BOOKMARK Title: The Drug Hunters: The Improbable Quest to Discover New MedicinesAuthors: Donald R. Kirsch, PhD, and Ogi Ogas, PhDPublisher: Arcade PublishingPublication date: January 2017Price: $24.99, hardcover, 328 pages Only about 1 in 100 drug discovery projects initiated by the pharmaceutical ...
The University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) and its clinical partner, Nebraska Medicine, has officially dedicated the new Fred & Pamela Buffett Cancer Center in Omaha. Joe Biden, the former two-term Vice President who headed a national Cancer Moonshot Task Force, served as keynote speaker...
The recent report of results of RTOG 9601 by Shipley et al in The New England Journal of Medicine1—reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post—strongly supports the variably used practice of adding “androgen blockade” to salvage radiation therapy in men with a rising prostate-specific antigen (PSA)...
Over the past 20 years, the Intergroupe Francophone du Myelome (IFM) and Dr. Michel Attal have pioneered the use of autologous hematopoietic cell transplantation (AHCT) for multiple myeloma in a series of randomized studies. Notable studies include comparisons of planned upfront AHCT vs...
Nearly 2,500 children in the United States are diagnosed with brain tumors each year, making these malignancies among the most common solid tumors in children and adolescents. Despite advances over the past few decades, the treatment of brain tumors remains one of the most challenging clinical...
On the Cancer.Net blog (www.cancer.net/blog), your patients can learn about the research highlighted at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting, including what it means for their care and treatment. They can also follow the blog for additional updates from the Meeting, including podcasts with ASCO experts...
One of the most active areas of research in breast cancer involves the targeting of the androgen receptor. Trials underway for androgen receptor antagonists and modulators, alone and in various combinations of available agents and novel therapies, are yielding encouraging early results. At the 2017 ...
Michael Berry, MD, a breast surgeon who is Director of the Margaret West Comprehensive Breast Center at The West Cancer Center, Memphis, told the The ASCO Post that these findings “echo what surgeons already know,” which is that lymphedema is a result of multiple insults to the axilla. But one...
Head and neck cancer can take away a patient’s “right to feel human,” and its impact on physical appearance, physical functioning, and general quality of life can be devastating, according to Merry Sebelik, MD, Associate Professor of Head and Neck Surgery at Emory University in Atlanta. At a...
The impact of targeted therapies in head and neck cancer has been limited, but we can strategize to integrate the development of targeted and immunotherapeutic agents, according to Christine H. Chung, MD, Senior Member and Chair in the Department of Head and Neck-Endocrine Oncology at Moffitt...
Phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) inhibitors represent a highly active class of drug for the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Idelalisib (Zydelig), a PI3K-delta inhibitor and the first PI3K inhibitor to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for CLL, has...
Manish Shah, MD, Director of Gastrointestinal Oncology at NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine, was impressed with the findings of the two subanalyses of CALGB 89803. “The study found a 46% reduction in the risk of recurrence with two servings of tree nuts a week, and that’s more than ...
Tree nut consumption, as well as a generally healthy lifestyle, significantly reduced the risk of cancer recurrence and death in patients with stage III colon cancer treated in the Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB) 89803 trial, researchers reported at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting. Two subanalyses ...
In the past 10 years, we have made remarkable advances in how we fight cancer. One of the most powerful new tools in our arsenal is cancer immunotherapy, which reawakens our own immune system to produce stunning results for many suffering from advanced cancer. Immunotherapy saved President Jimmy...
As new treatment decision-making tools make their way toward and into the clinic, oncologists are getting a sense of how they may affect clinical practice—and beginning to look farther down the road. “What do you see ahead for clinicians?” asked Christian Downs, JD, Executive Director of the...
Younger patients with colon cancer appear to have more than three times as many mutations in their tumors as older patients, which could lead to more effective treatment decisions, according to researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. In a new study, they found that tumor...
A randomized clinical trial of 766 patients shows that a simple intervention—a Web-based tool that enables patients to report their symptoms in real time, triggering alerts to clinicians—can have major benefits, including longer survival. Patients with metastatic cancer who used the...
Findings from a phase III clinical trial of about 300 women may introduce poly ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitors as a new type of treatment for breast cancer. Compared to standard chemotherapy, the oral targeted medicine olaparib (Lynparza) reduced the chance of progression of advanced,...
About 50% of all cancer survivors and 70% of young breast cancer survivors report a moderate to high fear of recurrence. The fear can be so distressing that it negatively affects medical follow-up behavior, mood, relationships, work, goal setting, and quality of life. Yet interventions to alleviate ...
Advanced cancer triggers enormous distress and brings challenges that can seem overwhelming. Yet most cancer centers lack systematic approaches to help patients and families manage the practical and emotional toll of advanced cancer. Findings from a randomized clinical trial of 305 patients with...
A lung cancer diagnosis appears to put patients at the greatest risk of suicide when compared to the most common types of non-skin cancers, according to new research presented at the 2017 American Thoracic Society International Conference (Abstract 8321). Researchers analyzed 3,640,229 patients in ...
In a study of three radiation therapies for early-stage breast cancer, one treatment option stands out as offering the most value based on factors including health outcomes, cost-effectiveness, and quality of life. The treatment—hypofractionated whole-breast irradiation—also requires...
After he was not accepted into the University of Hong Kong, plan B for W.K. Alfred Yung, MD, was to leave his country and immigrate to the United States to attend the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis—a move he considers more exile than choice. Born on April 8, 1948, in Hong Kong, Dr. Yung...
Robert L. Comis, MD, FASCO, Co-Chair of the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group, succumbed to a sudden illness at his home and died on May 10, 2017, at the age of 71. A giant in national and international clinical research since 1977, Dr. Comis is known as a champion of patient access to cancer...
Eric Paul Winer, MD, was born in Boston in 1956, a year when gasoline was 22 cents a gallon and IBM released the world’s first computer with a hard drive. His grandfather on his mother’s side had hemophilia and died 5 years before Dr. Winer was born. Although there was a 50% chance that Dr. Winer...
Bert Vogelstein, MD, was born on June 2, 1949, at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, the same renowned institution where he would later make his mark in the field of cancer genetics. As a young teen, he was an enthusiast and independent consumer of books, one of which helped shape...
Eliezer Robinson, MD, was born in Vienna, Austria, on June 17, 1931. At that time, Vienna, a bustling and prosperous city, was an important center of Jewish culture and education. Jews made up a large portion of the city’s professional class of doctors, lawyers, bankers, and artists. Dr. Robinson...
Lori J. Pierce, MD, FASCO, FASTRO, grew up in Washington, DC, and moved with her family to Philadelphia while in high school. She still considers the fast-paced DC–Philadelphia corridor her home, but her passion for a career in medicine, in part, took seed in a small town located in North...
Anna T. Meadows, MD, an internationally distinguished pediatric oncologist who led paradigm-changing survivorship research and clinical care of children with cancer, had an unusual introduction to the United States. “My mother was traveling abroad on vacation and got married in Poland. Although...
Waun Ki Hong, MD, FACP, one of the nation’s leading experts in head and neck and lung cancers, was born in South Korea and grew up in a tiny village outside the nation’s capital of Seoul. Number six of seven siblings, Dr. Hong described his early life in the cozy village as blissful, until the...
George P. Canellos, MD, President of ASCO from 1993 to 1994, was born in Boston on November 1, 1934. “I came from a business family and never wanted to do business at all. As long back as I can remember, I always found medicine attractive—not only because you could help people, but you could also...
David Baltimore, PhD, whose work profoundly influenced international science, was born on March 7, 1938, in Queens, New York, to Gertrude and Richard Baltimore. While he was in second grade, the family moved to Great Neck, New York, a middle-class suburb with top-notch public schools. “My father...
The nationally recognized hematologist-oncologist Mojtaba Akhtari, MD, was born and reared in Tehran, Iran. “In my early years, I had a couple of cousins who were medical students. When I visited them in their homes, I was fascinated with the images in their medical text books. I would flip the...
Bruce E. Johnson, MD, FASCO, 2017–2018 ASCO President, was born in St. Peter, Minnesota, and grew up on a rural dairy farm. “Neither of my parents had college degrees, but working on a dairy farm with them gave me a solid work ethic. I was working outside on the farm before I was 10 years old. In...
In 2009, I was living my dream. My work as a business development manager for a technology company was thriving; I had a satisfying social life; I was active in sports, especially hiking and biking; and I was involved in social justice causes as a volunteer at San Quentin State Prison, helping...
In a nearly hour-long address to more than 4,500 attendees at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) on April 3, former Vice President Joe Biden lambasted President Trump’s proposed $5.8 billion budget cut to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and...
Is there enough evidence to support the incorporation of weight management and physical activity interventions into an oncology practice? And if so, what is the best way to do it? The answer to the first question was a resounding yes from oncologists, patient advocates, dietitians, public health...
Research is still lacking to support a link between obesity and an increased risk of developing all types of cancer. Nevertheless, a review1 of more than 1,000 epidemiologic studies by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a division of the World Health Organization, examining...
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Chair of Immunology, James Allison, PhD—whose pivotal insight to attack cancer by treating the immune system instead of the tumor revived cancer immunotherapy—has been named to the 2017 TIME 100 Most Influential People. His approach launched a...
According to the American Cancer Society, over 252,700 new cases of invasive breast cancer will be diagnosed in 2017, and about 40,610 women will die of their disease. Between 7% and 10% of those new cases will be diagnosed in women younger than age 40, accounting for more than 40% of all cancer...
As the subtleties of metastatic prostate cancer become increasingly recognized, treatment should evolve accordingly, said Jessica M. Clement, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Connecticut Health System and Neag Cancer Center, Farmington. Of particular interest to Dr. Clement ...
Ensuring that all patients with cancer have access to the potential benefits of precision medicine regardless of where they are treated has been a primary goal of Bruce E. Johnson, MD, FASCO, since the concept was first introduced following completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003. Dr....
Next month, more than 30,000 oncology professionals will gather in -Chicago for the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting. This year’s theme, “Making a Difference in Cancer Care WITH YOU,” speaks to driving advances in cancer care and treatment through teamwork among clinicians, researchers, educators, and...
Adding hydroxychloroquine, an inhibitor of autophagy, to neoadjuvant chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer increases its efficacy and alters the tumor’s molecular profile in a way that may render the tumor more susceptible to immune checkpoint inhibitors, according to interim data from a phase II...
As thyroid cancer rates rise, more patients are having surgery to remove all or part of their thyroid. A new study by Papaleontiou et al in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism suggests complications from these procedures are more common than previously believed. Overall, 6.5% of ...
”This was a great study and novel, asking what longer-term survivors with colon cancer are dying from—the toxicity of our treatment or population-risk illnesses?” commented session co-moderator, Patrick S. Sullivan, MD, Assistant Professor of Surgery and Chief Quality Officer, Division of Surgical ...
Patients with colorectal cancer who survive at least 5 years are increasingly likely to die from causes that are common in the general population, highlighting the importance of screening and lifestyle modification, suggested a large cohort study conducted in California.1 The analysis of more than...
Triple-negative breast cancer is an aggressive disease with no approved targeted therapy, and it remains challenging to treat. Early data from a phase I study suggest that the PD-L1 inhibitor atezolizumab (Tecentriq) can extend the lives of a subset of women who respond to this checkpoint...
For patients with breast cancer starting on aromatase inhibitors, sexual dysfunction is commonly reported. Early intervention may lessen its impact—but it’s not an easy fix, says a specialist in this area, Leslie R. Schover, PhD. Dr. Schover is Founder of Will2Love, an online sexual health program ...
As reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, a recent issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology featured an ASCO Clinical Practice Guideline on the management of small renal masses reported by Finelli and colleagues.1 This comprehensive guideline is written by a group of well-regarded and...