Although extensive research has suggested ways to ensure that patients receive evidence-based cancer care, putting these solutions into widespread practice can be a complex, challenging, and inefficient process. Now, a new grant awarded to the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of...
The COVID-19 pandemic is an additional competing risk to factor in when making decisions about anticancer treatment for older adults. It poses a potential barrier to equal and evidence-based management of cancer in this group of patients. Implementing geriatric assessments in routine clinical...
The Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) announced the winning programs for its 10th annual ACCC Innovator Awards, highlighting the year’s leading-edge strategies to challenges faced by oncology programs and practices across the country. The eight ACCC Innovator Award winners feature...
For nearly 30 years, from the time he was a young resident at the Collis P. Huntington Memorial Hospital for Cancer Research of Harvard University, until his death from lung cancer on August 31, 1969, David A. Karnofsky, MD, dedicated himself to the pursuit of scientific excellence and the...
The dramatic advances in the diagnosis and treatment of multiple myeloma over the past 20 years have resulted in significant improvements in overall survival, with 5-year relative survival rates now around 50% and more than 60% for patients younger than age 70.1 The proteasome inhibitors...
Three years ago, former Chief Executive Officer of ASCO, Allen S. Lichter, MD, Laurence H. Baker, DO, Professor in the Departments of Internal Medicine and Pharmacology at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor; Leonard Saltz, MD, a gastrointestinal oncologist at Memorial Sloan...
Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) athletes use combat techniques designed to dominate one’s opponent with control and force. The goal: make your opponent be the first to tap out. In 2010, BJJ practitioner Jon Thomas was surprised to discover there was no philanthropic presence within his sport. That’s when ...
Uriya, age 49, visits Israel’s Rabin Medical Center for a cancer screening. On the surface, he shows no signs of disease. However, results from a study by David Margel, MD, PhD, revealed Uriya is living with prostate cancer at an early yet curable stage. Uriya carries the BRCA gene. Rabin Medical...
Cancer does not affect all people equally. The phrase “cancer disparities” refers to the differences in the number of new cancer cases as well as differences in cancer outcomes that exist among different populations. Disparities more often negatively affect racial and ethnic minorities, poor...
The Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitors have been one of the most exciting advances in the tre atment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and have led to the development of chemotherapy-free treatments for both treatment-naive as well as relapsed or refractory CLL based on studies where...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Paolo Ghia, MD, PhD, of the Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milan, Italy, and colleagues, the phase III ASCEND trial showed significantly prolonged progression-free survival with acalabrutinib monotherapy vs the investigator’s choice of...
A consensus statement published in JAMA Dermatology by an international group of melanoma researchers evaluated the use of prognostic gene-expression profile testing to guide clinical management of melanoma.1 The group cautioned against the routine use of currently available gene-expression...
Following an extensive national search, Bert W. O’Malley, Jr, MD, has been appointed as the new President and Chief Executive Officer of the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC), the flagship academic hospital for the University of Maryland Medical System and an anchor institution in...
A vaccine for COVID-19 is currently the Holy Grail, but even if an effective vaccine were developed on a fast-track timetable, it may be effective in only a percentage of people, judging by existing flu vaccines, which show efficacy rates of approximately 45% and vary year by year. Until we have a...
As reported inThe Lancet Oncology by Jean-Yves Blay, MD, of Centre Léon Bérard, Lyon, France, and colleagues, the phase III INVICTUS trial has shown that the oral KIT and PDGFRα tyrosine kinase inhibitor ripretinib significantly prolonged progression-free survival vs placebo in patients with...
Oncologists should consider screening all patients with cancer for the hepatitis B virus (HBV) prior to starting systemic anticancer therapy, with a focus on tests that use the hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), hepatitis B core antibody (anti-HBc), total Ig or IgG, and antihepatitis B surface...
Palliative care services are so crucial to the well-being of patients with cancer that, in 2017, ASCO updated its clinical practice guideline on the integration of palliative care into standard oncology care.1 The updated guideline recommends that all patients with advanced cancer receive dedicated ...
As evidenced at this year’s ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program, oncology science, technology, and clinical practice are evolving at a rapid pace, bringing new challenges to the efficient and ethical practice of cancer care at all levels. To shed light on some of the large-scale public health and...
ASCO has released an update to its Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer Guideline that includes recommendations for second-line treatment, including early biomarker testing for actionable genomic alterations.1 Last updated in 2018, this new version was triggered by novel evidence related to targeted...
The results of an online questionnaire of 609 breast cancer survivors in the United States suggest that nearly half of patients experienced delays in care during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study was published by Papautsky et al in the journal Breast Cancer Research and ...
The development of complex biomarkers such as tumor mutational burden (TMB) has enabled clinicians to identify patients more likely to respond to treatment of a variety of cancers, leading to more accurate diagnoses and improved outcomes. Differences in testing assays, however, have produced...
“In line with the emergence of targeted therapies, molecular biomarker testing in metastatic colorectal cancer has evolved over the past decade,” noted Jeanne Tie, MD, MBChB, FRACP, who acknowledged there is confusion about the best ways to use molecular testing in the clinic. Dr. Tie, who is...
Nineteen of the 20 nations with the highest cervical cancer death rates are in sub-Saharan Africa. Now an international team has published the first comprehensive genomic study of cervical cancers in sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on tumors from 212 Ugandan patients with cervical cancer. Their...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Knörr et al, a trial of risk-stratified treatment for relapsed pediatric anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL) showed that allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT) was effective in patients with high-risk relapse, whereas autologous SCT was not...
Novel targeted therapies have increased the likelihood of cure and prolonged survival in many patients with advanced breast cancer (Table 1), but these new agents also carry toxicity profiles that vary greatly from those of traditional chemotherapy. During the ASCO20 Virtual Education Program,...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Pieternella Johanna Lugtenburg, MD, PhD, and colleagues, the phase III Haemato-Oncology Foundation for Adults in the Netherlands (HOVEN)/ Nordic Lymphoma Group HOVON-84 trial showed that early rituximab intensification in R-CHOP-14 (rituximab plus...
A study by Wilson et al investigating the impact of radiation therapy on adult survivors of pediatric abdominal and pelvic tumors has found that these survivors were significantly more likely to have insulin resistance, high levels of triglycerides, and low levels of high-density lipoproteins...
This week, we’ll start with a follow-up analysis of pathologic complete response in patients participating in the I-SPY 2 trial. Then, we’ll move on to a study that sought to answer whether a longer time from diagnosis to surgical treatment lowered overall survival in women with early-stage breast...
A single priming dose of tremelimumab and durvalumab, followed by monthly durvalumab, showed clinical activity in a predominantly second-line advanced hepatocellular carcinoma population, in a study reported at the ESMO World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer Virtual 2020.1 In a study of 332...
Taimur Sher, MBBS, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology Consultant, and Director of the Multi-Specialty Amyloidosis Group at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, told The ASCO Post that shutting down the source of amyloidogenic light-chain production—the...
Androgen-deprivation therapy has been, and remains, the standard of care for patients with metastatic prostate cancer. Patients are often surprised to learn that was all we would do to control their disease and sometimes asked why they would not receive chemotherapy, as for other cancers. I would...
As reported in The Lancet by Matthew D. Galsky, MD, of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Tisch Cancer Institute, New York, and colleagues, the phase III IMvigor130 trial has shown prolonged progression-free survival with first-line atezolizumab plus platinum-based chemotherapy vs...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Jacqueline Vuky, MD, of Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, and colleagues, long-term follow-up in the phase II KEYNOTE-052 study has shown durable responses with first-line pembrolizumab in cisplatin-ineligible locally advanced or...
Philip J. Saylor, MD, Attending Physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School, Boston, commented on this study. “The results presented are clearly exciting and cause us to look forward to a likely phase III study of this strategy. The high response...
It may be possible to use a platinum-free combination as first-line treatment for advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma in cisplatin-ineligible patients, if the results of the phase Ib/II EV-103 trial hold up. The combination of the newly approved antibody-drug conjugate (enfortumab vedotin)...
Based on the recently published ENZAMET, ARCHES, and TITAN trials,1-3 we now have several choices of systemic combination therapies for men with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer. Today, men are faced with decisions of androgen-deprivation therapy alone or combinations with abiraterone,...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology,1 Anita Gul, MD, of the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute, and colleagues found that salvage therapy with nivolumab/ipilimumab was capable of producing a response after prior PD-1 pathway inhibitor therapy in some patients with...
As reported inThe New England Journal of Medicine by Ian D. Davis, MBBS, PhD, FRACP, FAChPM, of Monash University and Eastern Health in Melbourne, and colleagues, the phase III ENZAMET trial has shown that the androgen receptor inhibitor enzalutamide improved progression-free and overall survival...
In a study presented during the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program1 and published as a brief report in JAMA Oncology,2 Praful Ravi, MB, BChir, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, and colleagues found that rechallenge with immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy was capable of producing...
Nonmetastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer arises in the subset of men with biochemically recurrent disease (ie, rising prostate-specific antigen [PSA] level after definitive therapy in the absence of metastases) who develop PSA progression after chronic exposure to androgen-deprivation...
The single-arm TRITON2 study demonstrated the efficacy of the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor rucaparib in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.1,2 Results from the study (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT02952534) led to the approval of rucaparib in this...
Discussant Scott T. Tagawa, MD, MS, of Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, congratulated Dr. Hofman and coauthors on this first randomized trial of any PSMA-targeted therapy and was cautiously optimistic about the targeted radioligand treatment being adopted as post-docetaxel therapy in men with...
The Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) lauded the adoption of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) global strategy toward eliminating cervical cancer as a public health problem. WHO Member States adopted the strategy alongside other health resolutions as part of the silence procedure...
Neuroendocrine tumors are rare malignancies that arise in neuroendocrine cells, which can occur throughout the body but are most commonly found in the gastrointestinal tract, lungs, and pancreas. Although most neuroendocrine tumors are indolent and take years to grow, some are aggressive and grow...
A new 10-year analysis, led by Igor Puzanov, MD, MSci, FACP, Director of Early Phase Clinical Trials and Chief of Melanoma at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center and recently published in JAMA Oncology,1 provides new insights into an important question: whether BRAF V600E/K–mutation status or ...
I have witnessed much sickness and death over my 35-year career as a medical oncologist. During the early years of my career, I had difficulty dealing with the sickness and death I witnessed on a regular basis. As a result, with help from the Hindu scripture of Bhagavad Gita, I have trained my...
Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) recently announced a $5 million grant from Bristol Myers Squibb to fund research and education efforts aimed at achieving health-care equity for underserved patients with lung cancer, including Black individuals and those living in rural communities. The disease remains...
The Prostate Cancer Foundation and Robert F. Smith, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Vista Equity Partners, have announced a new effort to reduce deaths from prostate cancer, one of the largest health disparities facing Black men today. “As African American men are at an...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and European Medicines Agency (EMA) have approved record numbers of new cancer drugs recently. This is extraordinarily good news for physicians, patients, and drug companies, but it raises important questions as to how effective these drugs are, whether...
For this installment of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, spoke with noted neurosurgeon Keith L. Black, MD, Chair of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Department of Neurosurgery and Director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute. During his career, Dr. Black has...