In a study reported in Clinical Cancer Research, Shin and colleagues synthesized a novel polyphenol conjugate (DPP-23) that exerted antitumor effects by targeting the unfolded protein response in the endoplasmic reticulum via production of reactive oxygen species in cancer cells but not in normal...
Species of Clostridium bacteria have been shown to kill tumor cells growing under hypoxic conditions. In a study reported in Science Translational Medicine, Roberts and colleagues showed that intratumoral injection of an attenuated strain of Clostridium novyi (C novyi-NT) produced a microscopically ...
Susan T. Mayne, PhD, C-EA, Winslow Professor of Epidemiology; Associate Director for Population Sciences at Yale Cancer Center; and Chair of the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health, has been appointed to the position of Center Director of the Center for Food...
The following essay by Carolyn D. Runowicz, MD, is adapted from The Big Casino: America’s Best Cancer Doctors Share Their Most Powerful Stories, which was coedited by Stan Winokur, MD, and Vincent Coppola and published in May 2014. The book is available on Amazon.com and thebigcasino.org. Just...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) recently announced the election of four new members to its Executive Committee, the governing body of the organization, for terms beginning after the 2014 ASH Annual Meeting, which will be held December 6–9 in San Francisco. Kenneth C. Anderson, MD, will...
The overriding consensus from the 2014 Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium: Patient-Centered Care Across the Cancer Continuum held in Boston was that achieving optimal high-quality cancer care requires both state-of-the-art cancer therapy and the integration of palliative care principles...
A 4-year study1 involving 461 patients with advanced stages of lung, gastrointestinal, genitourinary, breast, and gynecologic cancers has found that providing early outpatient palliative care vs standard oncology care alone improved quality of life and patient satisfaction. The study participants...
The ASCO Clinical Practice Guidelines Committee and the Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) program in evidence-based care have released a clinical practice guideline on systemic therapy in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. The guideline was published in the Journal of Clinical...
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy represents a novel and promising therapeutic advance in cancer.1,2 It constitutes a form of personalized therapy that harnesses adoptive cell transfer through genetic engineering of autologous T cells. The initial step in this therapeutic paradigm...
In a study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Shannon L. Maude, MD, PhD, of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Noelle Frey, MD, of the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues reported achieving sustained remissions in children and adults with...
"Obesity is associated with cancer mortality,” said Steven D. Mittelman, MD, PhD, at the recent American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research.1 Dr. Mittelman presented a wealth of data to explain the link between obesity and...
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) recently announced the 20 hematologists and other medical professionals selected to participate in the 2014 ASH Visitor Training Program. This program provides talented hematologists, scientists, and laboratory staff from developing countries the opportunity ...
ASCO issued its new Policy Statement on Medicaid Reform on November 17, which calls for major changes to the program to ensure access to high-quality cancer care for all low-income individuals. The Society’s recommendations call for Medicaid expansion in all 50 states to close coverage gaps,...
Guidelines can be incorrect if they are not based on incontrovertible evidence. Such was the case with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) 1995 guidelines recommending 5 years of tamoxifen adjuvant therapy for stage I to III hormone receptor–positive breast cancer. With more definitive evidence,...
The ASCO Post wishes to acknowledge and thank all contributors to the publication during 2014. Here we recognize those who shared their personal thoughts in our Op-Ed department. If you are interested in contributing to The ASCO Post in 2015, write to editor@ASCOPost.com. Robert Peter Gale, MD,...
The following essay by Fadlo R. Khuri, MD, FACP, is excerpted from The Big Casino: America’s Best Cancer Doctors Share Their Most Powerful Stories (May 2014), coedited by Stan Winokur, MD, and Vincent Coppola. The book is available on Amazon.com and thebigcasino.org. Life and hope are why we go...
The information contained in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes details of actively recruiting clinical studies of children and adults with various types of soft-tissue sarcoma, including non-rhabdomyosarcoma, Ewing sarcoma, gastrointestinal stromal tumor, and Kaposi sarcoma. The studies...
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...
Matthew J. Ellis, MD, PhD, a renowned clinician scientist in the area of genomics and molecular profiling of breast cancer, was named the new Director of the Lester and Sue Smith Breast Center at Baylor College of Medicine. Dr. Ellis assumed his new role in September 2014, succeeding C. Kent...
The long-term outcome for patients with relapsed or refractory acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is poor, with 5-year overall survival from first relapse being only approximately 10%.1,2 Patients with disease relapse following allogeneic transplant have the worse prognosis and are typically...
Ipilimumab (Yervoy) was first approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2011 on the basis of an improvement in overall survival compared with gp100 vaccine in patients with advanced melanoma.1 Response rates with ipilimumab have been modest at best—10% to 15% using 3 mg/kg and 15%...
Immune checkpoint inhibitors, particularly PD-1 (programmed cell death-1) and PD-L1 (programmed death-ligand 1) inhibitors, are being studied extensively in lung cancer. These agents, alone and in combination, appear to have the potential to change the management of non–small cell lung cancer...
When classifying response to chemoradiation among patients with locally advanced rectal cancer, the American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) Cancer Staging Manual (7th edition) system “is most accurate and should be adopted as the standard,” Attaphorn Trakarnsanga, MD, and colleagues at Memorial...
The information contained in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting clinical studies of children and young adult cancer survivors. The studies include phase I, I/II, III, observational, and interventional trials investigating genomic profiling to personalize treatment;...
The Society for Integrative Oncology (SIO) Guidelines Working Group has recently released clinical practice guidelines on the use of integrative therapies as supportive care in patients receiving treatment for breast cancer. The guidelines, reported by Heather Greenlee, ND, PhD, MPH, of Mailman...
Although cancer rehabilitation has been a part of oncology clinical practice for several decades, it has largely gone unrecognized as an integral part of palliative medicine and survivorship care. Now, the role of physical medicine and rehabilitation in oncology care may increase as patients with...
JANUARY 2015 The Society of Thoracic Surgeons 51st Annual MeetingJanuary 24-28 • San Diego, California For more information: www.sts.org/education-meetings/educational-meetings-activities/future-meetings 7th Annual T-cell Lymphoma ForumJanuary 29-31 • San Francisco, California For more...
For newly diagnosed multiple myeloma patients, Cleveland Clinic specialists believe two drugs may suffice for most patients, bucking the trend toward using triplets for all patients and reserving them for patients with insufficient response to two. They described a pilot study of their “carepath”...
The interactions between the estrogen receptor (ER) and HER2 pathways in breast cancers are clearly complex and remain incompletely understood. Historically, cancers that express both ER and HER2 were thought to be intrinsically resistant to endocrine therapy, likely due to HER2 being the dominant...
Advances in the molecular characterization of non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) have led to the identification of molecularly defined distinct subsets of patients who derive benefit from targeted therapies. Currently, two such groups of agents have moved widely into clinical practice: epidermal...
As reported in this issue of The ASCO Post, Robert and colleagues recently published a phase III study comparing the anti–programmed death 1 (PD-1) antibody nivolumab with the standard melanoma chemotherapy dacarbazine in the front-line treatment of patients with advanced BRAF wild-type melanoma.1...
In a phase III trial reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Robert and colleagues found that the programmed cell death protein-1 (PD-1) immune-checkpoint–inhibitor antibody nivolumab (Opdivo) significantly increased overall survival, progression-free survival, and objective response rate...
Mammograms often miss occult breast cancers concealed in dense breasts. Women with dense breasts represent about 40% to 50% of women who undergo mammography screening. In some states and centers in the United States, women with dense breasts are routinely offered ultrasonography following a...
Commenting on this study, Benjamin O. Anderson, MD, Director of the Breast Health Clinic, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, Washington, said: “This new analysis of the Oncotype DX DCIS assay strengthens the findings of earlier studies performed in more limited subgroups, validating that the assay...
The final survival analysis of the landmark Women’s Intervention Nutrition Study (WINS) confirmed that a low-fat diet can reduce the risk of dying for a subset of breast cancer patients.1 At the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, Rowan T. Chlebowski, MD, PhD, of the Los Angeles Biomedical...
In the treatment of advanced/metastatic melanoma, recent debate has focused on the choice of initial therapy: ipilimumab (Yervoy) or, for patients with BRAF-mutant cancer, a BRAF/MEK inhibitor. This issue is now taking a back seat to the emerging conversation about the positioning of antibodies...
Fulvestrant (Faslodex) at a 500-mg dose was superior to anastrozole as first-line therapy for advanced hormone receptor–positive breast cancer in the phase II FIRST study.1 Overall survival and time to disease progression were significantly better with fulvestrant than with the current standard of...
The addition of everolimus (Afinitor) to weekly trastuzumab (Herceptin) plus paclitaxel in the first-line metastatic breast cancer setting did not improve outcomes in the phase III BOLERO-1/TRIO-019 but did provide a “signal” in the hormone receptor–negative subset. The study was reported at the...
The oncoprotein and transcription factor MYB is overexpressed in colorectal cancer and critical to proliferation and tumor cell survival. In a study reported in Clinical & Translational Immunology, Cross and colleagues developed a DNA vaccine to generate an MYB-specific immune response on the...
FEBRUARY AACR-SNMMI Joint Conference: State-of-the-Art Molecular Imaging in Cancer Biology and TherapyFebruary 11-14 • San Diego, California For more information: www.aacr.org 2015 BMT Tandem Meeting American Society for Blood and Marrow TransplantationFebruary 11 - 15 • San Diego, California For...
The information contained in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting clinical studies for patients with newly diagnosed or recurrent glioblastoma multiforme. The studies include pilot, phase I, I/II, III, and observational trials investigating chemoradiation therapy;...
Friends of Cancer Research, in conjunction with the Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at Brookings, recently held the seventh annual Conference on Clinical Cancer Research in Washington, DC. The panels that comprised the daylong meeting discussed a future that has already begun. The most...
Nearly 5,000 scientific abstracts were presented at the 2014 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting and Exhibition in San Francisco. Along with our targeted coverage of the meeting’s key newsmakers, The ASCO Post provides you with these brief reports of other interesting...
At the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, a research team led by Michael Dixon, MD, of Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, shed light on the development of endocrine resistance and presented a four-gene messenger RNA (mRNA) profile that can predict response to letrozole with a high degree ...
In the Clinic provides overviews of novel oncology agents, addressing indications, mechanisms, administration recommendations, safety profiles, and other essential information needed for the appropriate clinical use of these drugs. In December 12, 2014, ramucirumab (Cyramza) was approved for use in ...
As reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Anirban P. Mitra, MD, PhD, of the University of Southern California, and colleagues identified a novel genome-based signature that improves prediction of postcystectomy recurrence in patients with high-risk bladder cancer.1 Use of the...
I am writing in regard to the recent installment to “Clinical Trials” on Glioblastoma published in The ASCO Post (February 10, 2015, pages 69-71). As a principal investigator, I’d also like to call attention to the following glioblastoma trial, which remains open. PHASE II Study Type: Phase...
A special report in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded that atypical hyperplasia of the breast “confers an absolute risk of later breast cancer of 30% at 25 years of follow-up.1” This is higher than previously recognized, and the report’s authors urged “more intensive screening and...
Atypical hyperplasia of the breast has “special importance as a predictor of future breast cancer,” according to a special report in The New England Journal of Medicine.1 That special importance is based on the high incidence of atypical hyperplasia—found in around 10% of the 1 million breast...
FEBRUARY Genitourinary Cancers SymposiumFebruary 26-28 • Orlando, Florida For more information: www.gucasym.org 5th Annual Texas Adolescent and Young Adult Oncology ConferenceFebruary 27-28 • Houston, Texas For more information:...