In a Spanish phase II study (Atezo-Brain; GECP17/05) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Ernest Nadal, MD, PhD, and colleagues investigated the activity of the combination of atezolizumab with chemotherapy in patients with advanced nonsquamous non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with...
Several recent studies have shown an increasingly disturbing trend: the incidence of early-onset cancers—those diagnosed in individuals younger than age 50—is on the rise, and not just in the United States but globally as well. Worldwide, in 2019, there were a reported 1.19 million new cases of...
Patients with pancreatic cancer who were treated with the benzodiazepine lorazepam had shorter progression-free survival periods than patients who were not, according to study results published by Cornwell et al in Clinical Cancer Research. In contrast, patients who were treated with the...
Pancreatic cancer has the poorest 5-year survival rate (12.5%) relative to all other cancers. In 2023, about 64,050 people will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and approximately 50,550 will die of the disease. A retrospective study investigating the impact of palliative care medicine on the...
The addition of cabozantinib to nivolumab plus ipilimumab prolonged progression-free survival in untreated intermediate-risk patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC), according to the first results of the phase III COSMIC-313 trial. These findings were presented as a Presidential Symposium ...
Over the past year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted approval to several novel drugs and new indications for older therapeutic agents used in hematologic oncology. Glofitamab for DLBCL On June 15, 2023, the FDA granted accelerated approval to glofitamab-gxbm (Columvi) for...
The addition of nivolumab, an immune checkpoint inhibitor, to chemotherapy significantly improved progression-free survival in adults and children with advanced classical Hodgkin lymphoma with reduced toxicity compared with standard-of-care brentuximab vedotin plus chemotherapy, according to the...
On August 11, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the fixed-dose combination of niraparib and abiraterone acetate (Akeega), with prednisone, for adult patients with deleterious or suspected deleterious BRCA-mutated metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, as determined by...
The ASCO Post is pleased to present Hematology Expert Review, an ongoing feature that quizzes readers on issues in hematology. With this installment, we launch a new series of articles on commercially available chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies. Syed Ali Abutalib, MD, and Jennifer N. ...
As reported in The Lancet by Neeraj Agarwal, MD, FASCO, and colleagues, the phase III TALAPRO-2 trial has shown that the addition of talazoparib to enzalutamide improved radiographic progression–free survival vs enzalutamide alone in the first-line treatment of patients with metastatic...
As presented at the 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting, the phase III IMerge trial of imetelstat1 and the phase III COMMANDS trial of luspatercept2 met their primary endpoints of transfusion independence. The findings suggest that lower-risk patients with transfusion-dependent, non-del(5q) myelodysplastic...
Long-term follow-up of selinexor maintenance therapy in patients with p53 wild-type endometrial cancer has demonstrated anticancer activity, according to data presented by Brian M. Slomovitz, MD, and colleagues during the ASCO Plenary Series: July 2023 Session (Abstract 427956). Results of the...
A revised report of findings from the phase II TRICOTEL study of atezolizumab, vemurafenib, and cobimetinib in patients with melanoma and central nervous system (CNS) metastases was published in The Lancet Oncology by Reinhard Dummer, MD, and colleagues. The first version of trial findings,...
In a phase II trial (NCI Protocol 10250) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Ingham et al found that the combination of olaparib and temozolomide showed activity in previously treated patients with advanced uterine leiomyosarcoma. Study Details In the multicenter trial, 22 evaluable...
In the Belgian phase II CHEERS trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Spaas et al evaluated the addition of stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) to anti–PD-1/PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy, with SBRT directed to a maximum of three lesions, in patients with advanced solid tumors. The...
In a meta-analysis reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Faron et al found that neoadjuvant chemotherapy and chemoradiotherapy were associated with better survival vs upfront surgery in patients with thoracic esophageal or gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) carcinoma. Study Details The study...
In the final overall survival analysis of the phase III JUPITER-02 trial, first-line treatment with toripalimab plus gemcitabine and cisplatin resulted in a statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in overall survival and progression-free survival vs chemotherapy alone in...
Encouraging outcomes were achieved in patients with BRCA-mutated ovarian cancer who received neoadjuvant treatment with olaparib in a feasibility study led by Shannon N. Westin, MD, MPH, Professor in the Department of Gynecologic Oncology and Reproductive Medicine at The University of Texas MD...
In a phase III trial (LASER301) reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Byoung Chul Cho, MD, PhD, and colleagues found that lazertinib improved progression-free survival vs gefitinib in the first-line treatment of EGFR-mutated advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). As stated by the...
In a systematic review and individual patient meta-analysis reported in The Lancet Oncology, Claire L. Vale, PhD, and colleagues in the STOPCAP M1 collaboration identified factors associated and not associated with improved outcomes after the addition of docetaxel to androgen-deprivation therapy...
In an interim analysis of a Spanish pilot trial (CARTBCMA-HCB-01) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Oliver-Caldés et al found that an academically developed B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA)-directed chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, ARI0002h, showed activity in patients with relapsed...
In a Korean phase Ib/II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Kim et al found that trastuzumab combined with ramucirumab and paclitaxel showed activity in the second-line treatment of patients with HER2-positive advanced gastric or gastroesophageal junction cancer whose disease...
Immunotherapeutics that target human papillomavirus (HPV) genotype 16 appear to boost the activity of pembrolizumab in advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. Two examples were presented in posters at the 2023 ASCO Annual Meeting.1,2 The phase II VERSATILE-002 trial evaluated PDS0101,...
This is Part 3 of Updates in Myeloproliferative Neoplasms, a three-part video roundtable series. In this video, Dr. Naveen Pemmaraju and Dr. Gabriela Hobbs discuss goals of care in primary myelofibrosis. The patient is a 27-year-old woman who presents to the clinic after 6 months of...
On May 19, 2023, epcoritamab-bysp was granted accelerated approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treatment of relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL)–not otherwise specified, including DLBCL arising from indolent lymphoma, and high-grade B-cell lymphoma after two ...
Jennifer A. Ligibel, MD, FASCO, Director of the Leonard P. Zakim Center for Integrative Therapies and Healthy Living at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and colleagues conducted a randomized study to evaluate the impact of a telephone-based ...
On December 23, 1971, President Richard Nixon signed the National Cancer Act of 1971 into law, establishing a national cancer program that included the National Cancer Institute (NCI), other research institutes, and federal and nonfederal programs; funding for 15 new cancer research centers and...
Axillary management decisions made during surgery may be associated with aggressive treatment of limited nodal disease, according to data presented at a press briefing at the 2023 American Society of Breast Surgeons Annual Meeting.1 Results of a large National Cancer Database study revealed that...
The addition of nivolumab, an immune checkpoint inhibitor, to chemotherapy significantly improved progression-free survival in adults and children with advanced classical Hodgkin lymphoma with reduced toxicity compared with standard-of-care brentuximab vedotin plus chemotherapy, according to the...
Neoadjuvant therapy with pembrolizumab plus platinum-based chemotherapy followed by surgery and then adjuvant pembrolizumab led to significantly improved event-free survival in patients with resectable stage II and III non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) compared with platinum-based chemotherapy...
My father is deaf. Born deaf, he is now 75 years old. He uses his voice, but he sounds strange to a hearing person when he speaks. He uses lip-reading techniques to communicate. A year ago, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma. We did his oncology itinerary together. My father cannot go alone to...
Patients with intermediate-risk rectal cancer who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy with selective use of pelvic chemoradiation therapy had disease-free survival that was noninferior to the standard approach using pelvic chemoradiation, according to findings from the randomized phase III PROSPECT...
In a Korean study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Jin et al found that increased alcohol intake may be associated with an increased risk of early-onset colorectal cancer. Study Details The study involved data from 5,666,576 individuals aged 20 to 49 years from the Korean National...
Female survivors treated for Hodgkin lymphoma may face declining fertility at a younger age, according to recent findings presented by Drechsel et al at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) 2023 Annual Meeting (Abstract O-083). The new research also suggested that the...
Cervical cancer is a serious problem in many low- and middle-income countries such as the African country of Rwanda. Although the cervical cancer rate in Rwanda remains more than twice the U.S. rate, there has been improvement in recent years that cancer research organizations can learn from to...
The immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab achieved high response rates in patients with unresectable metastatic desmoplastic melanoma, a rare invasive tumor type, according to the results of the phase II SWOG S1512 trial presented at the 2023 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)...
Testing for the emergence of ESR1 mutations should be routine at disease recurrence or progression for patients with estrogen receptor (ER)-positive, HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer whose disease is being managed with endocrine therapy, according to an ASCO guideline rapid recommendation...
The oral IDH1/2 inhibitor vorasidenib significantly improved progression-free survival in patients with grade 2 gliomas expressing IDH1/2 mutations in the phase III INDIGO trial. These results, which were reported by lead author Ingo K. Mellinghoff, MD, FACP, of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer...
In the phase IIIb CheckMate 401 trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Reinhard Dummer, MD, and colleagues described outcomes with first-line nivolumab/ipilimumab followed by nivolumab in a clinically diverse population of patients with unresectable stage III or IV melanoma, including...
In a study reported in The Lancet Oncology, McIntosh et al identified components of global funding for cancer research—both public and philanthropic—between 2016 and 2020. Study Details The study used data from the UberResearch Dimensions database and Cancer Research UK data on human cancer...
In a Danish study reported in JAMA Surgery, Eskesen et al found moderate to severe physical trauma in one of same-sex twins was associated with an increased risk of the composite endpoint of death or immune-mediated disease or cancer vs their co-twins over long-term follow-up. Study Details The...
Hispanic and non-Hispanic Black breast cancer survivors may experience higher rates of mortality after being diagnosed with a second primary cancer than breast cancer survivors of other ethnic and racial groups, according to a new study published by Deng et al in the Journal of the National Cancer...
The use of preoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) did not significantly reduce positive margins after breast-conserving surgery, according to data presented during a press briefing at the 2023 American Society of Breast Surgeons Annual Meeting.1 Although MRI has been shown to detect...
In the phase II VIRO-15 trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Holloway et al found that virotherapy with the modified oncolytic vaccinia virus olvimulogene nanivacirepvec plus platinum-based chemotherapy with or without bevacizumab showed activity in patients with platinum-resistant or...
Guest Editor’s Note: Despite its high prevalence, cancer pain remains undertreated. Racial disparities present further challenges to assessing and managing pain. Music therapy, a nonpharmacologic intervention, has been documented to be effective in controlling cancer pain. In this article, Kevin T. ...
Results of a new survey from the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) have shed light on the widespread impact of the current carboplatin and cisplatin shortages. In a separate statement, the NCCN called on the whole oncology community to work together on solutions. Background Carboplatin...
Ciltacabtagene autoleucel, a B-cell maturation antigen–targeting chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, significantly slows or stops progression of multiple myeloma when compared with standard-of-care treatments among patients with lenalidomide-refractory disease. Results from the...
Researchers have found that the bacteria, fungi, and viruses within the tumors of patients with colorectal cancer varied significantly depending on whether they were diagnosed with early-onset or late-onset disease, according to new findings presented by Weinberg et al at the 2023 ASCO Annual...
Jonathan W. Friedberg, MD, MMSc, Director of the James P. Wilmot Cancer Institute, grew up in a suburb of Milwaukee. While his school friends were attending camp, he spent his summers working on the family farm. “Perhaps the hardest work I’ve ever done was haying on a hot, humid night in July,...
A randomized study by Jennifer A. Ligibel, MD, Director of the Leonard P. Zakim Center for Integrative Therapies and Healthy Living at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, evaluating the impact of a telephone-based weight loss intervention in...