INITIAL DATA from the ongoing, multicenter, first-in-human, phase Ia/Ib dose-escalation and -expansion study suggest that an anti–T-cell immunoglobulin domain and mucin domain–containing molecule 3 (anti–TIM-3) antibody alone or in combination with immune checkpoint blockade could counter intrinsic ...
THE COMBINATION of lenvatinib plus pembrolizumab has demonstrated antitumor activity in patients with advanced urothelial cancer, including patients receiving later-line treatment. Results of a phase Ib/II trial showed an objective response rate of 25% and a median progression-free survival of 5.4...
NEW AGENTS for the treatment of advanced HER2-positive breast cancer should be coming soon to your clinic, according to Sara A. Hurvitz, MD, Director of the Breast Cancer Clinical Research Program and Associate Professor of Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of...
Researchers have identified a new potential immunotherapy target in pancreatic cancer, which so far has been notoriously resistant to treatment with immune checkpoint blockade drugs effective against a variety of other cancers. A research team from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center...
As part of The ASCO Post’s continued coverage of the 2018 American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, here is an update on several studies of allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT) and cellular therapy, as used in myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), acute...
On March 21, 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) posted a safety statement on the investigational use of venetoclax in multiple myeloma. The statement alerts health-care professionals and patients about the suspension of the BELLINI trial (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT02755597) of ...
In patients with locally advanced rectal cancer, the delivery of all radiotherapy and chemotherapy neoadjuvantly—with a shorter course of radiation—may improve the chance of complete response and downstaging over conventional treatment, according to investigators from Washington University, St....
IMMUNOTHERAPY WITH the checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab may prove to be an effective option for patients with advanced non–clear cell renal cell carcinoma, according to results in cohort B of the KEYNOTE-427 trial, presented at the 2019 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.1 Response rates were...
Adding enzalutamide to androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) significantly prolonged radiographic progression-free survival in men with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer, reducing the risk of disease progression or death by 61% compared with ADT plus placebo, according to the results of the ...
SEVERAL STUDIES at the 2019 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium evaluated the benefits of neoadjuvant treatment in patients with pancreatic cancer—and in patients deemed fully resectable, not just “borderline” resectable.1-3 Although the standard of care for resectable pancreatic ductal...
PRELIMINARY EVIDENCE suggests that the antibody-drug conjugate sacituzumab govitecan is active in patients previously treated with chemotherapy or checkpoint inhibitor therapy for metastatic urothelial cancer. These results from a phase I/II basket study of this agent were presented at the 2019...
TREATMENT WITH stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) results in a similar safety profile to conventionally fractionated, or moderately hypofractionated external-beam radiotherapy, in men with low- or intermediate- risk prostate cancer, according to preliminary results of the Prostate Advances ...
ADDING ENZALUTAMIDE to androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) significantly prolonged radiographic progression-free survival in men with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer, reducing the risk of progression or death by 61% compared with ADT plus placebo, according to results of the phase III...
NIVOLUMAB PLUS low-dose ipilimumab continued to demonstrate strong responses as well as a survival benefit with a median of 32.4 months of follow-up as front-line treatment for patients with intermediate- and poor-risk advanced renal cell carcinoma, according to an update of the phase II CheckMate...
This week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted designations for treatments for recurrent glioblastoma, neurofibromatosis type 1 and plexiform neurofibromas, multiple myeloma, and relapsed or refractory FLT3-ITD acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Fast Track Designation for Ad-RTS-hIL-12...
Treatment with the FLT3-targeted therapeutic gilteritinib improved survival for patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML) harboring an FLT3 mutation compared with standard chemotherapy regimens, according to results from the phase III ADMIRAL trial presented by Perl et al at ...
An interim analysis of a small phase Ib study by O’Hara et al evaluating the CD40 agonistic monoclonal antibody APX005M in combination with gemcitabine and nab-paclitaxel with or without the programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) inhibitor nivolumab in untreated patients with metastatic...
A small phase I study by Navai et al investigated a combination of lymphodepletion chemotherapy and HER2-specific chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy for pediatric and adult patients with advanced HER2-positive sarcoma. The combination showed promising antitumor activity and was found to ...
In a phase Ib/II trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Wei et al found that the combination of venetoclax and low-dose cytarabine produced a high response rate in previously untreated older patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who were ineligible for intensive chemotherapy. In...
APPROXIMATELY 5 MILLION middle and high school students reported currently using a tobacco product, with over 3.6 million currently using e-cigarettes and about 2.5 million currently using a combustible tobacco product, according to the latest findings from the National Youth Tobacco Survey ...
ASCO ENDORSES and reinforces the evidence-based American Urological Association (AUA), American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), and the Society of Urologic Oncology (SUO) Guideline published in 2018 in the Journal of Urology. ASCO’s endorsement of a guideline on clinically localized...
THE MANAGEMENT of localized prostate cancer remains controversial. Although the widespread use of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing has resulted in a dramatic increase in the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer, many men do not benefit from intervention because the disease is either...
IN PATIENTS with newly diagnosed multiple myeloma who responded well to induction therapy and underwent transplant, 2 years of maintenance therapy with ixazomib led to a 38% improvement in progression-free survival compared with placebo, according to the results of the phase III TOURMALINE-MM3...
DARATUMUMAB APPEARS to be the “gift that keeps on giving” to the myeloma community. “It seems we can add daratumumab to almost anything and make the regimen better. It’s got good activity and a good safety profile,” said Kenneth Shain, MD, PhD, Director of the Myeloma Working Group at Moffitt...
THE PHASE III IMpassion130 trial, first reported at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2018 Congress1 and published in The New England Journal of Medicine,2 found that the combination of front-line atezolizumab plus nab-paclitaxel significantly improved disease-free and overall...
CITY OF HOPE announced recently that it received its third lymphoma Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE) grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). The grant covers a 5-year period and totals $12.5 million. SPORE grants involve both basic as well as clinical and applied...
PRELIMINARY EVIDENCE suggests that the antibody-drug conjugate sacituzumab govitecan is active in patients previously treated with chemotherapy or checkpoint inhibitor therapy for metastatic urothelial cancer. These results from a phase I/II basket study of this agent were presented at the 2019...
PATIENTS WITH advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) may no longer have to come to the clinic every 2 weeks for treatment. According to a descriptive analysis of the phase IIIb/IV CheckMate 384 study, a more convenient dosing option of nivolumab has demonstrated convincing short-term safety...
In a study reported in the Journal of Oncology Practice, Radhakrishnan et al found that the level of involvement of medical oncologists and primary care physicians during initial cancer care in women with early-stage breast cancer affected patients’ preference for provider roles after initial ...
Researchers have shown that selectively destroying cancerous prostate tissue may be as effective as complete prostate removal or radiation therapy, while preserving more sexual and urinary function than these other treatments. The study was published by Wasler et al in the Journal of Vascular and...
New research published by Dinan et al in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network provides evidence that genomic recurrence score testing using the 21-gene assay is associated with decreased cancer care costs in real-world practice among certain patients with breast...
As reported by Bates et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, an analysis from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study indicated that radiation doses in conjunction with heart volume exposed to radiation and anthracycline treatment were associated with increased risk of late-onset cardiac disease in...
This week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) posted a safety statement on the investigational use of venetoclax in multiple myeloma, and also posted a warning letter against a company for illegally marketing unapproved products labeled as homeopathic. Safety Statement The FDA posted...
In an analysis of the phase III CALGB/SWOG 80405 trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Innocenti et al found that tumor mutational burden and microsatellite instability status affected overall survival in patients receiving first-line chemotherapy plus bevacizumab or cetuximab for...
A study of over 64,000 women of childbearing age in the United States has found that infertility is associated with a higher risk of developing cancer compared to a group of over 3 million women without fertility problems—although the absolute risk is very low, at just 2%. These findings ...
In a retrospective cohort study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Douglas Kondziolka, MD, of NYU Langone Health System, and colleagues found that patients undergoing Gamma Knife stereotactic radiosurgery for nonmalignant neurosurgical conditions did not appear to be at long-term increased risk of...
As reported by Bertrand Tombal, MD, of the Cliniques Universitaires Saint-Luc, Université Catholique de Louvain, and colleagues in The Lancet Oncology, treatment with enzalutamide was associated with clinically meaningful delays in pain progression, symptom worsening, and deterioration in...
At the end of 2015, I was dying. I was just 50 years old and a wife and mother of 2 teenage boys. Twelve years earlier, I had been diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ in my left breast. Despite a modified radical mastectomy and removal of nearly all of the lymph nodes in my left underarm—which ...
Researchers have shown that testosterone replacement may slow the recurrence of prostate cancer in low-risk patients. Findings from the study were presented by Towe et al at the European Association of Urology (EAU) 2019 Congress (Abstract 646). Practitioners have long regarded testosterone as a...
In 2015, ASCO and the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) introduced value frameworks that utilize algorithmic scales to evaluate the clinical benefit of cancer therapies and provide an objective assessment of outcomes and treatment toxicities experienced by patients.1,2 Although the two...
In a report from the St. Jude Lifetime Cohort Study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Lehmann et al found that perceptions of risk of infertility were often discordant with laboratory-assessed fertility status in adult survivors of childhood cancer. Study Details In the study, 1,067 survivors...
ASCO and ASCO’s Conquer Cancer Foundation proudly recognize the winners of ASCO’s Special Awards, the Society's highest honors, and Conquer Cancer's Women Who Conquer Cancer Mentorship Awards. The recipients of these awards have worked to transform cancer care around the world. ASCO...
As reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology by Ready et al, the phase II CheckMate 568 trial has shown that higher tumor mutational burden is associated with response, irrespective of programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression in first-line nivolumab plus low-dose ipilimumab treatment of ...
Nearly half of all childhood cancers are not being diagnosed globally, according to a new modeling study published by Ward et al in The Lancet Oncology. “Our model suggests that nearly one in two children with cancer are never diagnosed and may die untreated,” said lead...
In an interim analysis of a prospective cohort study (IOTA5) reported in The Lancet Oncology, Wouter Froyman, MD, and colleagues found that the risk of malignancy and acute complications is low when adnexal masses with benign ultrasound findings are managed conservatively. In the study, patients...
In a prospective cohort clinical trial reported in JAMA Oncology, Constance D. Lehman, MD, PhD, and colleagues found that multiple factors, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings, played a role in conversion to mastectomy among women with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) who were...
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. Gary Deng, MD, PhD, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, explore the use of omega-3 fatty acids, which have...
Prosecuting health-care fraud is a top priority for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and other federal government agencies.1,2 After all, the government earns a $6 return for every $1 that it spends on enforcement. In December 2018, the DOJ announced that it had obtained more than $2.5 billion...
THE TREATMENT approaches for multiple myeloma, both newly diagnosed and relapsed disease, continue to undergo major transformation as new agents and combinations are being introduced.1 This change has been driven by the introduction of novel drug classes such as monoclonal antibodies, as well as...
The findings of the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST), reported in 2011, revealed that participants who received low-dose helical computed tomography (CT) scans had a 20% lower risk of dying of lung cancer than participants who received standard chest x-rays. Despite these results,...