The invited discussant of the MONALESSA-2 trial was Gonzalo Gomez-Abuin, MD, a medical oncologist who is Head of the Clinical Research Unit at Hospital Alemán in Buenos Aires. According to Dr. Gomez-Abuin, phase III trials of three different CDK4/6 inhibitors—ribociclib, palbociclib, and...
New research published by Shaverdian et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network assessed patient satisfaction and preferences associated with telemedicine. Researchers found 45% of people with cancer undergoing radiotherapy preferred telemedicine, whereas 34% preferred...
Rechallenge with the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor olaparib in patients with platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer led to significant improvement in progression-free survival, in patients with either BRCA1/2-mutated or nonmutated (ie, wild-type) disease compared with placebo, according ...
Breast cancer risk increases with age, but while scientists have long studied cellular changes that take place in the body over time, a new study published by Bahcecioglu et al in Advanced Science examined how the extracellular matrix—an underlying network of molecules and proteins that provide the ...
In a phase II clinical trial, the drug 4-demethyl-4-cholesteryloxycarbonylpenclomedine (DM-CHOC-PEN) improved survival for some adolescent and young adult patients with cancers involving the central nervous system, according to results presented by Morgan et al at the AACR-NCI-EORTC Virtual...
World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, MD, honored the late Henrietta Lacks with a WHO Director-General’s award, recognizing her world-changing legacy. Ms. Lacks, a Black American woman, died of cervical cancer 70 years ago, on October 4, 1951. While she...
The AACR Cancer Progress Report 2021 celebrates the gains made in cancer research since the National Cancer Act was signed into law on December 23, 1971. The report also recognizes the negative impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on cancer research and patient care, the disproportionate toll both...
EA1131 study discussant, Melinda L. Telli, MD, Associate Professor of Medicine at Stanford University, Director of the Breast Cancer Program at the Stanford Cancer Institute, and Associate Director of the Stanford Women’s Cancer Center, commented: “At this point, capecitabine remains preferred as...
In patients with triple-negative breast cancer who have residual disease after neoadjuvant chemotherapy, adjuvant capecitabine remains the standard of care. In the multicenter randomized noninferiority EA1131 trial, which included primarily basal tumors, noninferiority of adjuvant platinum over...
Recent clinical trials have been encouraging for the neoadjuvant or adjuvant use of immune checkpoint inhibitors in triple-negative breast cancer, but is this approach ready for the clinic? This question was addressed at the 38th Miami Breast Cancer Conference, held virtually this year, by Adam M....
The SWOG S1007 RxPONDER trial evaluated the benefit of chemotherapy in women with early-stage hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative breast cancer and node-positive disease.1 The data showed that many postmenopausal women can skip adjuvant chemotherapy, based on a 46% reduction in the risk of...
Commentary for monarchE and PENELOPE-B was provided by C. Kent Osborne, MD, and Ruth M. O’Regan, MD, respectively. Dr. Osborne is Professor of Medicine, Hematology, and Oncology and the Dudley and Tina Sharp Chair for Cancer Research at Baylor College of Medicine, as well as Founding Director of...
The primary outcome analysis of the phase III monarchE trial, an update of previous data, continued to show significant benefit for abemaciclib in the adjuvant setting, reducing the risk for invasive disease recurrence by 28.7%. Meanwhile, the first results of the phase III PENELOPE-B trial of...
Formal discussant of the OlympiA trial, Nadine M. Tung, MD, Director of Breast Medical Oncology and the Cancer Genetics and Prevention Program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, was enthusiastic about the ability of olaparib to improve invasive disease–free survival ...
Adjuvant therapy with the PARP inhibitor olaparib for 1 year extended disease-free survival in patients with high-risk early-stage HER2-negative breast cancer with BRCA1/2 germline (inherited) mutations, according to a prespecified interim analysis of the phase III OlympiA trial presented at the...
Because of their well-established efficacy, inhibitors of cyclin-dependent kinases 4 and 6 (CDK4/6) are the standard of care in the treatment of hormone receptor–positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer. The question now is this: After disease progresses on a CDK4/6 inhibitor and endocrine...
The past decade has seen an explosion of novel agents for breast cancer across subtypes. Although each new advance improves therapeutic options for patients, it also brings forth a challenging question: Who needs what treatment? Not all cancers are created equally, and similarly not all patients...
The addition of abiraterone acetate plus prednisone on top of androgen-deprivation therapy plus docetaxel improved survival in patients with de novo metastatic castration-sensitive prostate cancer vs androgen-deprivation therapy plus docetaxel alone. These results were from the phase III PEACE-1...
Psychological therapy may reduce adverse biobehavioral effects of testicular cancer in young adult survivors, according to a pilot study published by Hoyt et al in the American Journal of Men’s Health. Biobehavior is the interaction of biologic processes and behavior. The recently published...
A study that tracked parental opinion about the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine showed that after hesitancy decreased for several years, hesitancy has now either stabilized or increased in some ethnic and age groups, according to results presented by Adjei Boakye et al at the 14th AACR...
In comments to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), ASCO expressed significant concerns that several provisions in the 2022 Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System proposed rule have the potential to undermine access to cancer care for Medicare beneficiaries. ASCO does,...
2021 marks the 20th year of collaboration between ASCO; Conquer Cancer®, the ASCO Foundation; and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation® (BCRF). BCRF’s pivotal support during the past 2 decades has been critical to both organizations’ shared achievements in funding breakthroughs in breast cancer...
Neoadjuvant atezolizumab combined with pemetrexed and cisplatin, with maintenance atezolizumab, proved to be safe and feasible, offering a hint of benefit in patients with resectable pleural mesothelioma, in a small multicenter study presented at the International Association for the Study of Lung...
Charles M. Rudin, MD, PhD, Hassenfeld Professor and Chief of the Thoracic Oncology Service, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, commented that although ATLANTIS1 “unfortunately joins the ranks of negative phase III studies in patients with recurrent small cell lung cancer,” there are “some...
As a second-line treatment for patients with small cell lung cancer, lurbinectedin plus doxorubicin failed to improve overall survival in the multicenter ATLANTIS trial but did provide other benefits, including better tolerability, researchers reported at the 2021 World Conference on Lung Cancer,...
The Wistar Institute has announced the appointment of Italo Tempera, PhD, as Associate Director for Cancer Research Career Enhancement at the Institute’s Cancer Center. Dr. Tempera, who is also Associate Professor in the Gene Expression & Regulation Program, will lead the educational mission of ...
“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is currently examining pembrolizumab for the adjuvant treatment of stage IIB and IIC melanoma; if approved, we would be introducing immunotherapy earlier in the patient journey,” commented invited discussant Omid Hamid, MD (@OmidHamidMD), who was an...
Adjuvant pembrolizumab reduced the risk of recurrence in adults and children older than age 12 with high-risk stage II (AJCC 8th edition, stage IIB/IIC) melanoma vs placebo, according to a late-breaking interim analysis of the phase III KEYNOTE-716 trial, presented during the European Society for...
“The standard of care [in advanced cervical cancer] has been the addition of bevacizumab to platinum-based chemotherapy since 2014. Even with the addition of bevacizumab, we still need to do better. There is a substantial unmet need for new therapies,” said invited discussant Mansoor Raza Mirza,...
Monica Arnedos, MD, PhD, Head of the Breast Cancer Research Program at the Institut Bergonié, Bordeaux, France, commented on the study findings on extended treatment with letrozole. “We cannot ignore the results of the GIM4 trial.1 It provides additional strong evidence to support extended...
The resurging COVID-19 pandemic has reawakened challenges for patients and physicians—ones we all hoped were over—and presented stressful situations for patients and providers. Hospitals in some states, particularly those with lower vaccination rates, have faced levels of urgent illness that have...
Ichiro Yoshino, MD, PhD, Professor and Chairman of the Department of General Thoracic Surgery, Chiba University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan, reviewed the finer details of the IMpower010 exploratory analysis.1 He maintained that atezolizumab’s benefit does, indeed, seem to favor some patient...
In an exploratory analysis of the pivotal phase III IMpower010 trial in stage II–IIIA non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), continued treatment with the monoclonal antibody atezolizumab after surgery and chemotherapy improved disease-free survival regardless of the type of surgery or chemotherapy...
Shanu Modi, MD, of the Breast Medicine Service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, called the DESTINY-Breast03 results,1 which showed a highly significant benefit for fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) over trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1), “unprecedented.” She suggested they...
The antibody-drug conjugate fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (T-DXd) may become a new option as a second-line treatment of patients with HER2-positive unresectable or metastatic breast cancer, based on results from the global phase III DESTINY-Breast03 trial. These findings were presented by Javier...
Over the past month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued several regulatory decisions for novel treatments for patients with cancer. Priority Review for Relatlimab and Nivolumab Fixed-Dose Combination in Unresectable or Metastatic Melanoma The FDA accepted for Priority Review the...
On October 5, Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, announced his decision to end his tenure as Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by the end of the year. Dr. Collins is the longest-serving presidentially appointed NIH Director, having served three U.S. presidents over more than 12 years....
Today’s life-saving chemotherapeutics originated from the vision and indefatigable work of pioneers in the field whose unwavering vision challenged the status quo. One such pioneer was Franco M. Muggia, MD, who, in a career lasting more than 50 years, had a hand in the development of some of the...
“It is important to note that a paper on managing individuals with germline variants in PALB2 was published in the same issue of Genetics in Medicine as an article on reporting secondary findings in clinical exome and genome sequencing,”1,2 Douglas R. Stewart, MD, told The ASCO Post. “PALB2 is a...
PALB2 germline pathogenic variants are associated with a substantially increased risk for breast cancer and a smaller increased risk for pancreatic and ovarian cancers, warranting enhanced surveillance and the option of risk-reducing interventions, according to a global team of cancer genetic...
Since my small cell lung cancer diagnosis in 2010, I’ve had to overcome not just the distress of having a life-threatening disease, but the stigma attached to it as well. I admit that I was a smoker. I was attracted to smoking when I was 16 and saw how “cool” people looked smoking in television and ...
Given that death is a certain outcome in life, we seek the best way out as possible. What is a good death? According to Jeff Spiess, MD, author of the book Dying With Ease: A Compassionate Guide to Making Wiser End-of-Life Decisions, a good death is one in which pain and suffering are minimized and ...
“I vividly remember watching television with my older sister, Suzy, and marveling at President Nixon’s signing of the National Cancer Act in December 1971, and thinking ‘for me, this was like a man going to the moon,’” writes Nancy G. Brinker in the foreword to the recently published Centers of the ...
Ensuring equitable cancer care for every patient, everywhere has been embedded into ASCO’s mission statement since the Society’s inception nearly 60 years ago. Nevertheless, events of the past year, including the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has disproportionally impacted minority communities, ...
Invited study discussant, Johnie Rose, MD, PhD, called the correlation between Medicaid expansion and changes in 30-day mortality a critical research question. Dr. Rose is Assistant Professor in the Center for Community Health Integration at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and...
In a letter to the editor in The New England Journal of Medicine, Jocelyn Keehner, MD, of the University of California San Diego Health (UCSDH), and colleagues describe a marked resurgence of COVID-19 infections among fully vaccinated workers in the UCSDH workforce in July 2021.1 The resurgence...
On August 31, 2021, the Bruton’s tyrosine kinase inhibitor zanubrutinib was approved for treatment of adults with Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia.1 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was based on findings in patients receiving zanubrutinib in the phase III open-label ASPEN trial (ClinicalTrials.gov...
Maintenance durvalumab, the standard-of-care treatment for patients with unresectable stage III non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), remains significantly underutilized, according to data presented at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) 2021 World Conference on Lung...
For aggressive B-cell lymphomas, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy saves lives, but relapse remains common, and a second-line standard of care is lacking. During the 2021 Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference, Grzegorz (Greg) S. Nowakowski, MD, Professor of Medicine and Oncology, Lymphoma...
Worldwide, cervical cancer is the fifth most commonly occurring cancer in women, mostly due to human papillomavirus (HPV) infection. In 2020, globally, an estimated 604,237 women were diagnosed with cervical cancer and about 341,843 died from the disease. In the United States, in 2021, it is...