In the treatment of metastatic estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer, a highly significant 45% reduction in progression was achieved with abemaciclib, combined with fulvestrant (Faslodex), in the global phase III MONARCH 2 trial, reported at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting by George W. Sledge, MD,...
According to Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) data, more than 260,000 women were diagnosed with breast cancer in the United States in 2016, most of whom were diagnosed with early-stage (stage I or II) disease. For this demographic, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network®...
Nearly 1 in 2 Canadians is expected to be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime, according to a new report—Canadian Cancer Statistics 2017—released by the Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) in partnership with the Public Health Agency of Canada and Statistics Canada. For males, the...
In a Swedish study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Stacy Loeb, MD, of New York University, and colleagues found that use of testosterone replacement therapy was not associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer and was associated with a lower risk of aggressive cancer among...
After undergoing nearly 5 years of intensive medical training, IBM’s Watson for Oncology cognitive computing system is starting to make good on its promise to accelerate personalized care for patients with cancer. The system has been trained by oncologists at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center ...
The ASCO Post’s Integrative Oncology series is intended to facilitate the availability of evidence-based information on integrative and complementary therapies commonly used by patients with cancer. In this installment, authors Ting Bao, MD, DABMA, MS, and Jyothirmai Gubili, MS, present the case...
In both inpatient and outpatient medical settings, the physician-patient communication process can become more difficult as a disease progresses. Conflicts due to a misunderstanding of therapeutic goals and/or a patient’s values can slowly arise over time among patients, their surrogates, and...
Data from the TRANSCEND trial of JCAR017 in relapsed and refractory aggressive B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) was presented at the 2017 International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma (ICML) in Lugano, Switzerland. JCAR017 is Juno Therapeutics’ investigative chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) ...
Data was recently presented from the phase III GENUINE trial of ublituximab, a novel glycoengineered anti–CD20 monoclonal antibody, in combination with ibrutinib (Imbruvica), a Bruton tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor, for the treatment of high-risk chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), at the...
Data from the chemotherapy-free triple combination of umbralisib, an oral, next generation PI3K delta inhibitor; ublituximab, a novel glycoengineered anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody; and ibrutinib (Imbruvica) in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)/small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL) and...
A retrospective analysis reported in the Journal of Oncology Practice by Einstein et al showed the benefits of embedding palliative care in a clinic specializing in targeted and immune-based treatments in patients with melanoma or renal cancer. Study Details The study included data from 114...
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the use of daratumumab (Darzalex) in combination with pomalidomide (Pomalyst) and dexamethasone for the treatment of patients with multiple myeloma who have received at least two prior therapies including lenalidomide (Revlimid) and a...
CancerCare has announced the establishment of the CancerCare Patient Values Initiative, a multipronged effort with an aim to reframe the national health-care policy dialogue so that it includes what is important to patients and their families. As the first step of this important project,...
The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) has issued a new clinical guideline for the use of stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) in early-stage lung cancer. While SBRT is the current standard of care for peripherally located tumors in patients who cannot undergo surgery, the new...
Between the onslaught of bills and the endless stream of tests and appointments, managing cancer treatment can be overwhelming. There needs to be a good organizing system in place from the very first oncologist appointment. No one understood this better than the Founder of Vital Options ...
The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) has published its first set of consensus screening recommendations for children with common cancer predisposition syndromes in Clinical Cancer Research. These recommendations emerged from the Childhood Cancer Predisposition Workshop held by the...
Physicians gathered at the Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association (AMA) elected Barbara McAneny, MD, FASCO, MACP, an oncologist from Albuquerque, New Mexico, as the new President-Elect of the physicians' organization. Following a year-long term as President-Elect, Dr. McAneny will...
For an investment of $125 for each year of life gained since the 1950s, the National Cancer Institute (NCI)-funded SWOG clinical trials program has added 3.34 million years of life for patients with cancer in the United States because of successful therapies that were proved through its trials....
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...
Lisa A. Carey, MD, of the University of North Carolina, and Richard S. Finn, MD, of UCLA Medical Center, discuss phase II overall survival findings on palbociclib in combination with letrozole vs letrozole alone for front-line treatment of ER+/HER2– advanced breast cancer. (Abstract 1001)
CancerLinQ LLC, a wholly owned nonprofit subsidiary of ASCO, has -announced that Wendy S. Rubinstein, MD, PhD, FACMG, FACP, will be its first Division Director, Clinical Data Management and Curation. Dr. Rubinstein will oversee the team working to securely process and analyze the -CancerLinQ®...
Here are several abstracts selected from the proceedings of the 2016 America Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, highlighting newer therapeutics for the development for patients with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma. For full details of these study abstracts, visit...
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 ...
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...
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 ...
At the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting, results were presented from the phase II I-SPY 2 trial investigating pembrolizumab (Keytruda) in combination with standard therapy (paclitaxel followed by doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide) as a neoadjuvant treatment for patients with locally advanced triple-negative ...
On June 8,the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requested that Endo Pharmaceuticals remove its opioid pain medication, reformulated oxymorphone hydrochloride (Opana ER), from the market. After careful consideration, the agency is seeking removal based on its concern that the benefits of the...
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...
ASCO President Bruce E. Johnson, MD, FASCO, released the following statement today: “ASCO congratulates Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, on the announcement of his continued service as the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). A renowned researcher and skilled administrator, Dr....
The blend of bacteria in the digestive tract of metastatic melanoma patients is associated with disease progression or delay in patients treated with immunotherapy, reported Wargo et al at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting (Abstract 3008). Their study of fecal samples from 105 patients treated with...
On June 2, the European Commission (EC) approved nivolumab (Opdivo) for the treatment of locally advanced unresectable or metastatic urothelial carcinoma in adults after failure of prior platinum-containing therapy. This makes nivolumab the first immuno-oncology agent approved in the European Union ...
ASCO’s Targeted Agent and Profiling Utilization Registry (TAPUR) Study continues to expand and now has more than 300 participants enrolled on study drug, more than 100 sites, new partnerships, and a revised protocol to lower the age of eligibility. “We are very pleased with the...
A randomized phase II trial (Children’s Oncology Group [COG] ANBL1221) has resulted in the selection of dinutuximab (Unituxin) plus irinotecan/temozolomide as a regimen to be further evaluated in the treatment of pediatric patients with refractory or relapsed neuroblastoma. Study results were ...
Findings from a phase III clinical trial point to a potential new treatment for patients newly diagnosed with advanced, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-positive non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Compared to the EGFR inhibitor gefitinib (Iressa), one of the standard targeted...
Malignant pleural mesothelioma is a rare cancer, but its incidence has been rising. This cancer is usually associated with asbestos exposure, and patients have a median life expectancy of only 13 to 15 months. All patients relapse despite initial chemotherapy, more than 50% of them within 6 months...
In an early clinical trial, 33 out of 35 (94%) patients had clinical remission of multiple myeloma upon receiving immunotherapy with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells targeting B-cell maturation protein, or BCMA. Most patients had only mild side effects. The study was presented by Fan et al...
As reported in the Plenary Session at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting and in The New England Journal of Medicine by Robson et al, the phase III OlympiAD trial showed that the poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) inhibitor olaparib (Lynparza) prolonged progression-free survival vs standard therapy in...
A phase III clinical trial of 4,805 women with HER2-positive breast cancer suggests the addition of a second HER2-targeted medicine, pertuzumab (Perjeta), to standard-of-care trastuzumab (Herceptin) after surgery may improve outcomes, although the benefit is modest. The study was presented by von...
Lee S. Schwartzberg, MD, of West Cancer Center, reports on this past year’s progress of the ACCC initiative to speed adoption of immunotherapeutics in community practices.
After surgery for lymph node–positive colon cancer (stage III), some patients may need only half of the long-standing standard course of chemotherapy. In an analysis of 6 clinical trials with over 12,800 patients, 3 months of chemotherapy was nearly as effective as 6 months in patients with...
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,...
Scientists may have developed the first targeted, oral, tumor-type agnostic therapy—an agent that works comparably well across many kinds of cancer, regardless of patient age. In clinical trials of adults and children with 17 different types of advanced cancer, larotrectinib treatment...
In a study of 124 patients with advanced breast, lung, and prostate cancers, a new high-intensity genomic sequencing approach detected circulating tumor DNA at a high rate. In 89% of patients, at least one genetic change detected in the tumor was also detected in the blood. Overall, 627 (73%)...
Findings from a retrospective study of 1,200 women provide reassurance to breast cancer survivors who are contemplating pregnancy. In the study, women who became pregnant after an early breast cancer diagnosis, including those with estrogen receptor–positive tumors, did not have a higher...
Most patients experience significant distress after they are diagnosed with cancer. This distress not only erodes quality of life, but can also negatively affect the course of the disease and the patient’s ability to tolerate treatment. Yet few patients with cancer receive psychological...
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 ...
Treatments for childhood cancer are often intense and carry the risk of lifelong health problems for survivors. An analysis of 23,600 childhood cancer survivors in the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS), funded by the National Institutes of Health, found that the rate of severe health problems...