part of primary therapy for prostate cancer continues to be an important question. Two well-conducted studies reported recently at the 56th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) provide data that can help inform...
On the face of it, the idea that a code of professional conduct dating to the ancient Iron Age could possibly retain any relevance in the current era of “Big Data,” religious and cultural pluralism, trillion-dollar government budgets, and nanotechnology seems preposterous. Yet the well-publicized...
The R-CHOP regimen (rituximab [Rituxan] plus cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone) was a major advance in treating diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, but experts are seeking to up the ante and identify ways to continue to improve outcomes beyond that achieved with R-CHOP. “We are...
Adjuvant trastuzumab (Herceptin) was shown to be effective in patients with breast cancers ≤ 2 cm, regardless of estrogen receptor status, in a meta-analysis1 of five chemotherapy trials, but a “pressing question” remaining is whether T1a/b, N0 tumors warrant the use of adjuvant trastuzumab, Andrew ...
Combination chemotherapy for triple-negative breast cancer is anthracycline- and taxane-based and has not really changed much in the past 10 years, but “we are starting to see emerging data with selective activity of platinum agents,” Priyanka Sharma, MD, told participants at the Best of ASCO...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved bortezomib (Velcade) injection for previously untreated patients with mantle cell lymphoma. This is the first treatment in the United States to be approved for use in previously untreated patients with mantle cell lymphoma. Bortezomib was...
For the first time, studies show that a drug is effective in treating several domains of cancer-related cachexia. Oral anamorelin increased lean body mass, achieved weight gain, and improved quality of life in patients with cancer-related cachexia in two pivotal phase III studies presented together ...
Oncologists are now “in the luxury position of having two highly potent agents to treat BRAF V600–mutated melanoma,” noted Christian Blank, MD, PhD, Group Leader of Immunology at The Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, who discussed the two papers at the ESMO 2014 Presidential Symposium....
Women with atypical hyperplasia have an absolute risk of about 1% per year for developing breast cancer—a level of risk that has been underappreciated. Not enough is being done to protect these women, according to Lynn C. Hartmann, MD, Professor of Oncology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester,...
Progress has recently been swift in the development of new drugs to improve the response to hormone therapy in breast cancer, according to Hope S. Rugo, MD, Professor of Medicine and Director of Breast Oncology and Clinical Trials Education at the University of California, San Francisco, Helen...
In the final overall survival analysis of the phase III CLEOPATRA trial, HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer patients lived 15.7 months longer if they received pertuzumab (Perjeta) in addition to trastuzumab (Herceptin) and docetaxel, investigators reported at the European Society for Medical...
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has announced the names of 70 new members and 10 foreign associates during its 44th Annual Meeting held in October. Election to the IOM is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine and recognizes individuals who have demonstrated...
As reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post (page 155), the RAINBOW trial is an international phase III study demonstrating improved overall survival with ramucirumab (Cyramza) plus paclitaxel as second-line therapy for patients with advanced gastric/gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma over...
The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia recently announced the selection of Stephen P. Hunger, MD, a nationally prominent specialist in children’s cancer, as its new Chief of the Division of Oncology and the Director of the Center for Childhood Cancer Research. Dr. Hunger assumed his new position...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved ramucirumab (Cyramza) for use in combination with paclitaxel for the treatment of patients with advanced gastric or gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma. Ramucirumab was approved in April 2014 as a single agent for the treatment of...
The costs associated with skin cancer increased five times as fast as treatments for other cancers between 2002 and 2011, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study published online in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.1 The average annual cost for skin cancer...
Patients who received postoperative radiation therapy lived an average of 4 months longer when compared to the patients who had the same disease site, tumor histology, and treatment criteria and who did not receive postoperative radiotherapy, according to research presented at the 2014 Chicago...
Now that clinicians know to “think beyond KRAS” in metastatic colorectal cancer—and test for all RAS mutations, not just those in exon 2—it seems this is still not sufficient for selecting the best drugs. At the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2014 Congress in Madrid, a proffered paper ...
More than 150 oral and poster presentations were featured at the 2014 Breast Cancer Symposium, held September 4–6 in San Francisco. The multidisciplinary meeting is sponsored by ASCO, the American Society of Breast Disease, American Society of Breast Surgeons, American Society for Radiation...
The use of targeted therapies in indolent non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) is a burgeoning area. New targeted therapies directed at the cell surface, intracellular pathways, and the microenvironment are being studied for relapsed indolent NHL. These treatments, if validated in large randomized trials,...
ASCO has issued an endorsement of the American Urological Association (AUA)/American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) guideline on the use of adjuvant and salvage radiotherapy after prostatectomy, which was based on a systematic review of medical literature. The ASCO endorsement was published ...
Two phase III studies presented at the Best of ASCO meeting in Chicago shed more light on the role of maintenance therapy in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer undergoing first-line treatment with oxaliplatin-based chemotherapy. The two studies compared maintenance therapy with bevacizumab...