Jame Abraham, MD, has been appointed to the positions of Director, Taussig Cancer Institute Breast Oncology Program, and Co-Director of the Cleveland Clinic Multidisciplinary Breast Cancer Program. Dr. Abraham is the former Medical Director of the West Virginia University Mary Babb Randolph Cancer ...
The first candidate vaccine to prevent recurrence of breast cancer entered clinical trials about 8 years ago, and since then, the idea of a vaccine for secondary prevention has gained traction; more such vaccines are now in development. But this fall, it was vaccines for primary prevention that had ...
In early breast cancer patients receiving anti-HER2 therapy in the NeoALTTO trial, mutations in PIK3CA were associated with lower rates of pathologic complete response, according to a study reported at the 2013 European Cancer Congress by José Baselga, MD, Physician-in-Chief at Memorial...
A 72-year-old, obese male patient and a poor operative candidate is diagnosed with esophageal carcinoma. He has multiple comorbidities and a past history of colon carcinoma. His staging workup, which included a colonoscopy, revealed recurrent colon carcinoma. Thus, we have a patient who we...
Though certainly not new to oncologists, “shared decision-making” between doctors and patients is receiving increased attention in the medical community today. While it’s an idea with merit, Steven J. Katz, MD, MPH, a specialist in quality care issues, maintains that expectations about the...
Dr. Janet L. Rowley’s groundbreaking research in the translocation of genetic material bucked scientific convention and heralded a new understanding that cancer is indeed a genetic disease. Her research was largely responsible for the discoveries that led to the development of the targeted cancer...
Michael A. Foley, PhD, has been selected to lead the Tri-Institutional Therapeutics Discovery Institute, Inc. (Tri-I TDI), a collaboration of Weill Cornell Medical College, The Rockefeller University, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center that is designed to expedite early-stage drug discovery ...
On behalf of its founder, Daniel K. Ludwig, Ludwig Cancer Research has awarded $540 million across six Ludwig Centers, including those at Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Stanford University, and the...
Two events in Ezra M. Greenspan’s early adult life convinced him to pursue a career in medicine: the death of a college friend from pneumonia when the two were students at Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences and his own bout with the disease soon after. Saved by a local physician who...
NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center has named Gary Schwartz, MD, Chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology in the Department of Medicine and Associate Director for Research of its Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Schwartz assumed his new role on January 1,...
While acknowledging that the full potential of cancer immunotherapy remains unclear, the editors of the journal Science said that the approach of using the immune system to attack tumors marks a turning point in the treatment of cancer.1 The successes of cancer immunotherapy in clinical trials in...
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has selected Susan Desmond-Hellmann, MD, MPH, as its next Chief Executive Officer. Currently the Chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Dr. Desmond-Hellmann will assume her role on May 1, 2014. “We chose Sue because of her...
The updated analysis of the Intergroupe Francophone du Myelome (IFM) 2005-02 trial in newly diagnosed multiple myeloma patients showed that lenalidomide (Revlimid) maintenance prolongs progression-free survival after stem cell transplantation, but does not improve overall survival, according to...
Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, have identified an overactive gene that drives about one-third of high-grade serous ovarian tumors—the most common and malignant type of ovarian cancer. The gene, GAB2, isn’t mutated or abnormal, but triggers cancerous cell growth because the...
Debu Tripathy, MD, Professor of Medicine, Co-Leader of the Women’s Cancer Program, and the Priscilla and Art Ulene Chair in Women’s Cancer at the University of Southern California Norris Cancer Center, Los Angeles, commented on the APT study for The ASCO Post. “In treating early-stage...
After the IBIS-II presentation at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, Carlos L. Arteaga, MD, of Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center, Nashville, noted that women at high risk are afraid of developing breast cancer and that pharmacologic intervention may allay their anxiety. “Dr. Cuzick’s study...
Reports have been trickling in from centers conducting research on the use of chimeric antigen receptor–modified T cells (CAR-T) in hematologic cancer, and the news is encouraging. When directed against CD19, such personalized therapeutic T cells are known as CTL019, and small pilot trials of this...
As the American Society of Clinical Oncology celebrates its 50th anniversary, ASCO’s Chief Executive Officer Allen S. Lichter, MD, FASCO, recently talked with The ASCO Post about the Society’s past, present, and future. Important Milestone What are your thoughts about ASCO’s origins and its 50th...
“He gave his honours to the world again,his blessed part to heaven, and slept in peace.” —William Shakespeare, Henry VIII In 1971, John M. Goldman, DM, FRCP, FRCPath, FMedSci, began research in chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), a uniformly fatal disease at the time. Over the ensuing decades, Dr....
The Department of Pediatric Radiology at Texas Children’s Hospital recently announced that Kamlesh U. Kukreja, MD, has been named the new Chief of Interventional Radiology. Dr. Kukreja has also been appointed as Assistant Professor of Radiology at Baylor College of Medicine. “For more than a...
The Hutchinson Institute for Cancer Outcomes Research (HICOR) has named Gary Lyman, MD, MPH, the Institute’s Co-Director with Scott Ramsey, MD, PhD, an internist and health-care economist, and a member of the Cancer Prevention Program in the Public Health Sciences Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer ...
In October, ASCO will cosponsor the inaugural Palliative Care in Oncology Symposium with the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM), the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), and the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer (MASCC). The Symposium is...
Ian F. Tannock, MD, PhD, DSc, FASCO, Professor of Medical Oncology at Princess Margaret Hospital and University of Toronto, has long been an advocate for ASCO as a truly global society and a leader in cancer care worldwide. It’s something he encouraged during his time on ASCO’s Board of Directors,...
More than 1,000 scientists from 66 countries, including 32 of the 52 African countries, attended the African Organization for Research and Training in Cancer (AORTIC) 9th International Conference on Cancer in Africa, held this past November in Durban, South Africa. The theme of the 2013 meeting was ...
“The future is increasingly bright for patients as we move into an era of effective nonchemotherapy treatment options,” commented Nathan Fowler, MD, Associate Professor in the Department of Lymphoma/Myeloma at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston. “Over the past several years, ...
Lajos Pusztai, MD, DPhil, Professor of Medicine and Director of Breast Medical Oncology at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, who was the formal discussant of the papers by Sikov et al and Rugo et al, said there is mounting evidence for using carboplatin. He and his own research team have...
The achievement of a pathologic complete response in patients with triple-negative breast cancer was boosted by the addition of carboplatin to a standard neoadjuvant chemotherapy regimen, and by the addition of veliparib, an investigational oral PARP inhibitor, plus carboplatin to a standard...
In the January 15, 2014, issue of The ASCO Post, three errors occurred. These errors have since been corrected and revised versions of the articles may be viewed online at ASCOPost.com or via the QR code here. The errors were as follows below. Trastuzumab Dosing In the article “HER2-Positive...
Many of the advances that have bettered mankind are attributed to those who were driven by a primary passion. Geoffrey P. Herzig, MD, lived the better part of his life with a primary passion: conducting research to increase the cure rate of leukemia and lymphoma patients. His friend and colleague,...
“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.” —John Wayne Donald L. Morton, MD, transformed the management of melanoma and breast cancer by...
“If women are to truly participate in the decision of whether or not to be screened [for breast cancer using mammography], they need some quantification of its benefits and harms,” asserted H. Gilbert Welch, MD, MPH, Professor of Medicine, and Honor J. Passow, PhD, Instructor, at The Dartmouth...
Fourteen years ago, when I was just 29, I was feeling weak and fatigued and had severe pain in my abdomen. I’d had these symptoms for about a year, but none of the several doctors I saw or any of the tests they performed could find the source of my problems. I even had one nurse practitioner tell...
Over the past several decades, outcomes data have traced the success stories in cancer research and therapeutics. However, during those decades of increasingly rapid scientific breakthroughs, certain psychosocial components in the continuum of cancer care were often overlooked. One such element is...
National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, has appointed Hannah Valantine, MD, to Chief Officer for Scientific Workforce Diversity. Dr. Valantine will lead NIH’s effort to diversify the biomedical research workforce by developing a vision and comprehensive strategy...
Looking over an illustrious career in medical oncology that spans 5 decades, Franco M. Muggia, MD, told The ASCO Post that he is excited about the future and hopes to continue making contributions to the field of oncology in years to come. At the forefront of the early clinical development of...
Founded nearly 3 decades ago in response to unfavorable changes in Medicare reimbursement regulations and growing coverage issues with Michigan’s private payers that threatened oncologists’ ability to provide quality cancer care to patients, the Michigan Society of Hematology and Oncology (MSHO)...
On this historic year, as ASCO proudly commemorates its 50th anniversary and decades of evolutionary change and growth, it also celebrates the significant progress that has been made against cancer throughout history. ASCO’s anniversary website, CancerProgress.Net, chronicles these achievements and ...
It has been a little over a decade since the Institute of Medicine landmark report Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care found overwhelming evidence of racial disparities in the U.S. health-care system. Since then, ASCO has been dedicated to minimizing these...
The Bruton’s tyrosine kinase inhibitor ibrutinib (Imbruvica) is changing the landscape of treatment in chronic lymphocytic leukemia. New research with the drug in lymphoma, presented at the 2013 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting in New Orleans, indicates it may be of benefit in...
Andrew D. Zelenetz, MD, PhD, Chair of the Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma Guideline Panel of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) and former Chief of the Lymphoma Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, put the latest maintenance trials into perspective for The ASCO Post....
The connection between smoking and lung cancer is universally accepted as scientific fact, and those who choose to smoke are painfully aware of the risk it poses for addiction and subsequent cancer. However, to fully appreciate the significance of the Surgeon General’s report, one must turn back to ...
City of Hope in Duarte, California, has named Steven T. Rosen, MD, as its first Provost and Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Rosen will guide the scientific direction of the center’s medical research, treatment, and education. He will also assume directorship of the comprehensive cancer institute,...
David A. Fullerton, MD, of the University of Colorado School of Medicine, was elected President of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) at the Society’s 50th Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida. “STS has been a preeminent medical society for many years,” said Dr. Fullerton. “It is truly a great...
Nearly 250 advanced practitioners assembled at the first annual JADPRO Live educational symposium in St. Petersburg, Florida, hosted by the Journal of the Advanced Practitioner in Oncology (JADPRO). Leaders from four prominent oncology organizations championed collaborative practice as not only...
Jeffrey Miller, MD, Professor of Medicine at the University of Minnesota and Deputy Director of the Masonic Cancer Clinic in Minneapolis, commented on the haploidentical hematopoietic stem cell transplantation studies presented at the American Society of Hematology meeting for The ASCO Post “The...
Mastectomy is unnecessary in many women with stage IV breast cancer, according to a study from Indian investigators, reported at the 2013 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.1 The study randomly assigned 350 patients with metastatic breast cancer to mastectomy, complete axillary dissection, plus...
ASCO is exploring what is happening on the front lines in the laboratory and the clinic due to the shrinking federal funding for cancer research and clinical trials with a series of stories about oncologists. The series is posted on ASCO.org (www.asco.org/nihfunding). In the first article, Robert...
Michael A. Thompson, MD, PhD, a Medical Oncologist for Aurora Cancer Care and the Medical Director of Early Cancer Research at Aurora Health Care in Wisconsin, has become something of an expert on the Conquer Cancer Foundation. It began in 2006, when he received a Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO...
Debu Tripathy, MD, Professor of Medicine, Co-Leader of the Women’s Cancer Program, and the Priscilla and Art Ulene Chair in Women’s Cancer at the University of Southern California Norris Cancer Center, Los Angeles, commented on the APT study for The ASCO Post. “In treating early-stage HER2-positive ...
In January, Congress approved a $1 trillion appropriations bill for the rest of fiscal year 2014. While the new bill includes $29.9 billion for the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—$1 billion above FY2013 levels after sequestration—including $4.9 billion for the National Cancer Institute (NCI),...