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Showing 351 - 400How Cancer Affects Adolescents and Young Adults
The statistics are alarming: according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), about 70,000 adolescents and young adults (AYAs) are diagnosed with cancer each year1—a recent report by the University of California put that figure at 87,000.2 Although overall cancer survival rates continue to improve ...
ASCO Clinical Opinion Recommends Germline Testing for All Patients With Pancreatic Cancer
The recently released ASCO Clinical Practice Provisional Clinical Opinion on Evaluating Susceptibility to Pancreatic Cancer highlights the importance of emerging data indicating a relatively high rate of germline mutations in pancreatic cancer.1 Recent studies have demonstrated that up to 1 in 10...
Expert Point of View: Armin Shahrokni, MD
“Older and frail adults with cancer are the types of patients we deal with every day,” said Armin Shahrokni, MD, a geriatric oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. “The GO2 study is important, and I suspect it will be practice-changing,” he predicted. Older and frail...
2019 ASCO: Lenalidomide May Reduce the Risk of Smoldering Multiple Myeloma Progressing to Active Disease
A phase III randomized trial (E3A06) by Lonial et al testing the effect of single-agent lenalidomide vs observation in patients with intermediate- or high-risk smoldering multiple myeloma has found that lenalidomide significantly reduces the risk of smoldering multiple myeloma progressing to active ...
Study Finds New Candidate Susceptibility Genes for High-Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer
A team of researchers have identified 34 genes that are associated with an increased risk for developing the earliest stages of ovarian cancer. The findings, published by Gusev et al in Nature Genetics, may help identify women who are at highest risk of developing ovarian cancer and pave the way...
Postprogression Treatment of Estrogen Receptor–Positive Breast Cancer: Future Approaches
AT THE 2019 Miami Breast Cancer Conference, William J. Gradishar, MD, FASCO, presented a vision of the future in the treatment of advanced hormone receptor–positive breast cancer.1 The refinement of disease subsets, the development of agents targeting the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway, the use of novel...
ESTRO 38: Long-Term Results of Adjuvant Radiotherapy Plus Antihormonal Treatment in Hormone Receptor–Positive Breast Cancer
Women with early-stage, low-risk, hormone receptor–positive breast cancer may be less likely to experience disease recurrence if they have radiotherapy after surgery as well as antihormonal treatment, according to results from a trial that has followed 869 women for 10 years. These findings...
PRIMeR Study Explores Meaning of Minimal Residual Disease in Myeloma
In a study that earned a Best Abstract Award at the 2019 Transplantation & Cellular Therapy (TCT) Meetings in Houston, minimal residual disease (MRD) negativity at 1 year after autologous hematopoietic cell transplant (HCT) and maintenance lenalidomide therapy was an independent prognostic...
Expert Point of View: Michael Morse, MD
FORMAL DISCUSSANT of the abstract presented by Harding et al, Michael Morse, MD, Professor of Medicine at Duke University Medical Center, in Durham, North Carolina, noted that the authors should be commended on a complex dose-escalation strategy that surely required a lot of collaboration among...
More Than 50 Groups Sign Letter Urging HHS to Reject Proposed Changes to Medicare Part D
ASCO, along with over 50 other organizations, signed a letter from the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) urging the agency to reject proposed changes to Medicare Part D that could harm patient access to essential therapies, including...
Advances in Haploidentical Transplantation and Cellular Therapies
With advances in the field, the number of haploidentical stem cell transplants being performed (ie, using human leukocyte antigen [HLA] half-matched donor stem cells) has been increasing. In recognition of evolving strategies to improve outcomes, a group of transplant physicians started the...
Expert Point of View: Parag J. Parikh, MD
Parag J. Parikh, MD, Director of Gastrointestinal Radiation Oncology, Henry Ford Cancer Institute, Detroit, commented that KEYNOTE-128 “unfortunately found a very low rate of response to single-agent pembrolizumab.” He said he would not use this approach in any patients with neuroendocrine tumors...
In Era of Immunotherapy, Radiation Therapy May Become Essential Component of Systemic Treatments of Cancer
“IN THIS era of immunotherapy, it is highly possible, and potentially probable, that radiation therapy may become not just a form of locoregional and palliative treatment, but an essential component of our systemic treatments of cancer,” according to Zachary S. Morris, MD, PhD, Vice-Chair,...
Increased Risk of Bone Loss Extends to Younger Women Treated for Breast Cancer
Younger women who have been treated for breast cancer have a higher risk for osteopenia and osteoporosis than do their cancer-free peers, and that risk seems to rise when treatment involves chemotherapy plus hormone therapy or aromatase inhibitors alone. Researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg...
How Turning ‘Cold’ Tumors Into ‘Hot’ Ones May Improve Response to Immunotherapy
The proliferation of immunotherapeutics in the treatment of cancer over the past decade has revolutionized the way many cancers are treated, especially lung cancer and melanoma, as well as some blood cancers, including leukemia and lymphoma, drastically improving outcomes for many patients with...
Hastening the Development of Novel Therapies for Peripheral T-Cell Lymphomas
Peripheral T-cell lymphomas (PTCLs) make up a small fraction of all non-Hodgkin lymphomas—just 15%—in the United States.1 Although rare in the United States, the incidence of PTCL is common across Asia, the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa. Although the reason for such global variation in PTCL is...
Risk of Local Recurrence in Breast Cancer: Impact of Molecular Subtype and Surgical Approach
THE RISK of local recurrence in breast cancer “does not differ substantially based on the operation we perform, but it does differ substantially by subtype,” Tari A. King MD, FACS, stated at the 2018 Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium in Chicago.1 At 10-year follow-up, Dr. King reported, local...
Remnants of Cancer Remain, but Demons Are Now Gone
In the summer of 2002, I was a physically active 17-year-old boy on the cusp of adulthood. I was about to enter my senior year in high school, and like other teens my age, I was excited about college and the promise of the undreamed-of opportunities that lay ahead. At first, the lethargy I was...
FDA Announces New Updates to Expanded Access Program
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently announced new changes to expand and update the Expanded Access (EA) program, which allows very ill patients access to experimental treatments outside of clinical trials. The most recent updates include: Clarifications on Safety Data: The FDA...
How to Build a Clinical Trial Infrastructure in the Community Oncology Setting
HISTORICALLY, CLINICAL research has been viewed as an entity belonging to academic settings alone. With the advent of the Community Clinical Oncology Program (CCOP) in the 1980s and later with the Cancer Trials Support Unit, cancer clinical trials have begun to emerge in the community setting....
The Great Opioid Debate: Treating Cancer Pain Safely
As the number of opioid-related deaths continues to rise in the United States, stakeholders are struggling to make sense of the crisis. At the 2018 Palliative and Supportive Care in Oncology Symposium, two experts in the field, Charles F. von Gunten, MD, PhD, and Leslie J. Blackhall, MD,...
Has Scalp Cooling Reached the Level of Standard of Care?
Does evidence of the effectiveness and safety of scalp cooling to reduce hair loss among women being treated for breast cancer mean that scalp cooling is a new standard of care? “I would suggest that it is,” stated Mikel Ross, MSN, RN, AGNP-BC, of the Breast Medicine Service, Memorial Sloan...
Will the Trump Administration’s Plan to Reduce Cancer Drug Prices Work?
High drug prices are the number one health-care concern of many Americans. The average price of a cancer drug rose from less than $10,000/yr before 2000 to more than $170,000/yr in 2017.1-3 Between 1995 and 2013, the launch price of cancer drugs increased by 10% to 12% every year, and the average...
Encorafenib and Binimetinib: A New Benchmark in Metastatic Melanoma Therapy?
IN JULY 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the combination of the oral BRAF inhibitor encorafenib (Braftovi) and the oral MEK inhibitor binimetinib (Mektovi) for BRAF V600E– or V600K– positive metastatic melanoma. The FDA approval was based on the results of the COLUMBUS...
A Battle With Leukemia: Part Memoir, Part Oncology History
BOOKMARK Title: Cancer Crossings: A Brother, His Doctors, and the Quest for a Cure to Childhood LeukemiaAuthor: Tim WendelPublisher: ILR PressPublication date: April 2018Price: $24.95, hardcover, 256 pages Tim Wendel is a journalist and author of several noted books, mostly concerning sports. In...
A Diagnosis of Li-Fraumeni Syndrome Has Focused My Life Direction
Despite the fact that I had to have open heart surgery at age 7 to fix a congenital heart defect and then more surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy to treat a diagnosis of rhabdomyosarcoma a year later, I never felt like I was a sick kid. Children don’t have the existential worries about...
Denial’s Many Faces
The ASCO Post is pleased to reproduce installments of the Art of Oncology as published previously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. These articles focus on the experience of suffering from cancer or of caring for people diagnosed with cancer, and they include narratives, topical essays,...
Current Perspectives on the Treatment of Breast Cancer
“We are on the cusp of a new way to treat breast cancer,” Mary L. (Nora) Disis, MD, said in summarizing advances using immunology to treat breast cancer. Immune checkpoint inhibitors, adaptive T-cell therapies, and vaccines can enlist and rev up the immune system and be combined with chemotherapy...
ASH 2018: CAR.CD30 T-Cell Therapy in Relapsed or Refractory CD30-Positive Lymphomas
At the 2018 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, Grover et al presented preliminary results from a clinical study of an investigational cellular immunotherapy for Hodgkin lymphoma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma expressing the CD30 protein marker (Abstract 681). Data...
A Single CAR T Cell Cured My Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia
The combination of symptoms I began experiencing in the spring of 2007, including night sweats so severe they woke me from a sound sleep and midline chest wall swelling so extreme I needed a larger shirt size, drove me to seek immediate medical attention. A series of imaging and blood tests...
Obligation to Evaluate Racial/Ethnic Features That May Affect Outcomes for Patients With Breast Cancer
"WE ABSOLUTELY have an obligation to evaluate all of the features describing our patients with cancer when we are trying to figure out why some patients do better than others,” Lisa A. Newman, MD, MPH, reminded the nearly 700 participants at the 2018 Lynn Sage Breast Cancer Symposium, hosted by...
A Pediatric Oncologist Recounts 7 Years at a Hospital in Jerusalem
Elisha Waldman, MD, is a pediatric oncologist and Associate Chief in the Division of Palliative Care at the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. He grew up in a Connecticut suburb, the son of a conservative rabbi. Early on, Dr. Waldman majored in religious studies and felt...
Focus on the Rocky Mountain Oncology Society
Formed in 1991, the Rocky Mountain Oncology Society (RMOS), a Chapter Member of the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC) and State Affiliate of ASCO, serves as the voice for Colorado’s multidisciplinary cancer care teams and the patients they serve. Representing the common interests of...
Lung Cancer Researcher Melissa Johnson, MD, Benefits From Father’s Perspective as Career Military Officer
Lung cancer researcher Melissa Johnson, MD, is a self-described “military brat,” whose father was a career officer in the Marine Corps, serving for more than 35 years. She was born in Oklahoma City and moved nine times during her childhood. When Dr. Johnson was in high school, her father was...
Parenteral Opioid Shortage Threatens Appropriate Pain Care for Patients With Cancer
In response to the opioid-overdose epidemic, several measures have been put in place, such as the reclassification of hydrocodone as a Schedule II opioid and new requirements for physician review of prescription drug–monitoring program databases in most states. Moreover, the Surgeon General and...
Modern Clinical Trials: Engaging Stakeholders at the Front Lines of Care
Randomized clinical trials have been providing high-quality evidence for decades, but there are limitations to the traditional design. At the 2018 ASCO Quality Care Symposium, George J. Chang, MD, MS, FACS, FASCRS, discussed the need to modernize clinical trials, so they continue to provide...
NCRI 2018: Mortality in Men With Malignant Melanoma
The rate of men dying from malignant melanoma has risen in populations around the world, whereas in some countries, mortality rates for the disease are steady or falling for women, according to research presented by Yang et al at the 2018 National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference...
Cancer Taught Me to Help Patients Find Healing Hope
AS AN INTERNIST, I strived to give patients hope by prescribing therapies that increased their chance—their hope—of the best outcome and by encouraging them with hopeful words. My own hope was to care for patients until I was old. Just weeks after celebrating my 36th birthday, I was diagnosed with ...
I’m Not Dying of Cancer: I’m Living With Cancer
I’m a psychiatrist, so I don’t say this lightly: receiving a diagnosis of stage IV gastric adenocarcinoma made me insane. I had remembered the horrible deaths due to abdominal cancer I had seen during my medical training and was terrified that would be my fate as well. I knew from looking at the...
Has the Promise of Precision Medicine Been Oversold?
Recently, the term “personalized medicine” in oncology care has been overtaken by the more contemporary concept of “precision medicine.” According to the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, the newer terminology shifts the focus to improving...
Entrectinib Shows Activity in ROS1-Positive NSCLC
Although ROS1-mutated lung cancer accounts for about 1% to 2% of all non–small cell lung cancers (NSCLCs), it is an important druggable oncogene, and new data show that it can be successfully targeted for clinical gain. In a pooled analysis of phase I and II trials in patients with ROS1-positive...
How the Nobel Prize Could Spur More Cancer Advances
Even before James P. Allison, PhD, made an appearance at the Fourth International Cancer Immunotherapy Conference: Translating Science Into Survival in New York City, the excitement among attendees was palpable. Earlier that day, October 1, 2018, Dr. Allison and Tasuku Honjo, MD, PhD, of Kyoto...
An Early Love of Literature Gives Way to a Career in Breast Cancer Research for Jennifer K. Litton, MD
Breast cancer specialist Jennifer K. Litton, MD, was born and reared in Leominster, Massachusetts, a small city in the north central part of the state. “I went to parochial schools until seventh grade and then went on to high school in Worcester. Although I enjoyed science early on, I was...
Closing the Gender Divide in Preference for Palliative Care
Eight years ago, a survey of the preferences of Dutch patients with cancer for health care found that while gender was one aspect influencing how men and women approach cancer care, it was the most important, with men, generally, regarding most care aspects as less important than women. The study...
Update on CML: Focus on Sequential Therapy, Treatment Discontinuation, and Monitoring
Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is a poster child for the success of molecularly targeted therapy, with some patients appearing to be “cured” of their disease and others living for a long time after treatment with a tyrosine kinase inhibitor targeting the BCR-ABL1 protein. However, there are still...
Cancer Vaccine Shows Clinical Benefit in Phase I Study of Patients With HER2-Positive Cancers
A preclinical study showing that a vaccination with a recombinant adenovirus expressing a truncated ErbB-2 antigen can cure advanced established murine breast cancer as well as extensive established metastatic lung cancer led to the launch of a small phase I study investigating a therapeutic cancer ...
Conqueror in Action: Dr. Zhang Takes on Lung Cancer
Certain physicians know they want to become doctors from a very young age. Others start on a different path until something happens to alter their plans. This was the case for Jianjun Zhang, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. “When I was a kid, I...
Wally Curran, MD, FACR, FASCO, Reflects on a Career in Academic Oncology
GUEST EDITOR Dr. Abraham is the Director of the Breast Oncology Program at Taussig Cancer Institute, and Professor of Medicine, Lerner College of Medicine, Cleveland Clinic. Find him on Twitter @jamecancerdoc. For this installment of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor, Jame Abraham, MD,...
Are E-Cigarettes a Dangerous Alternative to Traditional Cigarettes?
Several studies published earlier this year present preliminary but compelling evidence that electronic cigarettes, also known as e-cigarettes, which deliver nicotine through aerosols without burning tobacco, may pose serious health consequences to users, including cardiovascular disease and...
ASH Honors Ross L. Levine, MD, With 2018 William Dameshek Prize
The American Society of Hematology (ASH) will present the 2018 William Dameshek Prize to Ross L. Levine, MD, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Weill Cornell Medical College, for his discoveries in the field of leukemia and myeloproliferative neoplasms during the 2018 ASH Annual Meeting ...
