To complement The ASCO Post’s comprehensive coverage of the 2020 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, here are several abstracts selected from the meeting proceedings focusing on novel clinical trial findings in myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). For full details of...
Gillianne G.Y. Lai, MBBS, of the National Cancer Centre, Singapore, discussed the presentations on novel agents for exon 20 insertion mutations in non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), which account for about one-third of tyrosine kinase resistance mutations. Although tyrosine kinase mutations are...
Next-generation inhibitors of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) exon 20 insertion mutations showed promise in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in early-phase trials presented during the International Association Society for Lung Cancer 2020 World Conference on Lung...
Tyrosine kinase inhibitors targeting the vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR) have proved to be effective drugs in the treatment of many solid tumors. However, their clinical benefit may come at the cost of cardiovascular toxicity if clinicians are not vigilant and proactive. During...
According to a retrospective study, the combined clinical and cell-cycle risk (CCR) score may be able to accurately predict which patients with intermediate- and high-risk prostate cancer will have little additional benefit from androgen-deprivation therapy added to dose-escalated radiotherapy and...
Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute has appointed cancer researcher Ze’ev Ronai, PhD, as Director of its National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Cancer Center. Established in 1976, the Cancer Center is one of only seven NCI-designated Basic Laboratory Cancer Centers in the...
Xin Gao, MD, a medical oncologist at Mass General Hospital and Instructor at Harvard Medical School, said these were important findings. “Analyses of patient-reported outcomes pertaining to health-related quality-of-life measures from CheckMate 9ER showed significantly improved quality-of-life...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies sometimes used by patients with cancer. Increasingly, patients with cancer desire nonpharmacologic strategies for managing their...
Gastrointestinal oncologist John Marshall, MD, is well known for his candid observations about cancer treatment and research. In 2006, all the scientific intricacies and sociopolitical dramas of oncology coalesced in Dr. Marshall’s life when his 43-year-old wife, Liza, was diagnosed with breast...
Globally, breast cancer surpassed lung cancer as the most common cancer among women, with an estimated 2.3 million cases in 2020.1,2 Approximately 685,000 women will die of breast cancer in 2020 around the world. Approximately 24.5% of all cancers in women are breast cancer, and 15.5% of...
The treatment paradigm for patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma has undergone a dramatic shift over the past few years, improving outcomes for many patients but leaving many unanswered questions as to how to optimally choose the best treatment for an individual patient. The changes are...
Stand Up To Cancer has announced $3.25 million in grants from four national nonprofits to fund research to find new treatments for head and neck cancers, which are newly diagnosed in about 65,000 Americans every year. The grants include contributions of $1.5 million each from the Fanconi Anemia...
The findings from a recent study of patients with cancer who had an exceptional response to chemotherapy are yielding new clues on the molecular changes in patients’ tumors. These findings may explain the genetic alterations contributing to these patients’ dramatic and long-lasting responses to...
Given the improvements in diagnostic strategies, treatment, and supportive care, long-term survival is now an expected outcome for a large majority of patients with hematologic malignancies. Unfortunately, radiation therapy and anthracyclines, which form the backbone of front-line treatment, have...
Patients with ovarian cancer frequently receive aggressive end-of-life care despite industry guidelines that emphasize quality of life for those with advanced disease, according to a recent study published by Mullins et al in the journal Cancer. In fact, by 2016, intensive care unit (ICU) stays and ...
Research published by Orgel et al in the journal Blood Advances showed that restricting calories, reducing fat and sugar intake, and increasing physical activity may boost the effectiveness of chemotherapy for older children and adolescents with leukemia. This intervention, which improved...
A study published by Yuan et al in the Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology found using percutaneous image-guided needle-based thermal ablation—the precise application of extreme heat or cold to a tumor using sophisticated imaging in a single outpatient session—is a safe and effective...
A combination of esophageal brushing and extensive genetic sequencing of the sample collected may detect chromosome alterations in people with Barrett’s esophagus, identifying patients at risk for progressing to esophageal cancer. These findings were published by Douville et al in ...
Patients with stage II pancreatic cancer who are treated with chemotherapy followed by resection live nearly twice as long as patients who receive only chemotherapy, according to a recent study published by Amanda K. Arrington, MD, MHM, FACS, and colleagues in the Journal of the American College of ...
New recommendations published by Doykos et al in Health Equity call for a significant expansion of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers to understand the causes of inequities in cancer care and a commitment to building sustained community partnerships...
A study published by Oben et al in Nature Communications has shown that whole-genome sequencing can help determine which patients with a multiple myeloma precursor condition known as monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) or smoldering myeloma may be at risk for progression to...
In an analysis from the Children’s Oncology Group (COG) AALL0331 trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Mattano et al found that the addition of pegaspargase intensification did not improve the high rate of continuous complete remission achieved with a standard COG low-intensity...
On March 31, President Joseph R. Biden, Jr, issued the following statement on National Cancer Control Month. Despite the incredible advancements we have made in recent years, cancer remains the second-leading cause of death in the United States. Behind this statistic are millions of Americans who...
Two studies presented at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) 2021 Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer highlighted the importance of addressing racial inequities in gynecologic cancers, including improving minorities’ low participation rates in clinical trials of women’s cancers. Clinical Trial...
Consumption of ultra-processed food and drink could increase the risk of developing colorectal cancer. This was the conclusion of a large study published by Romaguera et al in Clinical Nutrition based on questionnaires about food behaviors completed by around 8,000 people in Spain. The study, the...
The FIGHT study’s invited discussant, Rutika Mehta, MD, MPH, a gastrointestinal oncologist at Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, Florida, noted the emergence of new biomarkers and their targeted agents in HER2-negative gastric or gastroesophageal junction cancer. Two important ones are FGFR2b—now...
As first-line treatment for advanced gastric cancer, nivolumab plus chemotherapy leads to significantly improved progression-free and overall survival over chemotherapy alone, investigators reported during a Presidential Symposium of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Virtual Congress ...
Drawing on several lines of ongoing research, David A. Tuveson, MD, PhD, has created a theoretical framework to consider while developing clinical trials in pancreatic cancer. In his keynote lecture at the 2020 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Special Conference on Pancreatic Cancer, ...
The advent of effective combination chemotherapies has changed the treatment landscape for metastatic pancreatic cancer, extending median survival and leading to durable responses in a subset of patients. However, perpetual chemotherapy is cumulatively toxic, leading to progressive bone marrow...
Marcus Noel, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, Washington, DC, included SWOG S1505 in the presentation of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Highlights during the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program. Susan Tsai, MD, MHS, a ...
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. Javle showed the FGFR2 inhibitor infigratinib to be active in FGFR2 fusion–positive...
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 2007, sorafenib became the first approved systemic therapy for hepatocellular cancers and the first agent to improve overall survival in these patients.1 In a similar multikinase inhibitor strategy, lenvatinib was found to be noninferior to sorafenib in overall survival in the same patient...
Excluding skin cancer, colorectal cancer is the third most prevalent and lethal cancer among both men and women in the United States.1 Although the risk of developing colorectal cancer increases with age—more than 90% of cases occur in people aged 50 or older2—recent research shows that the...
“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...
More than 1 in 10 patients with lung cancer do not know what type of tumor they have, according to data from a 17-country study carried out by the Global Lung Cancer Coalition (GLCC) presented by Beattie et al at the European Lung Cancer Virtual Congress 2021 (Abstract 209P_PR). Nearly one in five...
The treatment of colorectal cancer has always been something of an art—but never more so than during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the spring of 2020, The ASCO Post asked three experts in this malignancy to share their concerns and their approaches to achieving good patient outcomes while minimizing...
Treatment with the KRAS G12C inhibitor adagrasib showed clinical activity in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) harboring a KRAS G12C mutation, confirming its role as a therapeutic target. Results from the KRYSTAL-1 trial were reported at the European Lung Cancer Virtual...
In a single-institution study reported in JAMA Oncology, Reyngold et al found that definitive hypofractionated ablative radiation therapy following induction chemotherapy was associated with prolonged locoregional control and favorable survival in patients with inoperable locally advanced...
Eric Pujade-Lauraine, MD, PhD, of Hôpital Hôtel-Dieu, discusses results from the PAOLA-1ENGOT-ov25 trial on the use of homologous recombination–repair mutation gene panels and whether they can predict the efficacy of olaparib plus bevacizumab in first-line maintenance therapy for patients with...
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) recently announced the establishment of The Tow Center for Developmental Oncology (TCDO). The new institution will bring together the unique expertise of researchers and physicians from across MSK and empower them to pursue translational research...
With the widespread use of multigene panels for germline genetic testing, understanding the cancer risks associated with pathogenic or likely pathogenic variants (ie, mutations) has become increasingly necessary. To identify which genes are breast cancer susceptibility genes, population studies...
In a U.S. population–based, case-control study reported in The New England Journal of Medicine, Chunling Hu, MD, PhD, of the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, and colleagues identified the prevalence of and breast cancer risk associated with germline pathogenic variants in established and...
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN), and National Minority Quality Forum (NMQF) recently presented new ideas for overcoming inequality in oncology. The recommendations—developed by a group of 17 national experts, representing...
An ASCO Expert Panel has endorsed an American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) guideline on radiation therapy for small cell lung cancer (SCLC), stating the recommendations in the ASTRO guideline “are clear, thorough, and based upon the most relevant scientific evidence” available.1...
Cancer ranks as a leading cause of death in every country in the world, and, for the first time, female breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer, overtaking lung cancer, according to a collaborative report from the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the International Agency for Research...
Lydia Pace, MD, MPH, was inspired to a become a doctor by her grandfather, a general surgeon in New York City, who spoke effulgently of his career in medicine, and by her mother, a social worker who was equally passionate about her profession. A primary care physician, Dr. Pace developed an...
The Prevent Cancer Foundation has announced funding for nine scientists who are researching cancer prevention and early detection. Each scientist is being awarded $100,000 for 2 years. Areas of focus include the pancreas, esophagus, liver, lungs, skin, prostate, colon-rectum, and blood/bone ...
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) has announced the appointment of Patrick Delaney as incoming Executive Director for the NCCN Foundation. Mr. Delaney has previously held leadership roles with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, American Red Cross, and American Cancer Society. ...
On January 22, 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the combination of nivolumab and cabozantinib as first-line treatment for patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma.1-3 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was based on the findings of the phase III, open-label CheckMate 9ER trial...