For this installment of the Living a Full Life series, guest editor Jame Abraham, MD, spoke with physician-scientist Brian J. Druker, MD, Director of the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University, Portland. In 2009, Dr. Druker won the Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research ...
A novel strategy of combining a drive-by flu vaccination clinic with an opportunity for participants to use a take-home fecal immunochemical test (FIT) increased access to colorectal screening among Black Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results related to access to colorectal cancer...
Patients with cancer are at an increased risk of death due to COVID-19 compared with the general population. And hematologic cancers carry an even greater risk than solid tumors, according to a comprehensive meta-analysis from the Reboot: COVID-Cancer Project presented at the 2021 AACR Virtual...
Oliver Sartor, MD, Assistant Dean for Oncology and Professor at the Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans, commended Dr. Hofman and colleagues for completing a randomized phase II trial of lutetium-177–labeled prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA-617), or LuPSMA, so quickly. He...
“Now we know enfortumab vedotin-ejfv is here to stay in the armamentarium of treatment for advanced urothelial cancer,” said Arlene O. Siefker-Radtke, MD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, during her discussion of both EV-301 and EV-201. “As we saw, overall survival was quite...
There are many relationships we build at work in our entire lifetime. Some are good, a few are not, and many are somewhere in between. But of all the relationships we are fortunate enough to build, there is no relationship more valuable and gratifying than the one between a physician and a ...
In just a few years, immunotherapy has risen to become a pillar of cancer care, leading to significantly improved response rates and even cures in previously intractable diseases. Leveraging the immune system to treat cancer, however, also increases the potential for serious off-target effects....
According to the invited discussant of UNIRAD,1Peter Schmid, MD, PhD, Lead of the Centre for Experimental Medicine at Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, it remains unclear whether or not everolimus plus hormone therapy is an effective adjuvant regimen for high-risk patients...
The formal discussant of the CLEAR trial, Stephanie Berg, DO, of Loyola University Medical Center, Chicago, was enthusiastic about these findings. “Traditionally, first-line therapy with vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors led to a median overall survival...
Although cancers of the gallbladder or bile ducts are rare, their rates of occurrence are increasing. A recent study published by Ouyang et al in the journal Cancer provided details on the burden of gallbladder and biliary tract cancer across 195 countries and territories from 1990 to 2017....
Sumanta Pal, MD, of City of Hope, Duarte, California, praised the authors for the conduct of the study, but stopped short of endorsing nivolumab as standard of care. “The phase III CheckMate 274 trial evaluated adjuvant nivolumab vs placebo in patients with high-risk, resected, muscle-invasive...
Updated findings from a cohort of patients with cancer infected with COVID-19 included in the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium (CCC19) were published by Petros Grivas, MD, PhD, and colleagues in Annals of Oncology. Authors identified factors associated with a more severe viral infection among...
Patients whose procedures for gastrointestinal malignancies were performed by a surgical team at a hospital ranked as one of America’s “best” by U.S. News & World Report were nearly two and half times more likely to survive the operation than those who had the same procedure done at a nonranked ...
In a study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Bersanelli et al reported that researchers in the EuroMDS Project found that patients with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) could be classified into eight distinct subtypes based on genomic characteristics. They also developed a new prognostic ...
In an analysis of a modern cohort of patients with metastatic seminoma reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Beyer et al, members of the International Germ Cell Cancer Collaborative Group (IGCCCG) Update Consortium, found that progression-free and overall survival have improved compared...
The combination of lenalidomide plus the steroid dexamethasone (together called Rd) is considered standard treatment for elderly patients with multiple myeloma. However, prolonged steroid use can be harmful for some older adults. A new study published by Larocca et al in the journal Blood found...
In the 5-year follow-up of the pivotal SOLO-1 trial in women with advanced ovarian cancer and a BRCA1/2 mutation, maintenance treatment with olaparib led to a doubling in progression-free survival. William H. Bradley, MD, presented these findings at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) 2021...
Frailty may be a better predictor of poor surgical outcomes in patients with ovarian cancer than age, according to two studies reported at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer. Researchers found that frail patients are less likely to undergo...
Although some studies show that patients with cancer have a greater risk of health complications from COVID-19, a new study has found that recent chemotherapy or immunotherapy for gynecologic cancer does not raise the risk of hospitalization or death due to COVID-19. The study results were...
In a survey of 250 female gynecologic oncologists, more than half reported experiencing instances of bullying, gender discrimination, or microaggressions. They also reported that having a female department chair provided no buffer against these forms of gender harassment or discrimination in the...
Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Priority Review to the HIF-2α inhibitor belzutifan for the treatment of patients with von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease–associated renal cell carcinoma. The agency also granted Fast Track designation to poziotinib for the treatment of...
One in six men being treated for advanced prostate cancer reported experiencing a reduced sense of smell and taste, according to a study published by Alonzi et al in the journal Supportive Care in Cancer. The study authors noted that a reduced sense of smell and taste among some patients with...
In an analysis of updated evidence on low-dose computed tomography (CT) screening for lung cancer reported in JAMA, Jonas et al found that screening can reduce lung cancer mortality but may be associated with a range of potential harms. The analysis was performed to inform the new U.S. Preventive...
High tumor mutational burden (TMB) was useful for predicting clinical responses to immune checkpoint inhibitors only in a subset of cancer types, according to a study published by McGrail et al in Annals of Oncology. The findings suggest that TMB status may not be reliably used as a universal...
Vaccinating adults aged 26 and older against the human papillomavirus (HPV) may not be cost-effective, according to a new study published by Kim et al in PLOS Medicine. “Our study found that the added health benefit of increasing the vaccination age limit beyond 26 years is minimal, and that the...
With three new HER2-targeted therapies approved in the past 15 months alone, the treatment landscape for patients with metastatic breast cancer has become increasingly crowded. In the third-line setting and beyond, there are now at least eight HER2-targeted agents approved by the U.S. Food and Drug ...
Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that the agency will hold a public meeting of the Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee on April 27 to 29 to discuss six indications granted accelerated approval that have since reported results from confirmatory trials that have not...
Consensus guidelines recommending that routine surveillance mammography be discontinued for older breast cancer survivors with a limited life expectancy1 may raise questions among patients concerned about undetected cancer recurrence. Informing older survivors about the new recommendations and the...
Newly issued mammography screening guidelines for breast cancer survivors aged 75 and older recommend discontinuing routine mammography for those with a life expectancy of less than 5 years and considering discontinuation of routine screening for those with a life expectancy between 5 and 10 years. ...
A survey of more than 6,500 U.S. patients with blood cancer and survivors revealed that only half are very likely to get a COVID-19 vaccine, while one in three is either unlikely or unsure about it. The nationwide survey was a collaboration between The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS), Boston...
New clues as to why night-shift workers are at an increased risk of developing certain types of cancer were uncovered in a new study published by Koritala et al in the Journal of Pineal Research. The study involved a controlled laboratory experiment that used healthy volunteers who were on...
New data from the prospective Neoadjuvant Breast Symphony Trial (NBRST), which demonstrated the predictive and prognostic abilities of the MammaPrint and BluePrint assays and underpinned their preoperative utility in pre-and postmenopausal patients with breast cancer, were presented at PER’s Miami...
As of this writing, no drugs have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of COVID-19, although several have received emergency use authorization and many others are being used off-label during the pandemic. In addition to searching for novel therapies, David...
New research published by van Seventer et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network has found that muscle mass was correlated with survival, while muscle radiodensity was associated with symptom burden, health-care use, and survival in patients with advanced cancer undergoing ...
A recent ASCO guideline update, prompted by data from several phase III randomized controlled trials, summarizes the evidence supporting the best initial treatment options for the management of noncastrate advanced, recurrent, or metastatic prostate cancer. The hope is that the guideline will help...
Feasibility assessments for clinical trials are conducted to establish that prospective trial sites can safely and effectively meet study goals and protocol requirements; however, a new research statement from ASCO asserts that current standards are “costly, inconsistent, inefficient, labor...
ASCO and Friends of Cancer Research (Friends) jointly issued new recommendations to further efforts to broaden eligibility criteria in cancer clinical trials with the goal of making clinical trials more accessible to patients.1 The joint recommendations are detailed in a series of articles...
Neoadjuvant treatment with single-agent atezolizumab in patients with stage IB to IIIB lung cancer resulted in a major pathologic response rate of 21% and a pathologic complete response rate of 7%, in the primary analysis of the Lung Cancer Mutation Consortium 3 (LCMC3) study.1 The findings were...
Caroline Dive, CBE, PhD, FBPhS, FMedSci, Director of the CRUK Manchester Institute Cancer Biomarker Centre, University of Manchester, has been recognized by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) with the Mary J. Matthews Pathology/Translational Research Award. The award ...
Belantamab mafodotin-blmf combined with pomalidomide and dexamethasone led to a very good partial response or better in approximately three-quarters of patients with multiple myeloma that was double-class or triple-class refractory, according to Suzanne Trudel, MSc, MD, FRCPC, of Princess Margaret...
In the treatment of cholangiocarcinoma, many clinicians may be unaware of the importance of the major oncogenic mutations and other alterations that can be identified and targeted, according to a survey of oncologists presented at the 2021 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.1 “Recent developments...
Various studies at institutions in the United States and abroad have shown a substantial decline in cancer screening rates during the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that fewer cancers will be detected by screening and when they do manifest, they will be at more advanced stages. Indeed,...
“It has been a long time coming to see a positive randomized phase III study with a checkpoint inhibitor in relapsed mesothelioma,” said the study’s invited discussant, Rina Hui, MBBS, PhD, Clinical Professor of Medicine, Crown Princess Mary Cancer Centre, Westmead Hospital, University of Sydney,...
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. In this installment, Yen Nien Hou, PharmD, DipIOM, LAc, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, focus on...
On January 14, 2021, crizotinib was approved for treatment of pediatric patients 1 year of age and older and young adults with relapsed or refractory systemic anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL) that is ALK-positive.1,2 The safety and efficacy of crizotinib have not been established in older...
On February 3, 2021, tepotinib was granted accelerated approval for treatment of adult patients with metastatic non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) harboring mesenchymal-epithelial transition (MET) exon 14–skipping alterations.1,2 Supporting Efficacy Data Approval was supported by findings from the...
The results from a recent study showcase the disturbing prevalence of sexual dysfunction as a treatment side effect of cancer and gender disparity in how the problem is addressed by physicians.1 The study, conducted by James Taylor, MD, MPH, Chief Resident in the Department of Radiation Oncology at ...
The holistic benefits derived from exercise in preventing and ameliorating chronic health conditions such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes are well documented. However, less is known about the salutary effects exercise may have across the cancer setting, especially during treatment....
Today, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) published a final recommendation statement on screening for lung cancer in people who do not have signs or symptoms. Based on the evidence, the USPSTF recommends yearly screening using a low-dose computed tomography (CT) scan for people aged...
A major new collaborative effort, the Global Breast Cancer Initiative, was introduced by the World Health Organization (WHO), with the objective of reducing global breast cancer mortality by 2.5% per year until 2040, thereby averting an estimated 2.5 million deaths. In recognition of International ...